Believing in Jesus Christ can only save you from hell if you obey Him, if you repent and follow Him. Just believing in Jesus Christ cannot save you. You have to come to Him on His terms on His conditions. You have to repent and follow Jesus Christ. The natural man, normal man, normal person, is selfish, self-centered, self-gratifying; his whole life is just about himself, satisfying his own ambitions and his own desires, his sinful lusts and therefore people sin. Because they are driven by lust and by their own desires. A normal man is a slave to sin, and a slave to his own ambitions. The normal man is the master of his own life, he serves himself. The wages of sin is death and therefore the natural man will end up in hell.
The only way to have eternal life is to give up our rights to ourselves and to submit ourselves to Jesus Christ, to obey Him and serve Him, live our lives to please Him and then He will pardon our sins. He will make us new inside, He will accept us and make us children of God. But we must serve Him as Lord and Master.
There is a cost to salvation, there is a cost to following Jesus Christ. It is such a high cost that very few people are willing to pay that price. They have wrongly been told that they only need to believe in Jesus Christ to have salvation; that is a lie.
We have to follow and obey Him, we have to submit our lives to Him and follow Him as disciples. I read the words of Jesus in Matthew chapter 16:24, “Then Jesus said to His disciples: “If anyone wishes to come after me he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what will man give in exchange for his soul? For the Son of Man is going to come in all the glory of His father with His angels and will then repay every man according to his deeds.”
We read in Luke chapter 14 verse 26 Jesus said:”If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple. Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be My disciple. For which one of you when he wants to build a tower, does not first sit down and calculate the cost to see if he has enough to complete it? Otherwise when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who observe it begin to ridicule him saying: This man began to build and was not able to finish. Or what king when he sets out to meet another king and battle, will not first sit down and consider whether he is strong enough with 10,000 men to encounter the one coming against him with 20,000? Or else while the other is still far away, he seems a delegation and asks for terms of peace. So then, none of you can be My disciple who does not give up all his own
possessions.”
That is the price of discipleship; that is the price of salvation. We have to be willing to give up our rights to ourselves, to our own pleasure, to own ambitions, to our own desires, and we have to submit ourselves to Jesus Christ. We have to turn away from the pleasures of sin and from doing our own will and submit ourselves to Jesus Christ. We must die to self and live for Jesus. We must live for His kingdom, we must serve Him as Lord and Master. We must obey His commandments. If we are not willing to do that, then we are wasting our time. If we start going after Jesus and we’re not willing to pay the price anymore we will only be disappointed. We have to make up our mind before we decide to go after Jesus Christ.
If you have counted the cost and you have made up your mind that you want eternal life, that you want to go after Jesus Christ, then you need to commit to Him. Go on your knees before Him and accept Him into your life; accept Him as your Lord and your Master. Give up your rights to your own self, plead His pardon for your past sins. Be prepared to turn away from your sin and your previous lifestyle of self-gratification, of doing your own will. Cry out to Jesus, invite Him into your life; but be serious. If you are serious then He will accept you, He will make you knew inside and He will immediately give you peace and a joy that surpasses all understanding. You will know in your heart that you have met with the Living God, you have met with Jesus Christ. Then you need to clean up your life; clean up your mind, clean up your closets, your house, get rid of all those things that will separate you from Jesus, friends, bad habits, sinful things, worldly things, that were dear to you. Get rid of it and rearrange your life to be able to follow and obey Jesus Christ, to be pleasing to Him.
Next you must be baptized in water as Jesus commanded. I read the words of Jesus in Matthew chapter 28 verse 19:”Jesus commanded:”Therefore go and make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.”
The words of Jesus, His commands, the words that He spoke, they are the words of eternal life. They are recorded in the Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John; go and read them, study, keep them in your heart because the Holy Spirit will remind you of those words. Those are the commands that we have to follow and live by to be pleasing to Jesus.
We read in Mark chapter 16 those 15: “and He said to them:” Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation. He who has believed and has been baptized shall be saved, but he who has disbelieved will be condemned. These signs will accompany those who have believed: in My name they will cast out demons, they will speak with new tongues, they will pick up serpents, and if they drink any deadly poison it will not hurt them, they will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover.” These are the signs that will follow for those who take Jesus Christ seriously who obey Him who repent and be baptized. Jesus Christ promised the baptism in the Holy Spirit, His Spirit in every person who believes in Him and who obeys Him, who repents and who is baptized and who obeys His commands, who seeks Him with all their heart. You need the Holy Spirit, the presence and the voice of Jesus Christ in you, because you cannot follow Him if you do not know His voice. Your relationship with Jesus Christ is through prayer, through His Spirit dwelling in you, guiding you, and teaching you. Jesus said: “My sheep hear My voice I know them, and they follow Me.” John chapter 10 verse 27. Verse 5, Jesus said:” a stranger they will simply not follow but will
flee from him because they do not know the voice of the strangers.” We get to know Jesus Christ through our relationship with Him, through His Spirit that dwells in us, when we seek Him in prayer and He fills us with His Holy Spirit; He imparts His knowledge and his presence into us. We need to build our fellowship, our relationship with Jesus Christ, so that we can know Him and follow Him. We need to obey His commandments, and then He will reveal Himself to us, His commandments as also recorded in the Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
Jesus said:”If you love me you will keep my Commandments.” We read in John chapter 14 verse 21:”he who has My Commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me, and he will loves me, will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and I will disclose Myself to him.” Jesus Christ will disclose Himself to us, He will speak to us.
The apostle Paul wrote in Romans 8:14, “those who are being led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.” There’s only one way to have eternal life and that is Jesus Christ; He is the Way the Truth and the Life.
There’s only one way to follow Jesus Christ and have eternal life, and that is to obey Him. Once we have believed in Him, we must obey His commandments, repent, turn away from sin, be holy, turn away from our own desires, from serving ourselves, we must put Him on the throne of our lives and serve Him; we must be baptized in water and receive the baptism in the Holy Spirit, the presence of Christ living in us, to guide us, to teach us. If we do not have the Holy Spirit, we cannot follow Jesus Christ; without the Holy Spirit we have no relationship with Jesus Christ. He promised His Spirit, the Holy Spirit in each and everyone who believes in Him and who obeys Him, His communion with them. They will know Him for real, they will know His voice and they will follow Him. Have you repented since you have heard the gospel of Jesus Christ? Have you accepted Him as your master? Do you serve and obey Him? Have you received the baptism in the Holy Spirit? Does the Holy Spirit of Christ live in you? Do you know His voice and do you follow Him? We have to follow Him until the very end. If we do not follow Jesus Christ and are not led by His Holy Spirit then we will never know Him and we will never enter His kingdom. Repent and be baptized, seek Jesus with all your heart be filled with the Holy Spirit, and follow Him, the guidance of His Holy Spirit and He will guide you every step of the way until the very end.
May Jesus bless you.
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