Have you ever received Jesus Christ as your Savior?
You need to realize that God loves.
God loves you and has a plan for your life: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16)
The Bible tells us that all people are sinners.
Sin is doing anything that goes against the law of God, it is breaking God’s law and it is this sin that has separated us from God (because He is holy). All of us have done sin – “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;” (Romans 3:23)
God created man in His own image and gave humans the ability to choose between right and wrong. This is what we call our “free will”, the ability to make choices. We choose to sin and that sin is what keeps us from God. It only takes one sin to make us a sinner and that sin keeps us from being able to enter Heaven when we die.
The Bible says that this sin must be paid for.
“For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” (Romans 6:23). Wages mean “payment” and the payment for our sin is death and hell, eternal separation from God and Heaven. If we continue to live in our sin and do not go to Jesus Christ for the salvation of our soul, we will die without Jesus as our Savior and be without God forever.
The Bible teaches that there are no good works that, if done, will help us go to Heaven. God says that eternal life is a free gift that cannot be obtained by our own works. “But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.” (Isaiah 64:6) All the good works we can do – “our righteousnesses” – are like dirty rags before God. These good works, therefore, can never make us worthy of Heaven.
The good news is that Jesus Christ paid for our sins.
All our sins were placed on Christ at the cross and so He paid the debt of our sin for us. The Lord Jesus Christ died on the cross and rose from the dead. He is now alive forever. “But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8)
Jesus Christ lived a perfect life and that made Him the only one that could ever die in our place, since He had no sins of His own to pay for. When He died on the cross, He became sin for us and died in our place. Remember, there must be a payment made for our sin. Someone has to die – if you choose to die in your sins, your penalty is eternal death which is in hell and the lake of fire for all eternity. But, since Jesus died for us, we can receive that gift of eternal life through Jesus Christ and go to heaven one day.
We must personally pray and accept Jesus Christ through faith.
The Bible says “For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” (Romans 10:13). You must accept Jesus Christ as your Savior, acknowledging that only through Him can you be saved. You must turn from your sins and your own attempts to be righteous to receive His free gift. No religion, no church, no good works can help you – only your faith and trust in Jesus Christ for the salvation of your soul.
New life!
Eternal life begins when we turn from our sins and accept Jesus Christ as our Savior, trusting that only He can save us from our sins. When you pray and do this, the Bible says that you are a “new creature” and that “old things have passed away, behold, all things are become new.” (II Corinthians 5:17)