Is It Really True That All You Have To Do Is Believe?

Tom:

We are going through the gospel of John, and Dave, you have been saying over the last couple of weeks that we are not moving very rapidly through this.

Dave:

That’s okay.

Tom:

I think it’s great because this is good stuff.  So, I don’t want somebody to think out there that we are purposely dragging our feet, we are not.  This is a banquet here and we want to go over every morsel and besides, where are we going?  What have you got to do?

Dave:

Well, there are more morsels ahead so—

Tom:

That’s true.  But the purpose here is to get to know the Lord.  The purpose here seriously is to understand the gospel, understand what He says we must do to be saved, to have eternal life with him and that’s what this is all about.  Last week we got as far as John:3:16For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
See All..., but I want to back up to 15 and just go over that again.  “That whosoever believeth in him should not perish; but have eternal life.”  And verse 16, I’m sure many of our listeners know or have heard.  “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.”  What a wonderful, incredible, unfathomable offer.  And it’s a free gift.

Dave:

The only reason this is possible is, we have to go back to verse 14 momentarily, He said the Son of man will be lifted up.  They all knew what that meant.  That meant on a cross.  So, because He is going to be the sacrifice for our sins, then those who believe in Him, it says, whosoever believeth.  Now, people say you mean that is all you’ve got to do.  Well, what else could you do?  You can’t merit your salvation, you can’t work for it, you can’t pay for it, there is no reason to plead for it because God offers it freely and Christ has paid the full penalty for our sins.  We were talking about Sungenis before in that little debate we had and he over and over and over insisted—I tried to say that Christ paid the full penalty—he insisted no, He appeased God.

Tom:

Dave, he said you made that up; that was your idea.  I mean, he is giving you a lot of credit here.  When you think of all the books that have been written about Christ paying the full penalty but—

Dave:

Well, the Bible says it and Paul raises the question in Romans 3, how can God be just and justify sinners?   It is a matter of justice and if the ticket has been written out as it has been on all of us, the penalty has to be paid.  So, He paid the penalty.  God wasn’t appeased, that’s a pagan term, to appease God.  No, it’s a matter of justice.  God’s laws are holy, perfect, can’t be changed and he has pronounced a penalty upon sin, that is, death, eternal separation from Him and Christ, because He is an infinite being—we just had a letter the other day, someone saying well, wait a minute!  If you are saying that Christ paid the full penalty for our sins but death is eternal separation from God, so He would still be paying that eternally separated from God.

Tom:

And he would be if He were a finite being.

Dave:

That’s right, but He is infinite and that’s why it had to be God who became a man, didn’t cease to be God, will never cease to be man, the one and only God/man who paid the full penalty for our sins.  And, I suppose, in a moment He could pay an eternal penalty but there were three hours of darkness on the cross when He cried:  “My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?”  He is crying out as the man, Christ Jesus being forsaken, and yet He is God and He is paying the infinite penalty.  So, that is the only way that verse 15 could say, “Whosoever believeth in him should not perish.”  That’s the only way verse 16 can say that “whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life.”  

Tom:

Dave, I want to just interject this.  I know growing up Roman Catholic and having people trying to share the gospel with me who were not Catholics, it really did seem strange to me that this is all that you had to do.  But, you know, now in my maturity in the Lord sometimes I think about how incredible this is and how miraculous it is because God has devised this way.  Faith is the vehicle for receiving what God has done for us and it is incredibly, I want to say miraculous, only God could have done this, come up with this because it covers everybody, anywhere, under any circumstance.  You’re not prevented from believing because you’re in this group or that group or you are unworthy or you are in circumstances.  For example, the thief on the cross:  He didn’t have to do anything else except believe and trust and that’s what the scriptures point out, that’s what he did.

Dave:

So, this is for whosoever will believe.  And, when you ask yourself, well, that doesn’t seem like enough, what could you do and if you did something to merit your salvation, your church attendance, your participation in the sacraments, your gifts to charity, whatever it was, whatever you did, then you could walk the golden streets above and boast, stick out your chest and say yes, Christ died for me on the cross but I paid for part of my salvation.  Now, some people say well yes, but if you even believe, then you can take credit for believing, therefore God must regenerate you first and make you believe.  There is no work in believing.  There is no credit to me.  If I believe something that is true, do I get any credit for the truth that I believe and that faith is not a work?  Very clearly the Bible distinguishes it.  For example, Romans:4:5But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.
See All..., Paul says, “Now, to him that worketh not, but believeth….”  So, believing is not a work, it is nothing that I can take credit for.  But otherwise,—I think of some dear people, I have some friends like this, I’ve had some lengthy discussions with them, and they are afraid that if they don’t live a good enough life they will lose their salvation.  Then they could say well, I didn’t save myself, Christ paid the penalty for my sins but I kept myself saved by living a good enough life by hanging onto Him.  No, there can be, just logically as well as biblically, God must do it all, there can be no basis for any human being to boast that he has lived up to certain standards, that he has been faithful in his life and so forth.  And those who believe this Tom, they come under some real fear.  We had some friends over for dinner last night and—

Tom:

Those who believe that there is something that they need to do.

Dave:

Right.  Those who believe that they have something they must contribute to their salvation, that it is their good works or whatever.  And—the lady was telling us how her father, who had been a pastor and yet he was kind of seduced by a woman that got him to divorce his wife and he married her and she was telling how when he came to die he was just under—of course he lost his ministry and so forth—he was under terrible condemnation.  He knew he had done wrong, he knew that what he had done was foolishness, it was folly, it was sin, it was wrong for the pleasures of sin for a moment, and he thought this would be more pleasurable than the wife he had been married to, the mother of his children.  He came under a terrible guilt and he called for a pastor to pray for him, he wasn’t sure that he was saved, was he going to heaven or not?  Had he committed the unpardonable sin and it just brought a great fear into his life as he came to die.  Well Jesus says, whosoever believeth, whosoever believeth that he paid the penalty for every sin, no matter what sin.  We get letters from some murderers on death row and they sound like the apostle Paul, who was not a murderer but who was on death row also.  They are so zealous for sound doctrine as you know.  And some of these men thank God that they went to prison.  They don’t thank God for the crime that they committed that put them in prison but they thank God that they were caught because it was in prison that they came to know Christ.  Now, I don’t find anywhere in the Bible—and we talked about this in the past, the sin that is unto death and so forth—I don’t find anywhere in the Bible that it say this sin is too great.  It says, whosoever, whosoever believes.  If you will believe that Christ is God, who came to this earth, became a man to pay the penalty for your sins so that God could be just and forgive sinners, no matter what your sin is, if you will believe in Him you will be born again of the Spirit of God. You will be transformed.  You have a new life.  Christ becomes your life.  You have new desires; you have deliverance from the sins that have plagued you in the past.  You become a new creature in Christ Jesus, created in Christ unto good works that God has before ordained we should walk in them.  And this is what Jesus is saying, whosoever, come on, whosoever, whoever you are, come unto me, I will give you rest.

Tom:

Dave, that’s our only hope.  The wages of sin is death, separation from God forever.  We have only one hope and that’s in Him who paid, as you said, the full penalty and He offers it as a free gift.

Dave:

And we talked Tom, about different religious groups and traditions and so forth.  Unfortunately, pride enters in.  I want to know that I belong to the right group, we’ve got the right rules and I’m keeping them.  No, that will keep you away from Christ.