That
God has provided a way by which we may be saved, pardoned,
cleansed from sin, no one who believes the Bible will call
in question. The Plan Of
Salvation
T.
Q. MARTIN, via The Christian Leader
That
God has provided a way by which we may be saved, pardoned,
cleansed from sin, no one who believes the Bible will call
in question.
Jesus says: “I am the way,
and the truth, and the life no man cometh to the Father but
by me” (John 14:6). The Apostle Peter, whom all believers
consider an inspired man, says: “And in none other is
their salvation for neither is there any other name under
heaven, that is given among men, wherein we must be saved”
(Acts 4:12).
The plan of salvation then
doubtless embraces the atoning work of Jesus the Christ.
Apart from Jesus Christ there is no salvation for any of us.
In God’s gracious plan of
making men righteous, acquitting men of guilt, forgiving or
blotting out the sins of men, the plan of salvation, if you
please, embraced the church. And here I use the term church
just as it is used in the New Testament. It is difficult
indeed to get the truth upon this subject into the minds and
hearts of people, not because the truth in itself is
difficult, but because of the confused state of the mind.
There are so many organized religious bodies called
churches, that when we read in the New Testament about the
Church, we think we are reading about what we have in the
world today.
Jesus Christ established one,
and but one Church. He says: “Upon this rock I will build
my church” (Matt. 16:18). He made good that promise, and
we read in the New Testament about that church. “So the
church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria had
peace, being edified, and walking in the fear of the Lord
and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, was multiplied”
(Acts 9:31). This church is called the body of Christ, and
in it Jew and Gentile are reconciled to God. “And he put
all things in subjection under his feet, and gave him to be
head over all things to the church, which is his body... the
fullness of him that filleth all in all” (Eph. 1:22, 23).
“And might reconcile them both in one body unto God
through the cross, having slain the enmity thereby” (Eph.
2:16)
The conditions of membership in
that body were made known by the Holy Spirit through the
apostles, and they had never been changed. For any man to
offer salvation to his fellow man upon terms other than
those offered by the Holy Spirit through the apostles would
be a presumptuous sin. In the church established by Christ,
the one about which we read in the New Testament, there were
none but believers. No one incapable of believing or
unwilling to believe in the divine Sonship and Lordship of
Jesus Christ, had membership in that church. If an
organization called a church exists today, having in its
membership unbelievers, or disbelievers, I know that is not
the church that Jesus built.
In giving the commission to his
apostles, in which commission are the terms of pardon to the
alien sinner, the conditions of the membership in the body,
the Church of Christ, Jesus said: “He that believeth and
is baptized shall be saved” (Mark 16:16). In preaching the
first sermon under this commission, the Holy Spirit says,
through the Apostle Peter: “Let all the house of Israel
therefore know assuredly that God hath made him both Lord
and Christ, this Jesus whom ye crucified” (Acts 2:36). To
know assuredly is to accept without any doubt.
It is impossible to please God
without faith (see Heb. 11:6), and certainly the members of
the Church of Christ must be well pleasing to God. That one
may hold to one’s sins and yet become a member of the
Church of Jesus Christ is foreign to the teachings of the
New Testament. So we find none in New Testament times in the
church, save penitent believers. Repentance then is a
necessary condition to entering the Church of Jesus Christ.
Before the Savior established his church he said: “Except
ye repent ye shall all in like manner perish” (Luke
13:10).
In the commission, as recorded
by Luke, he says: “Thus it is written, that the Christ
should suffer, and rise again from the dead on the third
day; and that repentance and remission of sins should be
preached in his name unto all the nations, beginning from
Jerusalem” (Luke 2:46, 47). Again, we find the Apostle
Peter, speaking as the Spirit gave him utterance, preaching
the first sermon under this commission given by his risen
Lord, saying to convicted believers, in answer to their
question: “What shall we do?” “Repent ye, and be
baptized, every one’ of you, in the name of Jesus Christ
unto the remission of your sins; and ye shall receive the
gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:38).
In the church about which we
read in the New Testament is not found one unbaptized
person. Baptism then is a necessary step in the way that
leads into the Church of Jesus Christ. Said the risen Lord:
“He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved.” The
line between the saved and unsaved, the forgiven and
unforgiven, the pardoned and unpardoned, those in the
kingdom and those not in the kingdom, is drawn in the New
Testament at obedience, and baptism was and is the
illuminating act of obedience on the part of him who would
be a member of the Church of Jesus Christ. Now let some one
cite the passage in the New Testament that recognizes the
unbaptized person as a member of the Church of Christ, the
church of which he is the head, and I will gladly
acknowledge my error in teaching.
“Go ye into all the world,
and preach the gospel to the whole creation. He that
believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that
disbeliev6th shall be condemned” (Mark 16:15, 16). The
language just quoted is what is commonly called the Great
Commission, and most assuredly contains the conditions of
pardon to the alien sinner; the necessary steps into the
kingdom of God, the Church of Jesus Christ. In the first
sermon under this commission, Peter puts baptism this side
of remission of sins. “Repent ye, and be baptized every
one of you in the name of Jesus Christ unto the remission of
your sins” (Acts 24:38). By baptism we enter into Christ,
into his death. “Or are you ignorant that all we who were
baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?”
(Rom. 6:3). We put on Christ by being baptized into him.
“For as many of you as were baptized into Christ did put
on Christ” (Gal. 3:27).
We are not saved out of Christ,
or apart from the merits of his death. And we are not in him
unless we are baptized into his death.
The idea of “getting
saved,” “getting converted,” “getting religion,”
and then “joining the church of your choice,” has
absolutely no authority in God’s Word. In the New
Testament, to be in the church is to be saved and to be out
of the church is to be unsaved. To be a Christian is to be
in the church and to be in the church is to be a Christian.
No living man will find in the New Testament a Christian
outside of the church, nor will he find a man who was saved
one way and got into the church another way. God added
people to his church through his own divine appointments.
“They then that received his word were baptized and there
were added to them in that day about three thousand souls”
(Acts 2:41). “And the Lord added to them day by day those
that were saved” (Acts 2:47).
To induce persons to kneel down
and then crowd around them, excite them, and induce them to
think they are saved, and join the church of choice, is no
more like the cases of conversion recorded in Acts, the book
of conversions, than midnight darkness is like the glare of
the noon day sun.
God forbid that any reader
should take my word on these matters; but God grant that we
may search the Scriptures, each one for himself.