How to Be Saved
By Jeff Cranston
It’s easy to look around in this world and see that it’s broken. It’s easy to look in our own lives and see that we’re broken. You see, there’s one true God, and He is perfect, He’s holy, He's just, He’s the Creator of you and of me. This brokenness is not what He intended. This brokenness is called sin. Sin is what plagues all of humanity. It’s not what we do or what we don’t do. It’s the condition of every human heart, and a holy and perfect and righteous God finds this unacceptable.
In His grace and in His mercy, and because He loves us so much, He wants to reconcile us back to Him, which He has done. The way that He reconciled us back to Him was by sending His Son, Jesus Christ, to this earth, to live the life that we couldn’t live and to die the death that we deserve. The wages of sin, Scripture tells us, is death. Jesus bore that death for us. That’s the good news. God, who loves us, demonstrated this great love in providing His Son as that sacrifice.
I want you to know that just as much as you want to know God or know your purpose in life, God wants you even more so to know Him and have a relationship with Him because He loves you, and He cares for you deeply. So, how do you that?
First, admit that you are a sinner and turn away from your sin. Romans 3:23 says, “…for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Not one of us can live a perfect, sinless life. Only Jesus did that, however, God promises that, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).
Second, believe that Jesus is God’s Son and that God sent Jesus to pay the price for your sin. John 3:16 says that God loved the world so much that He sent His only Son to die for us, so that we would not perish and have everlasting life.
Third, confess your faith in Jesus Christ as your Savior and Lord. Romans 10:9 says if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and you believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved!
My prayer for you today is that in whatever pursuit or search you’re on, wherever you find yourself in life, that in knowing and understanding Jesus, you will find God, you will find purpose, you will find life—life everlasting.
Jeff Cranston is lead pastor of LowCountry Community Church in Bluffton, S.C.