Wednesday, February 18, 2026
Tonight’s Study, Session 7: Core Belief #6 – Salvation
Introduction: Salvation by definition is a deliverance from danger or suffering. To save is to deliver or protect. More often, in the Christian realm, the word salvation carries the idea of an eternal, spiritual deliverance. When Paul told the Philippian jailer what he must do to be saved, he was referring to the jailer’s eternal destiny (Acts 16:30-31). Jesus equated being saved with entering the kingdom of God (Matthew 19:24-25).
Acts 16:30-31 – And he brought them out and said, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” So they said, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, you and your household.”
Matthew 19:24-25 – And again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” When His disciples heard it, they were greatly astonished, saying, “Who then can be saved?”
What are we saved from? In the Christian doctrine of salvation, we are saved from “wrath,” that is, from God’s judgment of sin (Romans 5:9; 1 Thessalonians 5:9). Our sin has separated us from God, and the consequence of sin is death (Romans 6:23). Biblical salvation refers to our deliverance from the consequence of sin and therefore involves the removal of sin. We are saved from both the power and the penalty of sin.
Romans 5:9 – Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him.
1 Thessalonians 5:9 – For God did not appoint us to wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ,
Romans 6:23 – For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Who does the saving? God removes sin and delivers us from sin’s penalty (Titus 3:5-7).
Titus 3:5-7 – not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior, that having been justified by His grace we should become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.
How does God save us? In the Christian doctrine of salvation, God rescues us through Jesus Christ (John 3:16-17). Specifically, it was Jesus’ death on the cross and subsequent resurrection that achieved our salvation (Romans 5:10). Scripture is clear that salvation is the gracious, undeserved gift of God (Ephesians 2:8-9) and is only available through faith in Jesus Christ alone (John 14:6; Acts 4:12).
John 3:16-17 – For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.
Romans 5:10 – For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.
Ephesians 2:8-9 – For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.
John 14:6 – Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.
Acts 4:12 – Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”
How do we receive salvation? We are saved by grace through faith. First, we must hear the gospel (Romans 10:17) – the good news of Jesus’ death and resurrection. Then, we must fully put our trust in the Lord Jesus (Ephesians 1:13). This involves a change of mind about sin and Christ which is referred to as repentance (Acts 3:19). Then there must be a confession of, belief in, and a calling upon the Lord for salvation (Romans 10:9-10, 13).
Romans 10:17 – So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.
Ephesians 1:13 – In Him you also trusted, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation; in whom also, having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise,
Acts 3:19 – Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord,
Romans 10:9-10 – that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.
Romans 10:13 – For “whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”
Scripture is crystal clear that salvation is by grace alone through faith in Christ alone!
Four Objections to the Exclusivity of Salvation through Jesus Christ Alone
Jesus’ claim to be the only way to God and the only means of salvation for humanity provokes strong objections in our increasingly inclusive culture. If you’ve engaged in conversation about the exclusivity of Jesus’ sacrifice, you’ll likely recognize four of the most common objections.
Objection #1: Exclusivity is Intolerant
The first objection goes like this: if you claim that Jesus is the only path to God, you’re being intolerant. And in our culture, there is no greater offense. The word tolerance has undergone a radical transformation in recent years. A generation ago, tolerance meant a respect for people’s right to believe whatever they wanted to believe. Being tolerant meant acknowledging that people have the right to be wrong or to believe a lie if they so choose.
Today, however, tolerance requires a much more substantial commitment. To be tolerant today, we must say that all beliefs are equally valid.
In terms of spiritual beliefs, that leaves us in an awkward position. All major religions answer the question, “What must a person do to be right with God?” And for many religions, the answer is, by nature, exclusive. Yet the modern concept of tolerance doesn’t allow for exclusivity. So, our culture has moved from the realm of objective truth, in which there is a correct answer, to the realm of subjective truth, in which everyone’s opinion is equally valid. When Christians attempt to shift back to the realm of objective truth, we’re accused of being intolerant.
If someone is truly tolerant, it means they are respectful of beliefs and behaviors with which they may disagree with. For example, we can be respectful of Muslims, recognizing their freedom to believe whatever they want to believe, without agreeing with or embracing Islam as an alternative pathway to God.
Tolerance involves a choice. You come to a judgment that what a person is saying or doing is wrong, but you nevertheless show that person respect and give him or her the right to be wrong.
Objection #2: How Can So Many People Be So Wrong?
The second objection goes like this: If Jesus is the only way to be saved, that means an overwhelming number of people are facing an eternity in hell. Billions of people throughout history never trusted Christ as their Savior. Instead they followed the path of Islam or Buddhism or Hinduism or some other religion. How can so many people be wrong? That question has particular weight in Western culture, which accepts that the majority is usually right and the minority is usually wrong.
According to the Pew Research Center, roughly 31 percent of the world’s population can be labeled “Christian.” The percentage of true followers of Christ is much smaller than that – a miniscule number, when you consider how many people have ever lived. How could such a small percentage of people know the only real path to salvation? How could so many sincere people be wrong?
To answer these questions, we must acknowledge two truths about ourselves. First, humans were born with an inclination to worship something greater than ourselves. We are spiritual beings. Ecclesiastes 3:11 says God “set eternity” in our hearts. We sense there is something that transcends this life.
Second, human beings are incurably rebellious. One of the residual effects of the sin virus we all inherited from Adam and Eve is the propensity to reject the knowledge of the true God and instead follow our own hearts. The problem with that approach is made abundantly clear in Jeremiah 17:9: “The heart is deceitful above all things, And desperately wicked; Who can know it? That’s how it is possible for so many people to be wrong.
Jesus crunched the numbers in Matthew 7:13-14: “Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it. In other words, the highway that leads to hell is a wide road, and most people in the world are on it. The path that leads to heaven is narrow; few people find it. Jesus Himself predicted that most people will spend eternity in hell.
The fact that most people miss the way to heaven doesn’t negate the truth of exclusivity; it proves it, because Jesus predicted it. Isn’t it logical to assume that Jesus is also right in His prescription of how to escape hell through faith in Him?
Objection #3: All Religions are Basically the Same
The third objection goes like this: Jesus’ claim of exclusivity doesn’t make sense because all religions teach basically the same thing. At the heart of this objection is the notion that all world religions spring from people’s sincere desire to seek God, which is totally opposite of what Romans 3:11 says: “There is none who understands; There is none who seeks after God.” People with this objection say that individual experiences and cultural realities cause people to pursue different paths. They say God cares only about sincerity that fuels a person’s journey to Him, not about the path a person chooses. People can be sincerely wrong! Jesus said in John 14:6 that He is the only path: “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.
According to Scripture, the fact that there are so many religions in the world is evidence not of the sincerity of human beings but of the sinfulness of human beings. In Romans 1:22-23, Paul said, “Professing to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man—and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things.” In other words, the people who created idols didn’t really believe those images were God. Instead, those people rejected the truth of the real God and replaced it with gods of their own liking – ones that were more convenient or manageable. The same goes for manmade religion. Its followers have rejected the truth of God and replaced it with a truth of their own creation, which is not truth at all, but a lie straight from the pit of hell.
Objection #4: It’s Unfair for God to Send People to Hell
The fourth objection goes like this: It’s unfair for God to send people to hell just because they haven’t believed in Jesus. After all, not everyone has heard the gospel message – that Jesus Christ is the Son of God who died on the cross to pay the penalty for our sins, rose from the grave by the power of God, and now offers us forgiveness and eternal life. There are people who have never heard of Jesus. How can they be expected to believe?
Acts 17:26 seems to bolster the objection: “And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings,” This verse says that God determines where we live. He decides whether we’re born in America or Africa or India. So if God has placed people in an area where the gospel has not been preached, how can He be justified in sentencing them to hell because they never believed in Jesus?
The two problems with this objection are that it overestimates people’s ignorance of God and underestimates people’s ability to recognize Him. One of the bedrock principles of Scripture is that God will reveal Himself to those who want to know Him. In fact, He already has.
In Romans 1:18-20, Paul said, For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse,
Anyone can look at nature and know there is a power greater than him or herself. You don’t have to read a Bible to know there is a God. Everyone born has this knowledge of God. This is called general revelation.
General revelation starts the snowball of faith rolling. If people respond with the right attitude to the realization that there is someone greater than themselves, then God will send the knowledge they need to be saved. Sometimes He does it in miraculous ways.
In Acts 8:26-39, an Ethiopian official went to Jerusalem to worship the God of Israel, yet his knowledge of God was limited. On his way home, the official stopped his chariot to read a passage about the Messiah from the book of Isaiah. But he couldn’t understand what he was reading. He was not a Jew, so the Messiah was a foreign concept to him. What did God do? He saw a heart that was right toward Him, so He miraculously sent Philip to share the gospel with this man. The Ethiopian official was saved and baptized that very day.
In Acts 10, There was a Roman centurion named Cornelius who was a devout man, but didn’t know Christ as Savior. What did God do? He spoke to the apostle Peter in a vision and then dispatched the disciple to share the gospel with this centurion. And Cornelius became a believer.
In Acts 19:1-7, the disciples of John the Baptist were lovers of God and followers of the law, but they didn’t know Jesus. What did God do? He sent Paul to share the gospel with them and lead them to saving faith in Christ.
Whenever God sees a heart that wants to know Him, He will send His truth into that person’s life. And that truth surpasses any objection people may raise against it.
Conclusion: All of us have sinned against God. The gospel is clear that we cannot save ourselves. No matter how hard we try, we cannot be good enough to earn heaven. Instead, we have to admit our sin and trust Jesus alone to save us. When Jesus Christ died on the cross, He willingly took the punishment you and I deserve for our sins. The biggest decision anyone will ever make in his or her life is to accept God’s free gift of salvation through faith and trust in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. Apart from Christ, there is no salvation, He is the one and only way to heaven. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved” (John 3:16-17).
Next Week, Session 8: Core Belief #7 – The Church