Salvation Through Faith
All of these He did to fulfill the mission that the Father sent Him into the world for and also due to His unconditional love for us. He even said that the greatest act of love was for a man to lay his life down for a friend which Jesus exemplified by going to the cross for the salvation of all men through faith in Him.
Today, I had quite a peculiar encounter with someone who shared to me about his doctrine and beliefs and at first, I was at ease with the direction of our discussion but as we moved forward into the meat of our conversation, I started to become wary of what he was trying to tell me.
I knew he had good intentions and he was definitely trained well to share his beliefs through the Bible but what he was sharing to me had some relation to salvation which we know is by accepting Jesus Christ through faith and recognizing that He died for our sins.
What bothered me was that he tried to insist and he persisted until the very end that eternal life can only be received by obeying the commands of Jesus but he specifically referred to the observance of the Passover, in particular, the "True Passover" as he mentions it.
This is contrary to eternal life and salvation being gifts that came from God by grace and through our acceptance of Jesus Christ as our personal Lord and Savior by having faith in Him that everything He did was for us to be reconciled with God and to have relationship with us.
Then he kept on asking whether I have observed the "True Passover" already and by that, he would always refer to the Jewish tradition of taking the Passover in the fourteenth day of the first month of the Jewish calendar which is approximately close to the Holy Week celebration, particularly when the Last Supper occurred.
Ephesians 2:8-9 specifically tells us that salvation was given to us by grace through our faith in Jesus Christ who is God's provision for our sins and not by good works or observance of a certain ritual in a religion or by personal philosophies.
At one point, I became quite guarded of what he was trying to persuade me in believing or from his point of view, he was somewhat trying to reprove me because we were talking about eternal life here which is the salvation from our sins although I would admit that Ephesians 2:8-9 only came to my memory after we had parted ways as I was reflecting upon that encounter.
I think that he took the passage of Scripture from Numbers 28:16 out of context, applying the old Jewish religious tradition with the teaching of Jesus who was trying to fulfill all the commandments so that we would no longer have to do them as a way for salvation and so that we would no longer be judged by the Law.
So from that point, I decided to end the discussion so that I can reflect upon what we talked about and so I can put things in the right perspective.
As it has been made clear in the Bible, salvation can only be found in Jesus Christ which we both agreed on however, the way to receive salvation is through faith and not by observing a certain ritual in all strictness.
As I found out later and as I somewhat knew, the disciples broke bread often when they meet so the command to observe "True Passover" once a year does not take precedence over the salvation that we have through faith in Jesus Christ.
If we were to go back to the presupposition that we must do this and that strictly by the letter so that we can enter into heaven then there would have been no need for Jesus to come into the world and to die for us.
If doing the "True Passover" would be enough to have eternal life then our faith in Jesus would be meaningless because the central way toward salvation is then becoming accustomed to doing this ritual and observing it strictly.
Even though Jesus told us that when we eat the bread and drink of the cup, we will have eternal life, it does not mean that by observing that ritual is THE way to salvation because frankly it is not and eternal life in this context is packaged within the salvation that Jesus brings to us by having faith in Him and it does not mean salvation itself because I think that was where we had a misunderstanding or where he misinterpreted.
We can only have eternal life if we receive the salvation that comes from believing in Jesus Christ and receiving Him into our lives.
I hope that this has been made clear because I realized today that there are many groups out there who may have a misinterpretation of what the Bible says or putting certain passages out of context so much so that it becomes a distortion of the message of Jesus Christ, the gospel that we proclaim to all nations.
I would just like to reiterate that it is not by observing rituals and ceremonies that we are saved and accepted into the kingdom of heaven and receive eternal life but it is through faith in Jesus Christ which has been given by the grace of God.
There is no other way but Jesus and keeping His commands is one way of putting our faith into works because it is a manifestation of our being transformed by Jesus.
But the central point in all this is that Jesus became the sacrificial Lamb of God so that we can be cleansed of our sins and not be judged according to the Law or the commandments in the Old Testament and instead be saved through believing in Jesus. It is as simple as that.
God Bless!
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