What Must I Do to Be Saved?
I mentioned in the opening sentence in my last blog that one of my favorite texts as an evangelical was Acts 16. It was a text I used in evangelizing. At that stage of my journey I had some very simplistic notions of salvation. When the jailer asks, “What must I do to be saved?” he wasn’t asking, as I thought then, how to go to heaven. He was asking, “What must I do to be made whole, to be healed, to be put right.” The word “saved” could be translated “to be made well, to be made whole, to be made complete.” When Paul says, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved” what he is saying is: Trust in and be faithful to the Lord Jesus. Transfer your trust and allegiance from the Empire of Rome to the kingdom of God as embodied and lived by Jesus, whom God has made Lord. Paul is telling this Roman citizen to transfer his allegiance. He wasn’t saying, “Here’s this doctrine about Jesus you have to believe in order to go to heaven.” He was saying, “ Rome is no longer ...