Sermon Central
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The Five R's Of Salvation
Contributed by David Azbell on Nov 13, 2004 (message contributor)
Summary: A sermon on recieving the gift of eternal life
The Five R’s to Christian Maturity
Receive: By Faith
Repent: Change of Heart
Remorse: Forgiveness of sin
Relationship: Build (Baptism) or Restoration
Righteousness:Maturity
Receive: By Faith
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.
Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life.
Eternal Life is a gift given to us freely. We are told that whosoever believes in Jesus shall be given eternal life.Do you believe in Him?This is the first step to complete salvation, however, at this very moment, if you said yes, I believe then you have been given the gift of eternal life.It is what you do from this point on that determines whether you go beyond this or not.It is a decision you have to ask yourself.Do I believe?Then, do I want more?
But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name:
Yes, if you will receive Jesus in your heart then you too can become an heir to the kingdom. Believing on Him shall grant you admission, and for some that may be enough. However, for most it will not be enough. How can this be explained?I do not wish to just enter into a restaurant, I wish to partake of the food.If I open the doors I can enter the place, however, if I do not go inside, sit down and order the food I will only have gained access to the place.If I buy a ticket to a football game, it gives me the right to enter the stadium. However, if I stand just inside the gate and don’t go to my seat, then I cannot enjoy the game.
You can receive the gift but then you must push for more.Just gaining admission to Heaven should never be enough for us. We should want to become children of God and strive to seek the kingdom. We will be covering these steps as we continue through this message. After we believe in Jesus then we can start moving forward.Now we have eternal life, so what do we do from here.
Repent: Change of Heart
Acts 3:19:Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord;
Here we are not being told to confess sin. We may not even know what we would be confessing at this point. All we probably know is that some Pastor or maybe a friend, who is a Christian, has told us that we are sinners. We will cover this in more detail later. This is not where we are going to cover sin. Instead we are going to talk about the important stuff. The changing of one’s heart.
You have to understand that it is through the heart that one feels emotion, and then our minds allow us to choose how to act or react to that emotion.If we believe in Jesus then we will also believe in Him who sent Jesus. This may sound alittle complicated but I am trying to make very understandable. I want you to understand God asks that you believe in Him, and just for that alone He gives you eternal life. Now that you believe in Him, then we have to start working on becoming like Him. So this is accomplished through a few steps.
The first, and most difficult I think, is the changing of one’s heart. It is the changing of one’s attitude towards life and people.It is changing your heart into a heart that is full of love. We have to choose to allow the heart that is full of love to act out according to love. We have to allow the heart to choose the direction for the mind; we have to allow our hearts to dictate to the mind. We, all too often, have an emotion and do not act on it.This I can explain a couple of ways.Suppose we suffer an emotion of pain or anger.Do we allow that emotion to control our actions?Or, do we allow the love to control our actions?See, God hates sinners and hated the world.Therefore, He destroyed the world by flood once. Then, instead of destroying the world again, He reached out with love and compassion that is incomparable to any you have probably seen. He sent the ultimate sacrifice to earth.He sent His Son to earth. He removed Him from the comfy confines of a mansion and sent Him down to earth. He was born to a poor carpenter and was, by no means, living like a king here.
