Trusting In Christ

John F. MacArthur once said, “Saving faith is not just believing that Jesus lived and died. Faith that saves is the confident, continuous confession of total dependence on, and trust in, Jesus Christ to meet the requirements on your behalf to give you entrance into God’s Eternal Kingdom. It’s the surrender of your life in complete trust to Him to do what you cannot do.” Just like a king cannot be saved by the size of his army, a warrior by his strength, nor a horse be the deliverance by all of its power, we cannot save ourselves. Trusting in our own abilities can only get us so far. We need God as Lord in our lives. Since the beginning of time, God has chosen people for his inheritance. With his omnipresence, Christ is continually watching his children, waiting for us to realize we cannot do this on our own; we need his saving grace to deliver us from sin.

We need that saving faith. When we are clinging to him in such a way, we are crying out, because we cannot save ourselves. It is only when we trust in his unfailing love that our souls can be saved. Jesus Christ is the only one who can deliver us from the death and famine of this world. Since that fateful day in the garden, the sin of Adam and Eve has consumed us. We are unable to save ourselves from it. Without Christ’s love, we are lost, broken, and in constant need of salvation. Although our daily lives may seem to be going alright, our eternal lives are ever in peril without his intervention. This is where saving faith comes into play.

Throughout all of this, Matthew 16:24 comes to mind. Those seeking to follow Christ are commanded to “deny themselves and take up their cross.” It is only when this happens, when we realize that Christ alone is the only one who can save us, that we are able to follow him. His unfailing love will come rest upon us. This isn’t a message of submission, but of surrender. We must surrender our lives, trusting the Lord to do what we know we cannot do. He is our Hope and Salvation, so, in order for our lives to be saved, our hope needs to be in the Lord. Like the verses say, he is our “help and shield.” Both these words give us the hope of salvation. When we trust in him, we are told that Christ will save us and we will be blessed. He has formed our hearts and he knows us. The same hearts which he formed are the hearts that rejoice when trusting in Him.

In the Bible, we are told of all the miraculous things that Jesus has done for his people. When you put your hope in Christ, you become one of his children; the people he has chosen for his inheritance. That inheritance is eternal life, made possible through the death of His son. God’s love for us is bigger than death; it has defeated death. Through this, the promise of salvation is given to all that put their hope and trust in Christ alone. What an amazing God we serve!