BELIEVE
What do you believe?
It is the pivotal word that is the center of everything God expects from us. Have you ever noticed this pattern?
“For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that everyone who believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16)
“But to all who did receive Him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God — children born not of blood, nor of the desire or will of man, but born of God.” (John 1:12–13)
“For what does the Scripture say? ‘Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.’”(Romans 4:3)
“Now the words “it was credited to him” were written not only for Abraham, but also for us, to whom righteousness will be credited — for us who believe in Him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. He was delivered over to death for our trespasses and was raised to life for our justification.” (Romans 4:23–25)
Even if we accept human testimony, the testimony of God is greater. For this is the testimony that God has given about His Son. Whoever believes in the Son of God has this testimony within him; whoever does not believe God has made Him out to be a liar, because he has not believed in the testimony that God has given about His Son.
And this is that testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.
(1 John 5:9–12)
I could quote more, but I think you get my point. Better yet, I think you get God’s point. He wants us to believe Him. In fact, He requires it. A few years ago, when I was praying about the requirements for salvation, because I had been exposed to the idea of Once Saved Always Saved, which completely went against everything I had been taught in church. I decided to ask God for the truth of it. Honestly, I expected Him to tell me this well meaning friend I had was just confused and wrong. But what would it hurt to pray about it, right? I mean, God will always tell us the truth when we ask Him for it, so I felt I had nothing to lose. Then, I had this dream…
There was a person in my dream that was explaining to me that to “believe” meant we had to believe everything that was stated in John 3:16. They explained as they pointed out every part of this verse:
For God… You must believe God is God. He is the Creator who made everything. He is the Most High, the highest authority. He has the right to order His Creation how He sees fit. He is in control. He is GOD.
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So loved… You must believe that God loves. He is love. His motivation is love. His plans center on His love. His plans for His creation, all of it, are because He loves.
The world… You must believe that everyone God made is included in this love. Everyone. Not just you. Not just your race or culture. Everyone God created from the beginning to the end. The good, the bad, and everyone in between. Everyone. No exceptions. “He Himself is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.” (1 John 2:2)
That He gave… God’s love propelled Him to offer us precious gifts. A gift by definition is something given freely, not a prize to be earned. What God has done for us, giving us life, giving us a beautiful world to live in, giving us free will choice, giving us His only Son as a sacrifice for our sins so that we can be forgiven and our debt paid in full… was all because He loves us and wanted to show us that love in these beautiful gifts. He is not expecting us to pay Him back. He is not trying to manipulate us into being good, He is not even expecting that everyone will believe Him. He’s leaving that up to each one of us. His gift is freely given. We must believe that.
His only begotten Son… God’s only begotten Son, Jesus Christ. Jesus is unique. He is the only begotten of the Father. Jesus is the only one God made with a human woman. God did this so that Jesus would have a human nature as well as God’s Spirit. Jesus is fully God in His Spirit, and He is fully man in His flesh. This is so that Jesus could experience life as a human, he would be tested and tempted in every way just like we are, but He was able to overcome His flesh nature because He is also God’s Spirit. He is completely without sin. His is both fully God and fully man. Just as God created a man to unite with his wife to make a child, so did God put part of Himself into the virgin Mary to create His child, Jesus Christ. We have to believe this. No other human being could have ever paid the sacrifice necessary to atone for the world’s sin. None of us are sinless. That sacrifice had to be 100% human and 100% sinless. This is why it is so dangerous for us to believe we have any part in this salvation. You don’t want God to factor your righteous deeds into the mix. You aren’t that righteous! You will never be able to measure up to His standard of righteousness. This is why we needed Jesus in the first place. You have to believe this.
that everyone who believes in Him… This is what we have been talking about. Everyone who believes in Jesus Christ. Everyone. All. Entirety. The whole tamale. ALL of them that BELIEVE.
shall not perish… Our spirit will not die in torment for eternity in hell. Our flesh will absolutely die at the end of this short life. Our real life, our eternal life, is hidden with Christ in God. (Colossians 3:3) Just like Jesus died in His flesh and was resurrected by God’s Spirit that lives inside of Him, so will we die in this flesh and be resurrected by the Spirit of Christ who lives in us. Some of us will be caught up alive together with everyone else when the resurrection occurs, because God will not leave any of us behind. That is what we call the rapture of the church.
By the word of the Lord, we declare to you that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a loud command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will be the first to rise. After that, we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will always be with the Lord.
Therefore encourage one another with these words.
1 Thessalonians 4:15–18
but have eternal life… Eternal means eternal. The Greek word here is G166. Aiónios. Eternal, forever, everlasting. From aion; perpetual (also used of past time, or past and future as well) — eternal, for ever, everlasting, world (began).
I know it’s redundant, but it took me several years to grasp the concept that salvation is eternal. The struggle against mental programming is real, people. Because I was raised in churches that taught you can lose your salvation, I never really paid that much attention to the word “eternal” here. I figured the pastors went to school to learn about the Bible, I didn’t, so they must know more than me and I just went with what they preached… for a while at least. But Jesus Christ Himself just said that if we believed in Him, we would have eternal life. Life that never ends. Never ends. Never. To believe you can lose your salvation is really just calling God a liar. Truth. There is no getting around it. We need to stop just taking as gospel other people’s opinions about the Word of God and take God’s Word for what He is plainly saying here. Eternal means eternal. Eternal life does not mean you are on probation for this life span and you will get eternal life later. If we are born again by the Holy Spirit of God the moment we believe, then our eternal life starts at that moment. Just like a baby’s life starts at the moment of conception, but instead of ending, this new spiritual life is eternal. It never ends. To say we can lose it is an oxymoron. It is a complete contradiction in terms. This is why there is so much confusion and infighting among God’s people. We need to stop fighting to keep our denomination’s beliefs as though they are sacred, which they are not, and start praying for God to show us all the truth so we can be on the same page. Jesus is coming soon. It doesn’t take a genius to read the Bible and watch the news everyday and know we are almost to that time of the rapture/resurrection of the church. My plea to you today is to seek God and His truth for yourself. Don’t just take other people’s words for it. We are all wrong at times. We all make mistakes. We all misinterpret things. This is the one thing you don’t want to be wrong about. And you don’t have to be. Jesus said “Ask and you’ll receive…” What are you waiting for? Just ask Him!
And BELIEVE.
All scripture taken from the Berean Standard Bible.
