Salvation and the Cleansing of Sin

Man does not inherit the guilt of sin as he does the color in his eyes. Man was not born a sinner as many teach. Yet man does sin. The Bible affirms this truth, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). If there were no remedy for this awful sin then all would be doomed to eternal damnation, for “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23).

While there is no escape from physical death, there is an escape from the final separation from God and the Bible alone supplies that information. The Bible is the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and the apostle Paul wrote: “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek” (Romans 1:16). If we would ever hope to have eternal salvation in Jesus, then we better open up the Gospel of Christ and read what we must do in order to be saved. So many say they believe in God, Jesus, Death, Heaven, and even Hell. Yet these same individuals do not open up the Word of God to find out what God has directed for them to do in this life, in order to be saved! The Bible tells us to “lay aside all filthiness and overflow of wickedness, and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls” (James 1:21).

The Bible is available, and it is the complete and perfect guide which supplies our needs for salvation. Creeds, manuals, prayer-books, catechism, disciplines and the like are completely unnecessary and are in fact additions to God’s Word. The Bible is God’s book, and every other book is man’s book. We must make the right decision in this life in order to gain eternal salvation. Will it be God’s book, the Bible, or the creeds of man? 

"Cleanliness is next to Godliness" it is said. This has been said with reference to the cleanliness of the body or physical surrounding. But we might say in matters that are spiritual, "Cleanliness IS Godliness". For when one is cleansed from sin, he is godly. Just as water is a cleansing agent for the filth of the flesh, just so there is a cleansing agent for the sins of man. That agent is the blood of Christ. Listen to the Bible as it says: “Not with the blood of goats and calves, but with His own blood He entered the Most Holy Place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption. For if the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer, sprinkling the unclean, sanctifies for the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?” (Hebrews 9:12-14).

But how is it that we gain such spiritual cleansing? The Bible says: “You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you” (John 15:3). In order for us to become clean spiritually, we must then obey the words of Christ. It is the Words of Christ that tell us of his saving blood and when we are baptized into the death of Christ, we have our sins washed in the blood of the lamb. The Bible says: “Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? Therefore, we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection” (Romans 6:3-5).

We cannot be saved without the blood of Christ, and we cannot be saved without His Word. It is through the Bible, the complete and perfect guide, that we learn that it is through the blood of Christ that we are cleansed from sin. All that will truly matter when we die is that we have been baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of our sins and have lived a life pleasing to God so that we can gain eternal life. Please let the Bible guide your steps (Jeremiah 10:23). 

The Bible is Needed, and It Directs Our Way

Are we in need of any additional revelation from God today? Or is the Bible complete? I have been told that there have been and still are divine revelations from God since the Bible has been written. As a student of God's Word, I want to know whether everything I need to know is contained in the Bible as I now have it. Therefore, to find out whether the Bible is complete or not, let us go to the source, and that is the Bible itself for the answer. We can turn over to Jude 3 and read where it says: "Beloved, while I was very diligent to write to you concerning our common salvation, I found it necessary to write to you exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints." The Greek scholars are quick to point out that the expression "once for all" means, "Once, one time ....used of what is so done as to be of perpetual validity and never needs repetition" (Thayer). This says that the scriptures (that which is written from God) were given one time - one time for all time- and there is never a need for repetition. Therefore, any claim of inspiration from anyone since the inspired men died during the first century is a false claim.

The apostle Paul speaking to Timothy tells us that "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness," (2 Timothy 3:16). That seems to say it all right there. Every piece of Scripture that we have was given to us through God's inspiration for the purpose of providing doctrine, reproof, correction, and instructing in all righteousness. Don't let anyone tell you differently, nothing but the Bible is needed because the Bible is our complete and perfect guide providing us with everything we need to know on how to be saved. 

The world without the Bible would be worse than a trip through Carlsbad Caverns without a lantern. David said, "Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path." The Psalmist also wrote, "The entrance of Your words gives light; it gives understanding to the simple" (Psalms 119:105, 130). The Bible stands as a complete and final revelation from God giving spiritual light to dispel darkness in our individual lives as well as in the world. The Bible lights our way here and shines to show the way to heaven. Truly then, it is a lamp shining in darkness. In the midst of wickedness, sin and selfishness, the Bible shines as a giant beacon showing the way of God like a lighthouse, standing proudly on shore, shining its bright rays to the lost ship at sea.

However, we have got to let the Bible be that shining light for us. It is only going to be able to show us the way if we open it and read what God's Word tells us (Romans 10:17). We must be determined to let God direct our every step through life. The prophet Jeremiah wrote: "O LORD, I know the way of man is not in himself; it is not in man who walks to direct his own steps" (Jeremiah 10:23). When we let the Bible direct our way in our daily life, we are in essence letting God direct our steps because the Bible is God's inspired revelation to man. Have you turned to God's Word, the Bible, to direct your life here on earth? If not, why not? There's no better time to start letting God lead your life, than today. Having an eternity with God depends upon it!

The Bible Contains No Errors

Jesus claimed that He fulfilled all Messianic prophecies, that is, prophecies about the Messiah. These were written in the Old Testament hundreds of years before Christ was born and stand as solid evidence that these men were writing by the inspiration of God as stated in 2 Timothy 3:16 which says "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God." In the book of Acts we can read where these Old Testament prophecies applied to the Christ of Galilee. It says in Acts 3:18: "But those things which God foretold by the mouth of all His prophets, that the Christ would suffer, He has thus fulfilled." The apostles realized and understood that the prophecies that they had heard about were being fulfilled.

There are literally many dozens of prophecies made of Christ, and when we realize every one of them came to pass exactly as predicted, we begin to ask ourselves the question, "How did these men know of this person hundreds of years before He was born?" In Jeremiah 31:15 it says: "Thus says the LORD: A voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping, Rachel weeping for her children, refusing to be comforted for her children, because they are no more." This prophecy of Jeremiah did not occur until 600 years later when Herod committed this cruel act. We can read of where it was fulfilled in Matthew 2:17-18 which says: "Then was fulfilled what was spoken by Jeremiah the prophet, saying:"A voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation, weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, refusing to be comforted, because they are no more." How then could Jeremiah know of the "weeping" of the people over their slain babes as he predicted? The only explanation is that God was speaking through Jeremiah and all the prophets, concerning the things that were to come to pass. The Bible was truly "given by inspiration of God". 

There are no errors in the Bible and there are no errors in geography concerning the Bible. The Bible is not a geography book; but it is an astounding fact that every single statement the Bible makes about the earth and its make-up has been shown to be true. Yes, it is a fact that the Bible, the Word of God, contains NO errors in the fields of geography and science.

How did Solomon know about 1,000 years before Christ that there was a sphere when man did not? Man, as a result of his own experiments and wisdom, did not know this for hundreds of years. Notice carefully the words of Solomon in Proverbs 8:27: "When He prepared the heavens, I was there, when He drew a circle on the face of the deep." The first to give arguments for the earth's round shape was Aristotle who lived from 384-322 B.C. Few people accepted his idea then. Most people believed that the earth was flat until the invention of the compass, which made such voyages as that of Columbus and Magellan possible. When we sailed around the world, we knew then that Solomon in Proverbs 8:27 had told us the truth, nearly a thousand years before man discovered it. This could only have occurred through the mighty God Himself!

Evolutionists would have us to believe that the Bible is scientifically inaccurate. But did you know that many scientists are turning away from the idea or organic evolution? And many more are finding out that the Bible is accurate in each statement that it makes relative to science. Again, while the Bible is not a book of science, it has in each case proven to be accurate.

For example, in the field of sanitation, Moses, as he led the children of Israel through the wilderness, gave some laws of sanitation and food contamination that medical science did not discover for over a thousand years after Christ was born. How did Moses know of these laws of sanitation when man's wisdom did not discover them for thousands of years? Read the book of Leviticus for some of these medical practices far in advance of their time. How did Moses know these things? The only explanation is that God was with him.

In the area of oceanography, Matthew Fontaine Maury, known for charting the ocean currents, wrote a book which became the first textbook of modern oceanography. He became interested in finding the ocean currents after hearing his son read from a book which told of these currents. The currents are of great value to commercial fisherman since they discovered that schools of fish pass through them searching for food. The book Mr. Maury's son was reading was the Bible. 3,400 years before Maury's discovery, David wrote in Psalm 8:8: "The birds of the air, and the fish of the sea that pass through the paths of the seas." David was not an oceanographer, sailor, or fisherman, but he spoke with certainty of the paths, or currents, in the ocean, and of the fish that passed through them. How could he have spoken with such certainty? The only explanation is that God revealed these facts as He was was with him. 

Do you believe in the Bible? Do you truly believe that the Bible contains no errors? No errors have ever been found in the Bible. In the areas of prophecy, geography, or scientific facts, no errors have been found in the Bible. It contains no errors because the Bible is truly the “inspired Word of God.” Now, let us live our lives for God, believing and understanding that He created and knows all things, and will judge us when we come to the end of our life (John 12:48).

The Bible - Prophecies, Archaeology, and Survival

The predictions of men, based on facts of the past and logical conclusions drawn from them, are sometimes right, but more often are in error. Even weather predictions, with all the sophisticated equipment and a storehouse of knowledge, often are wrong. But the difference in human predictions and Bible prophecy is that no man who spoke from God was ever wrong. These men prophesied of men - even mentioning their names and events, hundreds of years before such events came to pass, and concerning things which were obviously beyond the scope of human knowledge and wisdom at the time they were written.

The prophet Isaiah prophesied during the days of the divided kingdom of Israel that Cyrus “shall perform all My pleasure, saying to Jerusalem, You shall be built, and to the temple, Your foundation shall be laid” (Isaiah 44:28). He names Cyrus by name, yet he’s telling of an event that would happen over 200 years later. Cyrus was king of the Medo-Persian empire that allowed the children of Israel to return to Jerusalem to rebuild the city and temple. Isaiah prophecies this before Judah was taken into Babylonian captivity. Babylon would later be destroyed by the Medo-Persians under king Cyrus. Furthermore, how could Micah know the Savior would be born in little, insignificant Bethlehem when he wrote 700 years before Christ was even born?  And Jesus in Mark 9:1 prophesied that the kingdom would come with “power” which came about in the second chapter of Acts. The prophets could prophesy these things because God was with them. Christ could prophesy because He was God (John 1:1,14).

Besides all the 300 plus prophecies concerning Christ, there are many archaeological and other proofs that the Bible is the product of an all-powerful creator. Scientists digging into the ruins of the past, have uncovered amazing corroborative evidence to verify the Bible account of cities and events, many of which were doubted and even disputed by skeptics. The uncovering of battle records, names of kings and cities, all correspond with the Biblical account of the same events. We have old copies of Bible writing, such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, which are known to have existed long before the fulfilment of these prophecies actually occurred and became facts of history.

Ancient Babylon is a good example. In Isaiah the 13th chapter (written about 700 years before Christ), the prediction is made that the city would become desolate, even to the point that the wild beast would not lie there. Neither would the Arab pitch his tent there. Visitors to this site verify the truthfulness of this statement.

Isaiah, in speaking of God, stated in Isaiah 40:22: “It is He who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers, who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them out like a tent to dwell in.” The Hebrew word that Isaiah used for “circle” is the word khug. It literally means something with “roundness”, a “sphere.” But, of course, the people of Isaiah's day (and in fact, for many generations to come) thought the earth was flat. How did Isaiah know that NOT to be the case? There is scientific foreknowledge in the Bible which is years ahead of its time. How could the Bible writers have known these things and countless more - except God, who created the universe and knew every detail of it, told them! No rational, sane person would believe that such foreknowledge could have come through just men. All this had to come from only one source, and that is God almighty!

If a few uneducated men wrote a book today, what would be the odds of its being a best seller for hundreds of years? Imagine then the odds against the writings of a few uneducated fishermen and uneducated Jews in a captive Roman province surviving the persecutions of the Jewish authorities and the pagan religious leaders, to say nothing of the determined efforts of the Roman Empire to stamp them out! But such writings have not only survived, but they continue to be the best seller of all books. The Bible has not only survived in early days, but it has withstood the blows of the skeptics and the infidel’s best efforts to destroy it through the centuries. If the Bible is not from God, then how do we account for such phenomena? If it is from God, these things are easily understood - God saw to it that it did survive! The Bible (the inspired Word of God), has survived into the 21st century, and will continue to do so until the end of time. 

The Bible - Its Moral Standard

The Old Testament writers lived in a country surrounded by and influenced by heathen religions. New Testament writers were in the midst of the immoralities and vices of pagan Rome and Greece. Yet the moral standards which these writers set forth were far in advance of anything known at that time. This is again evidence that the Bible is from an omniscient God. The inspired apostle Paul addressed the sins of the flesh in Galatians 5:19-21 when he wrote: “Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like; of which I tell you beforehand, just as I also told you in time past, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.”

One must ask, how can the skeptic account for the fact that the world’s greatest literature and the highest moral standards came, not from the geniuses of Rome or the philosophers of Greece, but from a hand-full of Jewish fishermen who never went to college nor published a book. Christianity is the one standard that admits of universal application without destroying the world. No other religion elevates all mankind as does Christianity. The Bible says: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28). When we practice what Jesus would have us to do as stipulated in His Word, the Bible, then our moral standard will be above reproach.

The Bible is Relevant to Our Needs

The Bible's relevancy to human needs stands as mighty evidence that the Bible is from God. Man is spirit and body. Both have needs, and the Bible outlines how God supplies these needs. Every need that man has whether it is physical, mental, moral, or psychological, the need is supplied and anticipated by God in His Word, the Bible. He tells us how to care for our human body. In Romans 12:1-2 the Bible says: "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God." It is through the gospel of Christ, the Bible, that tells us how we are to present our body, the body that God gave us in the first place, to Him. The Bible also gives us the formula for peace of mind and peace with God, along with how to get along with others. What a wonderful book that anticipates and supplies all of our needs! This is clearly stated in Philippians 4:19 which says: "And my God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus."

Man desires to know his origin; the Bible supplies that knowledge. Man wants to know his purpose in life; the Bible supplies that knowledge. Man wants to know his destiny; the Bible answers what will become of man. Man desires to worship; the Bible points to the true God and true worship of God. John 4:24 says; "God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth." Can this be the product of mere man? We think not, but agree with the Psalmist, "Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path" (Psalms 119:105). If man is to know his origin, purpose in life, destiny, and how to worship in spirit and in truth, then man must take up the Word of God, the Bible, and let it light the way for his life. I encourage everyone to think on these things because this is absolute “Bible Truth.”

Appealing to the Spiritual Interest of Man

According to Matthew 10:28 we can read where man consists of a soul and a body. We can learn from this reading that the soul is more valuable than the body. Jesus said “do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. But rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.” The soul is more valuable because the soul is eternal and body is mortal. The soul of man is that part which was made in the image of God, while the body was made from the dust of the earth.

In the first book of the Bible we read: “And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being” (Genesis 2:7). The Word of God, or the gospel, is that which appeals to the soul, and as the soul is more important than the body, we must present to everyone the gospel, which is God’s power to save the soul from eternal condemnation. The inspired apostle Paul wrote: “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek” (Romans 1:16). What is it that has the power to save souls? It is the gospel of Jesus Christ!

Therefore, we must learn and understand that it is our soul that is to be cherished. Jesus again tried to make this very clear when Matthew wrote His Words in Matthew 16:26. Jesus said, “For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?” Have you really thought about this question that Jesus asked? Could it be that you have exchanged your soul for the material wants and desires of this world?

While the Christian is taught to care for their body, the thrust of the gospel of Christ is directed toward the saving of the soul. Too many churches today overemphasize the material, the social, and even the political. But that is not the mission of the church that Jesus built, and was bought and paid for by His blood (Matthew 16:18). Jesus said that He came to “...seek and to save that which was lost” (Luke 19:10). The church which belongs to Christ is to do the very same thing today; to seek, teach, and save lost souls. May God richly bless you as you nourish your soul daily with the precious words of Jesus.