As important as doctrine and theology are (and they are most certainly important), if doctrine and theology have no relationship with how Christians live our lives, we have missed the mark!

Do not misunderstand: no one is saved by how we live. What we contribute to our salvation is sin—which doesn’t save, but serves rather to condemn. It is only as one is aware of one’s guilt before the thrice-holy God that one is aware of how desperately one needs a Savior. Praise God, He has supplied a Savior! The one and only Savior supplied by God is Jesus, the only begotten Son of God. He became a human being:

so He could live for us—the life God requires of us, that we have all failed to live.
so He could die for us—to pay the penalty for our sins.
so that He could rise from the dead for us—defeating sin, death, Hell, and Satan on our behalf.
so that He could ascend back into Heaven for us—where He ever lives to intercede for us.

Jesus did everything to save us. We contribute absolutely nothing to our salvation.

We receive the full benefit of what Christ did for us through faith alone, in Christ alone.

But due to our sin, no one would ever believe. So God regenerates those Jesus came to save, and in so doing, gave the redeemed new hearts. These new hearts have saving faith in Christ and a desire to turn from sin (in what the Bible calls repentance). So while we are responsible to believe in Jesus (a belief that includes repentance), faith and repentance are also gifts from God.

We can therefore not take any credit for salvation—including the faith and repentance by which we receive Christ. All credit and glory belong to the triune God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

NOW—once we are saved, we are responsible to live the redeemed lives we have been given, not to earn or even to retain salvation, but to validate that we have indeed been born again by God.

In the next series of blogs we’ll consider what this Christian life looks like.