Christ’s Standard of Salvation & Discipleship for His Kingdom | Part F

The King James Version (KJV) is mostly used in these lessons. Click here to access the KJV online.

There is no immortal spark or soul in us as human beings. Immortality has to be acquired by embracing the words of Yahushua, which are the words of Yahuwah who commissioned him. We are urged to seek immortality. We do not yet have it beyond all chance of losing it. Loss of salvation is hardly a topic on which the New Testament writers concentrate, but the threat is there nevertheless as a warning that “he who thinks he stands” (1 Cor. 10:12) should realize he can fall. Patient well-doing is the essential Christian task and we must persist to the end. “Salvation is now nearer than when we first believed” (Rom. 13:11) — a verse which gets amazingly little airing in Christian circles or tracts.

The faith sounds like hard work: “With all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge; and to knowledge self-control; and to self-control patience; and to patience Godliness; and to Godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity [love]. For if these qualities are in you, and abound, they ensure that you will not be barren or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Yahushua Christ” (2 Pet. 1:5-8).

This “tougher” teaching from the words of Yahushua and the apostles about salvation will be rejected by some who seem to have absorbed a sort of “mantra” to the effect that all you need do is “believe in Yahushua,” without further definition or explanation. The text usually appealed to and provided in tracts (which say nothing about the words of Yahushua relative to being saved) is Romans 10:9: “If you say with your mouth that Yahushua is Lord, and have faith in your heart that Yahuwah has made him come back from the dead, you will have salvation.”

This beautiful text should be put in its own context. Paul had just been speaking about “the faith, which we are preaching” (v. 8). To find out what that was, one should consult the reports of Paul’s evangelistic activity in Acts 19:8, 20:24, 25 and 28:23, 31. Now note what else Paul says in Romans 10. Verse 14 reads: “How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? How will they believe in him whom they have not heard? And how will they hear without a preacher?”

Paul insists that to be saved you must hear not just about Yahushua, but you must hear him, that is hear him preach his Gospel. Paul, properly translated here, teaches that hearing Yahushua is necessary for salvation. Hardly unreasonable, since Yahushua was the original preacher of the Gospel (Heb. 2:3). Now finally notice how Paul concludes his teaching in Romans 10. Verse 17: “So faith [true belief] comes from hearing, and that means hearing the word of Christ.” The word, Gospel, that is, which Yahushua preached for salvation.

So then the two verses often extracted unfairly, i.e. Romans 10:9, 10, easily misrepresent Yahushua and Paul. True faith is built on the one Gospel of the Kingdom brought by Yahushua, commanded in the Great Commission and preached always by Paul. Readers should be cautioned against a reduced or shrunk Gospel, based on a few verses pulled out of context. The key is to return to Yahushua and his Gospel of the Kingdom. Then, too, Paul will not be twisted.