The Olive Branch
Church at Woodforest
What do we believe?
What do I have to do to be saved? (John 3:3)
To be saved you must turn away from sin, believe in
the death and resurrection of Jesus,
and receive Him as Lord and Savior of your life.
Here is a step-by-step process:
1.
You
must consider your life and then turn away from everything in it that is
contrary to what God wants. This
turning away from selfishness and toward God is called repentance (Matthew 3:7-10; Acts 3:19).
2.
You
must acknowledge that Jesus Christ died on the cross to forgive you of
sin. you take Him as your Savior to
cleanse you from sin—as the substitute Who paid the price for your sin (Roman
5:9, 10; Titus 2:14).
3.
You must ask Him to be Lord of your life,
acknowledging openly and verbally that Jesus is not only your Savior but your
Lord (1 John 2:23).
The Bible says that as many as received Him were
given the power to become the sons of God (John 1:12). So when you open your heart and receive Him,
He comes into your heart—your inner person—through His Holy Spirit, and begins
to live His life in you. From that
point it is your privilege and call to confess what God has done (Romans 10:9).
If I sin, will I lose my salvation? (Hebrew 6:4-6)
An act of sin does not cost
you your salvation. There are people
who teach that if you sin once after you have accepted Jesus, you must be saved
again, but is not what the Bible teaches.
Can you conceive of somebody
adopting a baby and then throwing it out on the street because it falls while
learning to walk? When we are saved, we
are adopted into the family of God. We
must, out of love on one hand and godly fear on the other, seek to live a life
that is pleasing to Him. But the idea
that one act of sin would cause someone to be thrown out of God’s family is not
in the Bible (1 John 1:7-9).
However, acts of sin or
rebellion will take away the joy of your salvation. When David sinned he had no joy because he had rebelled against
God (Psalm 51:12). He said, “Take not
thy holy spirit from me” (Psalm 51:11).
Even though he had committed adultery and had been responsible for an
innocent man’s death, by this clear statement we are shown that he still had
the Holy Spirit. Though punishment came
due to his sin; nevertheless, God forgave and loved him because David was
repentant before the Lord.
If one continues on a course
of known sin, assurance of one’s salvation may be lost, but that is not the
same as an actual loss of one’s salvation.
When the scripture says,
“Whosoever is born of God sinneth not” (1 John 5:18), the sense of the Greek is
not a Christian never commits an act of sin, but that he does not continue in a
course of sin, refusing to confess and repent of his sins. A person born of the Spirit of God will be
drawn back to repentance every time he sins.
Beyond
that, we do read in Hebrews 10:29 that if somebody actually says the blood of
Jesus Christ is a common (unholy) thing and renounces the salvation he has
received, then that person may have lost it all. But the same book says, “But beloved, we are persuaded better
things of you ” (Hebrews 6:9). It is
very hard to believe that someone who has been born again would turn that for
away from God.
Yet, one might ask if we are new creatures in Christ, why do we even still have the capacity to sin? the answer is that perfection for the Christian awaits us in heaven (1 Corinthians 15:54). Now, we are united with Jesus at salvation, but we are being progressively transformed into His image (2 Corinthians 3:18). We are being changed throughout our lives, but there is no final moment, short of death, when the believer becomes perfectly sinless (1 John 1:8).