It was around midnight in the prison cell and Paul and Silas were singing hymns to God and all the other prisoners were listening. Suddenly there was such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the prison were shaken. At once all the prison doors flew open and everybody’s chains came loose. Everyone was awake including the jailor who decided to fall on his sword to escape the ignominy and death penalty for allowing the prisoners to escape. In any normal situation like this prisoners would try to escape, however, in these circumstances everyone remained in the prison. This was no ordinary situation but one that God Himself sent to get a man saved. God will go to great lengths to save a soul from eternal hell and the lake of fire. In this case it was a Roman jailor, a rough uneducated man by the standards of his time.
Just as he was about to fall on his sword Paul cried out to him and told him not to kill himself as all of the prisoners were still there, none had attempted to escape. The jailor was so overwhelmed with the whole situation that he was visibly shaken and fell down before Paul and Silas. He then brought them out of the prison cell and asked them “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” Now Paul did not tell him to go to the synagogue to say some prayers. He did not tell him to go and give alms to the poor. He did not send him to some Rabbi to ask his advice. He did not give him philosophy or the latest trend in existential thought and ideas. Paul gave him the Lord Jesus. Paul never wasted time he said to the jailor; “Believe on the Lord Jesus the Anointed Messiah and you will be saved-you and your whole household.”
Immediately after that we read about Paul and Silas, “Then they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all the others in his house.” Following this the jailor was baptised. He had become a new creation in the Lord Jesus. Furthermore his family had also come to believe. God Himself is very much into families being saved! It may well be that you do not know the Lord Jesus as your personal saviour and Lord. You may have studied other religions, gone to Sunday school, been brought up in the church. You may well have been baptised as an infant. You may even sit on a church board or be an elder and deacon in your local church. You may well be an upstanding citizen and you do not smoke, drink, fornicate or abuse your wife and children yet you have never really encountered the Lord Jesus personally in your life. You have religion but not Him!
Possibly you are living in the world being driven by your lust for fame and fortune and for the good life. Possibly you are climbing the corporate ladder or vying for a prominent position in your company or even in the church you attend. You may even rationalise your morality and ethics thinking that you are not as bad as others you know about yet you have never had the personal revelation from God that the Lord Jesus the Messiah is the Son of God, your personal Saviour from sin, your rightful king, and that only through Him alone can you can be saved. As it is written; “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by whom we must be saved.” (Acts 4:12)
Have you ever asked the question “What must I do to be saved?” Your eternal destiny depends on how you respond to this vital question. What do you need to do to be saved?
1. To be saved you need to believe on the Lord Jesus the Messiah because only through Him alone you can have the privilege to know God personally for yourself.
(John 17:3) “This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus the Anointed Messiah whom You have sent.”
To know God personally is not just having a mental knowledge about Him. It is not enough to have a Biblical knowledge about God but to experience a personal relationship with Him. It is one thing to believe that the Lord Jesus existed and quite another thing to believe on the Lord Jesus Himself. The devils believe in Him and know him to be the Son of God. In fact the Bible says that the demons “believe and tremble” but they do not have a saving relationship with Him and will never have it. (James 2:19) During his ministry on earth the demons knew who He was even if the crowds didn’t. To believe on the Lord Jesus is to encounter Him in your life that results in having a personal relationship with Him.
To Know the Lord Jesus personally is to know God Himself. The Lord Jesus said to doubting Thomas; “He that has seen Me has seen the Father. How can you say show us the Father? Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in Me? The words I say to you are not just my own. Rather it is the Father living in Me, who is doing His work. Believe Me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me; or at least believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves” (John 14:9-11). In the Bible we are told that; “God is light and that in Him is no darkness at all.” (1 John 1:5) Well the Lord Jesus said; “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows Me will never walk min darkness but will have the light of life” (John 8:12). God loves you and has a purpose for your life that is good, acceptable and perfect. (Romans 12:1-2) The Lord Jesus came to give you the opportunity to experience it. (John 10:10)
2. To be saved you need to believe in the Lord Jesus the Messiah because you have violated His commandments and laws and stand condemned.
(Romans 3:23) “For all have sinned and fall short of the Glory of God.”
Multitudes of people do not experience the life God has for them. because they do not know Him or His Son the Lord Jesus or about how much he loves them because all men are born into this world as sinners and rebels in God’s sight. (Psalm 51:5) We have violated His commandments and forfeited our right to go to heaven to be with Him forever. God gave us the Ten Commandments for our own good and welfare but because of our love for sin and independence from God we have spurned his laws. The Bible says; God has a righteous standard of life and without it none of us will be able to enter into His eternal kingdom. Without His standard of righteousness we will never be able to enter heaven. The alternative is hell and the lake of fire. (Revelation 21:8)
Good works and trying to keep religious rules and regulations cannot save anyone. (Romans 3:19-20) Only God’s unmerited favour shown to you in the Lord Jesus can save you from the power of sin, from the power of Satan and bring you into a brand new relationship with God through the Lord Jesus and ultimately into heaven. (Ephesians 2:8-9) (2 Corinthians 5:17) He is the only way of salvation. (John 14:6)
There are many religions in the world yet the reality is that all of their founders are long dead. Buddha is dead, Confucius is dead, Mohammed is dead, they are all dead and buried but the Lord Jesus Christ is alive. God raised Him from the dead through the Spirit of holiness declaring Him to be the Son of God with power. (Romans 1:4) In Him alone is the resurrection to Life. The Lord Jesus Himself said, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who is believing in Me will live, even though he dies, and whoever lives and keeps believing in Me will never die” (John 11:25-26)
3. To be saved you need to believe on the Lord Jesus the Messiah because He gave His life for you, paying a terrible price and cost to Himself and to God His Father, to save you from the power of sin and the wrath to come.
(2 Corinthians 5:21) “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”
Man’s greatest need is righteousness, that standard of life God requires of men that will enable one to be in God’s presence forever instead of separated from Him in the Lake of fire for all eternity. This righteous standard of life was provided in the Lord Jesus who was without sin, fully God yet fully man in the one person, and the sinless one who died in the place of sinners and for sin that His righteous nature might be made available to those who have none.
At the cross the Lord Jesus exchanged places with you. God treated Him as a sinner, even though He was without sin that He might receive you as His son even though by nature and birth you are a great sinner and rebel in his sight and condemned to a fiery eternity. God loves you so much that He was willing to send the Lord Jesus, His one and only begotten eternal and divine Son to die in your place to bring you back into a right relationship with Himself.
As the Lord Jesus said; “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up; so that whoever believes will in Him have eternal life. “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever is believing in Him shall not perish, but having eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. He who is believing in Him is not judged; he who is not believing has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.” (John 3:14-16)
The blood of the Lord Jesus was the price needed to atone for your sin, to redeem your life from Satan’s clutches, to cleanse you from the power of sin and to preserve your life from the wrath upon sin that is coming. (Ephesians 1:7) (1 John 1:7-9) (Romans 5:9) When you repent of your sin and acknowledge your rebellion to God and put your faith in the Lord Jesus to save you He will give you His righteous standard of life making you fit to enter into God’s eternal heavenly courts. His Holy Spirit will come into you and rest upon you. (Acts 2:38-39) (Philippians 3:7-9) God will in fact declare you to be righteous and justified in His sight because of your faith in the Lord Jesus. (Romans 3:21-26; 5:1)
4. To be saved you need to believe on the Lord Jesus the Messiah because He wants you to spend eternity with Him in Heaven
(John 14:1-3) “Do not let your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also.”
You know hell is worse than anyone can even imagine or think but also heaven is better than anyone can ever imagine or think. If you have turned from your life of sin with the help of God’s power and put your trust in the Lord Jesus to save you then He has a place especially prepared for you personally in His heavenly courts and if you die before He comes back you will go there. You will be absent from your body but present with the Lord. (2 Corinthians 5:8) Why spend eternity in the lake of fire when God has done everything to enable you to spend eternity with Him?
5. To be saved you need to believe on the Lord Jesus the Messiah because He wants to use you to reach others for Him.
(John 7:37-39) “Now on the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.’” But this He spoke of the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were to receive; for the Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.”
(Acts 1:8) “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth.”
On the Day of Pentecost the Holy Spirit fell upon Jesus’ followers and God started to work through them in a very powerful way. In one day 3,000 people came to salvation through faith in the Messiah the Lord Jesus. That same power is still available today for every believer in Him and is theirs for the asking. (Luke 11:13) The Lord Jesus was empowered with the Holy Spirit for His ministry and service. We read what He did; “How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power, and how He went about doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil, because God was with Him.” (Acts 10:38) The Lord Jesus has now made the same spiritual power available to all of His followers. (Acts 2:33, 37-39)
The Philippian jailor asked Paul and Silas the question “Sirs what must I do to be saved?” Paul and Silas did not waste time in responding. He simply said “Believe on the Lord Jesus the Anointed Messiah and you will be saved-you and your household!” The Holy Spirit went to work and saved the man and his whole family! If you have read this post and as yet have never encountered the Lord Jesus in your life but you would like to know Him and the salvation He brings then you can pray the following prayer.
The Sinners Prayer:
“Dear Heavenly Father I want to thank you for loving me and for sending Jesus your only begotten Son to die in my place and for my sins. Thank you that His blood has fully atoned for all of my sin and rebellion against you. I now confess Jesus as Lord over my life and I do believe in my heart that you have raised Him from the dead. I am willing to turn away from my unbelief and rebellion towards you and from everything in my life that does not please you. I now turn from my own will and take up your good, acceptable and perfect will for my life. Please make me brand new on the inside and the kind of person you created me to be. Have mercy on me Lord Jesus, pardon and cleanse me from all and every sin by your blood. I now receive your Holy Spirit and ask you to be my personal Saviour, Lord and King by faith alone. I am willing to be baptised to show the world my full obedience to you. Thank you Lord Jesus for coming into my life through your Holy Spirit to live in me as you promised. In Your name I pray this prayer to God my Father in Heaven, Amen!”
If you have sincerely prayed this prayer then the Lord Jesus has come into your life to take up residence there by His Holy Spirit who is now living in you. (John 14:23) You have been born again into the Kingdom of God. You have exchanged Lords. Satan is no longer your overlord but the Lord Jesus is now your rightful Lord and king and the ruler over your life. All of your sins have been forgiven! So then if you have confessed with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believed in your heart that God raised Him from the dead then you have been saved and made a partaker of God’s Divine nature and are now bound for heaven! By faith you have been made righteous in God’s sight and a partaker of that righteousness without which no man shall see the Lord! (Hebrews 12:14)
