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What does the Bible have to do with
eternal life?
The Bible is not a magical object.
Owning a Bible, touching a Bible, reading a Bible — none of
these things save us. But allowing God's Holy Spirit to speak
to us, as He applies the words and testimony of Scripture to
our own hearts, that can lead us to faith in Jesus
Christ, which leads to the confession and forgiveness of sin,
and to eternal life with God.
When we accept the words of God as
what they are -— the very words of God — and when we believe
what God is saying to us in the Scriptures, something powerful
and supernatural happens inside us. For one thing, faith
begins to grow. And it's God's kind of faith, a saving
faith (See Romans 1:16 & 10:17).
Ultimately, a human being is "saved" when that
person is made right with God. And that salvation comes as the
result of faith. But faith in what? It must
be faith in God Himself, and we show that faith by believing
what God says.
The opposite is also true.
As you read the Scriptures,
from Genesis all the way through to the Revelation, you will see
that sin results from disbelieving and disobeying what God
says. Adam and Eve, for example, decided to believe the
lie of the serpent, rejecting the clear warning of God. The
result is still being unfolded in every generation of human
beings.
Sin is the result of not believing
God. And when a person does believe God? When we
believe and obey God, we have the kind of faith that saves us.
When God speaks, people always have a choice. They will
either choose to believe, or they will decide not to believe.
Think about it.
God knows what is right and good, and He often reveals such
truths to us in the things He that says. Whatever
God says is true. The heart that is open to God (by
faith) will believe that God is good, and will be willing to
obey Him, even when He directs us in ways that are against our
normal human desires, our understanding or natural abilities.
For example Noah, Abram (Abraham),
Moses and others believed whatever God said. In the case of
Noah, he was able to save the lives of his family, and
ultimately the human race. And in the case of Abram, the Bible
makes it clear that he was made right with God. Without
him, there would be no Isaac, no Jacob, and no nation of
Israel. Without Israel, there would be no Messiah, no
Jesus to die for the sins of the world.
The Genesis account says:
Abram said, "O
Lord GOD, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and
the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?"
And Abram said,
"You have given me no offspring, and so a slave born in my
house is to be my heir."
But the word of
the LORD came to him, "This man shall not be your heir; no one
but your very own issue shall be your heir." He brought him
outside and said, "Look toward heaven and count the stars, if
you are able to count them." Then he said to him, "So shall
your descendants be."
And he believed the LORD; and the LORD
reckoned it to him as righteousness. (Genesis 15:2-6)
Paul comments on this very passage in Romans, chapter 4,
showing us that such faith in “what God says” is the very
basis of righteousness with God.
By the Spirit of God, Paul writes:
"For what does the
Scripture say? 'Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to
him for righteousness.' "
The Bible goes on to say much
more:
"Hoping against
hope, he believed that he would become 'the father of many
nations,' according to what was said, 'So numerous shall your
descendants be.' He did not weaken in faith when he
considered his own body, which was already as good as dead
(for he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered
the barrenness of Sarah’s womb.
"No distrust made
him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in
his faith as he gave glory to God, being fully convinced that
God was able to do what he had promised. Therefore his
faith 'was reckoned to him as righteousness.'
"Now the words,
'it was reckoned to him,' were written not for his sake alone,
but for ours also. It will be reckoned to us who believe
in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was handed
over to death for our trespasses and was raised for our
justification.
"Therefore, since
we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our
Lord Jesus Christ..." (Romans 4:18 – 5:1)
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So then, we
actually obtain God's gift of eternal life by believing God.
Jesus said the same kinds of things all through the Gospels.
He said, for example:
"It is the Spirit
who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I
speak to you are spirit, and they are life." (John
6:63)
And again:
"For I have not
spoken on My own authority; but the Father who sent Me gave Me
a command, what I should say and what I should speak.
And I know that His command is everlasting life.
Therefore, whatever I speak, just as the Father has told Me,
so I speak." (John 12:49, 50)
Go back and look at all the things
Jesus said in the Gospels as He urged people to have faith in
God, to believe God, to trust God. We must believe God,
and not simply believe some nice things about
God.
The Bible is a gift of God's grace
If we’re willing to believe what
God says, then we’re on our way to knowing and following God.
That's why the Bible remains so important today. It is a
record of what God has been saying down through the
generations of human history. And that’s why godly men and
women through history have fought so hard to keep the Bible
record available to all generations.
The same Holy Spirit that calls to all human hearts,
drawing us and urging us to repent (for God
"now commands all men everywhere to
repent..." Acts 17:30) also bears witness to the Bible
that it is the Word of God. The Bible has not been preserved for us by
human efforts, even though many people have lived and died to
make it available to us, but by the sovereign working of God
Himself.
In the Bible God gives us a
faithful record of what He's said and done among human
beings, from the very earliest times. And in that Bible He
also tells us what is to come — both for those who believe
Him, and also for all who reject Him.
Throughout the centuries people
have come to know Jesus Christ, often with far less of the
written message available to them than believers in Western
societies have today. And before that, people came to know
God without even knowing about Jesus — or having any of the
New Testament to explain anything for them.
Salvation (the spiritual
transformation that results in eternal life) is granted to
those who are ready to believe God, as Jesus Himself
testifies in John 6:44,45; and as Abram also found out way
back in Genesis 15:6.
Technically, we don't need a
written account of the facts to verify anything. But God has
granted to the church a written record of His message to the
human race. That written record is the Holy Bible.
Continue to
"The Bible Has a
History"
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