My Salvation is Based Upon...

Salvation is at its heart a simple thing: to believe that the price of my sins was amply paid for by Jesus' sacrifice on the cross.

But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name John 1:12

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whomever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life John 3:16

Nothing I can do by myself can come close to buying a ticket to heaven. There's not enough money to donate to charity, not enough widows and orphans to feed, not enough homeless people to shelter to pay for the sins I've committed in my life. No church is holy enough that my participation will even get Jesus's notice, no theology so right that my memorizing every jot and tittle will ever even get my name so much as a footnote in the book of life. Since God is the only arbiter of salvation, my salvation has to come from God Himself and all He asks that I do to earn such a marvelous gift is to confess that Jesus paid for my sins with his death.

How many times have I sat in church and mouthed the words first spoken by John the Baptist without thinking of their real meaning: "Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world." (John 1:29) As I learned more and more about biblical history the meaning became clear. For centuries it was the general practice among all nations to worship their gods by means of animal sacrifice and the Jews were no different in worshiping the one true God. There were various offerings the ancient Jews would make, one being a sin offering where an animal would be sacrificed for the atonement of sins. Most often that animal was a perfect lamb. 

Centuries before Jesus stood before the Sanhedrin God asked his beloved Abraham to sacrifice his only son to prove how much Abraham loved Him. Of course God stayed Abraham's hand and replaced Issac with a ram, but on Calvary God repeated the sacrifice, this time with His own son to show how much He loved us. While thousands and thousands of lambs were being slaughtered in the temple in Jerusalem, the Lamb of God was being sacrificed on Mt. Calvary to pay for our sins. In return all God asks is that we acknowledge that final sacrifice. If we do that our sins are paid for in full.