What Must One Believe about Jesus for Salvation?

[fastfredy0]

I read an interesting URL by Rick Brown. (see https://www.ijfm.org/PDFs_IJFM/17_4_PDFs/02_Brown_Beliefs_hw.pdf ) It has the title: "
What Must One Believe about Jesus for Salvation?" I enjoyed it as it went into depth on the subject. I disagreed with his thesis on one point as he said it was NOT necessary to believe Jesus was God to be saved.

Is it necessary to believe Jesus was God to be saved? Thoughts? Verses?

Aside: I asked ChatGPT to: "List Bible verses that indicate that believing Jesus is God is necessary for salvation".

 

[Fred]

Is it necessary to believe Jesus was God to be saved? Thoughts? Verses?

Yes.


Joel 2:32
And it shall come to pass that whosoever shall call on the Name of the Lord shall be saved; for in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem shall be deliverance, as the Lord hath said, and in the remnant whom the Lord shall call.

Since Paul applies YHWH from Joel 2:32 (kyrios in the Septuagint from Joel 3:5) which refers to praying to the Lord (only the Lord is to be prayed to) proves a major component of the gospel that Paul preached includes the fact that Jesus is YHWH (God).

Romans 10:8, 13
8 But what saith it? The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth and in thy heart: that is, the word of faith which we preach;
13 For whosoever shall call upon the Name of the Lord shall be saved.


The same applies with Peter (recorded by Luke).
Acts 2:21
And it shall come to pass that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.
Acts 10:42
And He commanded us to preach unto the people and to solemnly testify that it is He who was ordained by God to be the Judge of the living and the dead.



It is interesting that Acts 2:21 is an exact quote from Joel 3:5 (Septuagint - 2:32 in our English versions).
καὶ ἔσται πᾶς ὃς ἂν ἐπικαλέσηται τὸ ὄνομα κυρίου σωθήσεται
And it shall come to pass that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.

 

[makesends]

I read an interesting URL by Rick Brown. (see https://www.ijfm.org/PDFs_IJFM/17_4_PDFs/02_Brown_Beliefs_hw.pdf ) It has the title: "
What Must One Believe about Jesus for Salvation?" I enjoyed it as it went into depth on the subject. I disagreed with his thesis on one point as he said it was NOT necessary to believe Jesus was God to be saved.

Is it necessary to believe Jesus was God to be saved? Thoughts? Verses?

Aside: I asked ChatGPT to: "List Bible verses that indicate that believing Jesus is God is necessary for salvation".

As I usually answer such things, What WE know is not the basis of our salvation, nor, for that matter, WHO we know, but who knows us, and made us for that end. That we must believe is beyond question, but that that belief must be defined as adequate is not. It is the NATURE of that belief that makes a salvific difference, it being a product of God himself and not of us in our consequential understanding.

My personal opinion is that if God has given one salvific faith, they are already regenerated. Even if they are ignorant of all the doctrines concerning God and salvation, I warrant that their spirit, or rather, the Spirit of God within them, "knows" (whether conscious to their intellect or not) that Jesus is God.

 

[fastfredy0]

As I usually answer such things, What WE know is not the basis of our salvation, nor, for that matter, WHO we know, but who knows us, and made us for that end. That we must believe is beyond question, but that that belief must be defined as adequate is not. It is the NATURE of that belief that makes a salvific difference, it being a product of God himself and not of us in our consequential understanding.

My personal opinion is that if God has given one salvific faith, they are already regenerated. Even if they are ignorant of all the doctrines concerning God and salvation, I warrant that their spirit, or rather, the Spirit of God within them, "knows" (whether conscious to their intellect or not) that Jesus is God.

Maybe I'll rephrase the question so that you get to the crux of the question for I grant that it is a given that God is the sole cause of salvation. The question is restated as:
Given God has caused a person to have salvific faith, is it 100% certain in your mind that one of the effects of said cause is that the person will believe Jesus is God.

 

[CrowCross]

I read an interesting URL by Rick Brown. (see https://www.ijfm.org/PDFs_IJFM/17_4_PDFs/02_Brown_Beliefs_hw.pdf ) It has the title: "
What Must One Believe about Jesus for Salvation?" I enjoyed it as it went into depth on the subject. I disagreed with his thesis on one point as he said it was NOT necessary to believe Jesus was God to be saved.

Is it necessary to believe Jesus was God to be saved? Thoughts? Verses?

Aside: I asked ChatGPT to: "List Bible verses that indicate that believing Jesus is God is necessary for salvation".

I would say no, you do not have to believe Jesus is God to be saved. All that is required is that one understand their need for forgiveness and that Jesus died on the cross to acheive that for them.

HOW-EVER....Once one becomes saved and indwelled by the Holy Spirit... when they eventually learn that Jesus is God they will understand that Jesus is God.

If you reject the divinity of Christ..that Jesus is God come in the flesh.....You probably don't have the Holy Spirit and are not saved. OR, you are severely deceived.

 

[Rescued One]

Isaiah 43!
IOW, Who redeems us?

I searched the Bible to learn if the Trinity is true. I was saved in my living room. I can't imagine trusting in another; I had been a Mormon.

Without the Holy Spirit, we don't belong to Christ.

 

[Rescued One]

ISAIAH 43:11
I, even I, am the LORD, And besides Me there is no savior.

 

[fastfredy0]

All that is required is that one understand their need for forgiveness and that Jesus died on the cross to acheive that for them.

Do you have verses correlating "salvation" to "understanding a need for forgiveness" or to "Jesus died on the cross to achieve forgiveness for them"?

 

[CrowCross]

Do you have verses correlating "salvation" to "understanding a need for forgiveness" or to "Jesus died on the cross to achieve forgiveness for them"?

There are many.

 

[makesends]

Maybe I'll rephrase the question so that you get to the crux of the question for I grant that it is a given that God is the sole cause of salvation. The question is restated as:
Given God has caused a person to have salvific faith, is it 100% certain in your mind that one of the effects of said cause is that the person will believe Jesus is God.

I would have a hard time saying that must be so for certain, as God can cut off a person's life in a heartbeat. But that eventually they will realize it, I do agree, given time. Furthermore, I would say that their faith is most definitely in Christ AS GOD, whether they are cognizant of the fact as such or not.

So, I would say, yes it is 100% certain in my mind that one of the effrects of said cause is that the person believes that Jesus is God, as that is the very nature of the faith through which they are saved. But I do not imply that they are aware of those terms.

 

[brightfame52]

Maybe I'll rephrase the question so that you get to the crux of the question for I grant that it is a given that God is the sole cause of salvation. The question is restated as:
Given God has caused a person to have salvific faith, is it 100% certain in your mind that one of the effects of said cause is that the person will believe Jesus is God.

I believe yes, That Jesus is God is included in the Gospel. The Gospel is about His Person and Work, so how can it be avoided proclaiming Him as God when describing His Person. He did His saving work as God in the flesh. 1 Tim 3 16

And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory.

 

[fastfredy0]

Re: Do you have verses correlating "salvation" to "understanding a need for forgiveness" or to "Jesus died on the cross to achieve forgiveness for them"?

There are many.

List some then. Keep in mind, I asked for verses that correlate "Salvation" to "the necessity of understanding need for forgiveness" and
verses that correlate "Salvation" to "the necessity of knowing Jesus died on the cross". I am aware of plenty of verses speaking of 'forgiveness' and 'Jesus dying on the cross' but I'm not aware of verses saying you must believe Jesus died on the cross in order to be saved or
I must understand the need for forgiveness to be saved.

Example: I know of plenty of verses saying Joseph was Jesus' father, but none correlating the fact to be understood to be saved.

 

[fastfredy0]

Re: What Must One Believe about Jesus for Salvation?

Here's my answer for what it's worth. I am 90% sure that one must believe Jesus is God to be saved. I base this on the following:


Jesus is God - It is difficult to define what must be believed about who God is to be saved ... but apparently one must believe Jesus is God.

• John 20:31 I write these things to you that you might believe that Jesus is the Son of God and that by believing you may have life in His name. The logic being the "Son of God" is the same as say "Jesus is God" (John 1:1, 14)
• 1 John 5:13 I have written these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life. The logic being the "Son of God" is the same as say "Jesus is God" (John 1:1, 14)

• 1 John 4:2 Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God: 3 And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world.
• "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." In the context of Paul’s writings, “Lord” (Kyrios) carries divine connotations, often equating Jesus with Yahweh of the Old Testament.
• Philippians 2:9–11 "Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow… and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." Confessing Jesus as “Lord” (divine title) is shown as universal and essential.
• John 14:6–7 "Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you had known me, you would have known my Father also." Belief in Jesus’ unique divine identity is required for access to the Father.

 

[Josheb]

Is it necessary to believe Jesus was God to be saved? Thoughts? Verses?

Yes, at least to some degree (and that degree is life giving or life destroying). Why? Because there must be some correlation between belief and reality. I can believe my SUV can fly all I want but that belief will not have any effect whatsoever when I drive my car off a cliff. Similarly, there must be some belief between the Jesus that exists and the belief. Believing things that have no basis in reality is called a delusion. When it comes to non-Trinitarians, the modalist, the oneness, the LDS, the JW, etc., will all agree among themselves Jesus is not God, but they will not agree between themselves as to the nature/ontology of Jesus. One group thinks him an especially endowed-with-the-Spirit ordinary human while another thinks him a human who achieved divinity. Some even believe and are able to perform miracles only to later the Jesus in whom they believe is not Jesus.

Matthew 7:21-23
Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter. Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles? And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you who practice lawlessness.'

The other side of that condition is the fact no one fully understands who and what is Jesus when they are brought from death to life in Christ. Doctrine does not save; Jesus does. Which Jesus? The Jesus testified to in the whole of scripture and that Jesus is repeatedly compared to God and ascribed the attributes of God in a manner that would be sacrilegiously heretical and apostate if those claims were not true and correct.

John 5:18
For this reason, therefore, the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because he not only was breaking the Sabbath, but also was calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.

He made himself equal with God. That is heretical, unless it's true. If Jesus is a heretic, then he is not Savior and every single one of us, trin or non-trin alike, is still dead in sin.

Is it necessary to believe Jesus was God to be saved?

As opposed to what? Jesus is a kumquat? Jesus is mundane? Jesus is profane? Jesus is infernal? Jesus is solely creaturely?

Matthew 16:15
"But who do you yourselves say that I am?"

Matthew 16:16
"You are the Christ, the Son of the living God”

Let's stone Peter, too, because he believes Jesus is equal to God, too, since he believes Jesus is God's son.

John 6:68
"You have words of eternal life. And we have already believed and have come to know that you are the Holy One of God.”

Is it necessary to believe Jesus is the Son of God to be saved? If so, then according to scripture, a person must also believe Jesus is equal with God (because being God's son is an equivalence) and since there can be only one God, that makes Jesus God.

Is it necessary to believe Jesus was God to be saved? Thoughts? Verses?

Yes

 

[EarlyActs]

I read an interesting URL by Rick Brown. (see https://www.ijfm.org/PDFs_IJFM/17_4_PDFs/02_Brown_Beliefs_hw.pdf ) It has the title: "
What Must One Believe about Jesus for Salvation?" I enjoyed it as it went into depth on the subject. I disagreed with his thesis on one point as he said it was NOT necessary to believe Jesus was God to be saved.

Is it necessary to believe Jesus was God to be saved? Thoughts? Verses?

Aside: I asked ChatGPT to: "List Bible verses that indicate that believing Jesus is God is necessary for salvation".

First, let us be clear that salvation is justification and also personal change. Justification is not the same as personal change. It is the declaration by God, in light of what he accomplished through Christ historically, that there is now a righteousness available to the believer for the question of justification. That question is: how can a sinful person be cleared of their sin?

Many personal changes come about meanwhile, sometimes out of gratitude for the gift of justification.

Now let's apply justification to the divinity of Christ. God has to have a perfect righteousness to justify a sinner. There is no half-baked solution. In fact, it must be His own righteousness. This was accomplished in Christ. "At one time we knew Christ in an ordinary sense, but we now know that God was in Christ reconciling mankind to Himself..." (2 Cor 5)

This is why, after the inventory of the human race in Rom 3, we hear 'But now the righteousness of God has been manifested...' He goes on to explain that this was God in Christ.

 

[makesends]

This post is directed to the members in general.

A general commentary on this subject --well, on the subject of Jesus being God. We think we know what the words we use mean. That the words have meaning, I do not doubt, but our child's prattle is so short of knowledge/understanding that to place confidence in what WE believe, according to the knowledge of our terms, is a bit presumptious. We don't even know what "God" means, but only what we mean by it. So to say "Jesus is God" only demonstrates "a" difference between what we think creature is vs something bigger than creature. It galls me no end when people treat "God" as though he /it? was only another resident within reality, like we are, though, granted, far more powerful than us.

This I say on this subject then: Only God himself is capable of KNOWING God, in this question of knowing that Jesus is God. Therefore, I must relegate the "knowing" to God himself. From two sides, then, I logically see faith as necessarily produced by God himself: 1) As has been said in many threads here, man is not of himself capable of producing valid thoughts on the matter, and, 2) If indeed it is necessary that in order to BE saved, (not saying, causally to BECOME saved), then that knowledge is necessarily part of that new nature of regeneration, by God himself within man. It is not necessarily even conscious, to the man's intellect or sentience.

And lest someone try to balance two sides to man's responsibility, the fact that man is not capable in himself of producing valid thoughts on the matter, does not give his rebellion any excuse. His rebellion is innate--his rebellion is itself sin. It is not simply that he rejects Christ as God that condemns him, not even knowing what he is rejecting. He is altogether corrupt.

 

[Carbon]

I read an interesting URL by Rick Brown. (see https://www.ijfm.org/PDFs_IJFM/17_4_PDFs/02_Brown_Beliefs_hw.pdf ) It has the title: "
What Must One Believe about Jesus for Salvation?" I enjoyed it as it went into depth on the subject. I disagreed with his thesis on one point as he said it was NOT necessary to believe Jesus was God to be saved.

Is it necessary to believe Jesus was God to be saved? Thoughts? Verses?

Aside: I asked ChatGPT to: "List Bible verses that indicate that believing Jesus is God is necessary for salvation".

I told you that you would die in your sins, for unless you believe that I am he you will die in your sins.” John 8:24.

 

[CrowCross]

Re: Do you have verses correlating "salvation" to "understanding a need for forgiveness" or to "Jesus died on the cross to achieve forgiveness for them"?

List some then. Keep in mind, I asked for verses that correlate "Salvation" to "the necessity of understanding need for forgiveness" and
verses that correlate "Salvation" to "the necessity of knowing Jesus died on the cross". I am aware of plenty of verses speaking of 'forgiveness' and 'Jesus dying on the cross' but I'm not aware of verses saying you must believe Jesus died on the cross in order to be saved or
I must understand the need for forgiveness to be saved.

Example: I know of plenty of verses saying Joseph was Jesus' father, but none correlating the fact to be understood to be saved.

Sorry. I'm not going to play that game.

if you don't understand the need for forgiveness and how it associates with salvation....well then, what can I say.

I gave you a whole list of verses in my link....NOW, if you would like to show me a verse that tells us salvations isn't about forgiveness....lets see them.
But as I said, I don't intend to play that game with you.

 

[Carbon]

I would say no, you do not have to believe Jesus is God to be saved.

But once you are saved, you believe.

 

[Carbon]

So, I would say, yes it is 100% certain in my mind that one of the effrects of said cause is that the person believes that Jesus is God, as that is the very nature of the faith through which they are saved.

Amen to that, brother!