What Does It Mean to be Saved?

Romans 10:9-10

Because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.

Acts 4:13

Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.

What is salvation? What does it mean to be saved?

Salvation is forgiveness of sin and cleansing from the stain of sin.

1 John 1:9

If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.

Being saved means that when we admit our sin, God forgives us from the penalty of our sin and takes away the stain or guilt of sin. It means that we don’t have to live in fear or discouragement or guilt.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is experiencing God’s forgiveness.

Salvation is having eternal life.

John 3:16

For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son that whoever believes in Him will not perish, but have eternal life.

Believing that Jesus is the Son of God and the only source of salvation leads to receiving, by God’s grace, a life that does not end at physical death. It continues forever in the presence of God in heaven and then our eternal home in the New Jerusalem.

We as humans with our finite perspective cannot wrap our minds around eternal. Everything we know has a beginning and an ending. Something that never has an ending goes beyond our ability to comprehend. But just because it goes beyond our ability to fully understand does not mean it is not true.   

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is knowing that we will live forever.

Salvation is being justified in God’s sight.

Romans 3:24

And are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.

Justification is being declared by God that, through Jesus’ death on the cross, we have been made right in our relationship with Him. It means we are innocent.

We cannot earn that justification. It comes only by God’s grace.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is being in right relationship with God.

Salvation is your lifestyle changing.

Acts 3:19-20

Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord, and that He may send the Christ, who has been appointed for you – even Jesus.

Repent means to have a change of mind that leads to a change in behavior.

Salvation is allowing God to change our lives so we live the way God wants us to live.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is having our lives transformed by God’s grace.

That is the standard way of looking at salvation. But there is more!

Salvation is being made new.

2 Corinthians 5:17

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!

We become brand new people when we surrender our lives to Jesus.

The old desires, the old way of living, the old goals as well as the old sin and guilt are gone and the new desires, the new way of living, the new goals, and new peace and freedom are here to stay.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is being made new in Jesus.

Salvation is being righteous.

2 Corinthians 5:21

God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.

We are righteous just like Jesus because He became our sin.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is being righteous.

Salvation is Jesus living His life in and through us.

Galatians 2:20

I have been crucified with Christ and no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.

When we surrender our lives to the authority of Jesus, He then lives His life through us.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is having Jesus live His life through us.

Salvation is becoming like Jesus.

2 Corinthians 3:18

And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into His likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.

When we surrender our lives to Jesus, the Holy Spirit begins to form us into the image of Jesus. We start to take on the character of Jesus.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is becoming like Jesus.

By the Power of Jesus’ Salvation Raising the Roof and Removing the Walls

                                                      Joe