How Can the Soul Be Saved?

In the last article we saw how sin came into the world: the devil, through the serpent, persuaded Adam and Eve to disobey God, and on top of the sin we inherited from them, each of us has sinned for ourselves in our thoughts and in our actions. We also saw that "the wages of sin is death" [Romans 6:23], and if all of us have sinned and the wages of sin is death, the question that follows is how the soul can be saved at all, because none of us can live at peace knowing that the soul is headed for eternal damnation.

Sin came by one man

Paul begins with where the problem came from, writing that "by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men" [Romans 5:12]. That one man is Adam, and the death the verse speaks of is announced in Genesis 3, where God tells Adam that because of his sin he will return to the ground he was taken from: "dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return" [Genesis 3:19]. Because all of us are born under that sin, the same death passed upon every one of us.

The death Scripture has in mind is not only the death of the body, which is one consequence of sin, but the death of the soul, because the Bible says plainly that "the soul that sinneth, it shall die" [Ezekiel 18:4], and that death ends in hell.

God's answer

God saw that man had sinned and was headed for eternal damnation, and he decided to redeem him. The only way the soul of man could be saved was for the price of sin to be paid, and so "God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" [Romans 5:8]. God came in the form of man, as Jesus Christ, and died for us on the cross at Calvary.

Notice when he did it, because he did not wait for us to change, and he did not even wait for us to realise that we had sinned. That is the part many people still miss today, since a lot of people know they are headed for eternal suffering without knowing that the price has already been paid.

A gift, not a wage

In the last article we stopped halfway through Romans 6:23, at the wages of sin, and the rest of the verse is the answer: "but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord" [Romans 6:23]. Death came through Adam as the consequence of sin, while life came through Jesus Christ as a gift, so the salvation we have is not a reward we earned but something God has given us.

Because it is a gift, it is not forced on anyone, and it is left to each of us to accept it. John tells us how, writing that "God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life" [John 3:16]. The gift is received by believing in the only begotten Son of God, believing that Jesus Christ died and saved you from sin, and that is the one condition.

What happens when you believe

When a person believes, Scripture says that "if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new" [2 Corinthians 5:17]. The sin we inherited from Adam and the sin we committed ourselves are cast away, and we are given the opportunity to start afresh.

After we become new, "the Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God" [Romans 8:16], so the witness of your redemption is found in the spirit. In an earlier article we saw that the spirit of man is "the candle of the LORD" [Proverbs 20:27], the part of a person that knows, and it is there that the Spirit of God bears witness. That inner conviction comes alive again, because the emptiness left by our separation from God is gone once the spirit is connected back to him.

In summary

We inherited sin through Adam and we committed sin ourselves, yet God showed his love while we were still sinners by sending Christ to die for us. His death brought us redemption, that redemption is a gift, and we receive the gift by believing in the Son of God, at which point we become new creatures in Christ and the Spirit of God bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God. That is how the soul can be saved.

The prison door is open

In the last article I shared an illustration of Adam and Eve committing their sin and being put in prison, with every one of us born inside that prison. Jesus Christ has now opened the door, so anyone who is willing can walk out, and he is stretching out his hand, although he will not force you out the way sin pulled you in, because coming out of that prison is a choice.

That leaves a question. If the door is open, and redemption has been bought through the death of Jesus Christ, why are people still inside the prison, still living in sin and still dying in sin? That is what we will look at in the next article.