What Must I do to be Saved?

Point 1: God Wants to Save Everybody – Corporately


Of course God wants to save his people Israel. Surprise! Salvation is for all peoples, even our traditional enemies.

More of What Must I do to be Saved

Copyright information, disclaimers, and sponsors

Return to homepage
Acts 7:2a, 29-34; Exodus 6:1-8, "I will take you to be my people, and I will be your God." (04/01/19)

The Old Testament has a very limited – and possibly even non-existent – view of individual salvation. Instead, the OT talks about corporate salvation, salvation of the people as a whole. You all know the sad story of Adam and Eve and the Fall, which is also my story and your story. By the time of Abraham, the human race had fallen so far that most of us didn't even know God existed. It's hard to bring about the salvation of the universe with only a couple of followers, so God made a covenant with Abraham and Sarah to make them into a mighty nation, provided they stayed loyal to him (Genesis 12:1-3).

By the time of the Exodus, Abraham and Sarah's descendants had become numerous indeed, and I think it's fair to assume that some of them were good, and some of them were bad. God chose not to rescue the good and leave the bad in Egypt, but to take all of them: "I will take you to be my people, and I will be your God."


Leviticus 26:6-13, John 1:14, "I will walk among you and will be your God, and you shall be my people." (04/02/19)

After God brought the Israelites out of Egypt, he gave them instructions for the building of a large tent called the Tabernacle, which was the place for worship and for God's visible presence in the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night. In the first chapter of the book of John, most translations have something like "the Word became flesh and dwelt among us," which is fine; however, the literal meaning of that word dwelt is tented, or pitched a tent, which you see occasionally in some translations. Both the Old and New Testaments give us assurance that God is intent on saving us.


Samuel 7:1-17, "I have chosen a place for my people Israel." (04/03/19)

You know by now that I want you to get a good, modern translation with footnotes, one that is unrelated to the translation you normally read. If you don't want to buy a bunch of paper Bibles, I recommend e-sword, which allows you to download about 30 assorted Bibles for free, and a ton of others for a price. Bibles are available in a number of modern languages, biblical Greek, and Hebrew. There are also several free commentaries. I use this tool literally every day, since it's where I get the readings for you. The nifty "Compare" button lets you look at the same verse in every translation you have downloaded, and you know how often I urge you to do just that! (And besides, if you all use e-sword and the commentaries, you won't need me, and I can go back to playing with my Legos.)

I like the International Standard Version, but it has its quirks, as they all do. One of the ISV's quirks is the use of "Israelis" to translate "children of Israel." "Israelis" are people living in the modern-day country of Israel. The "children of Israel" were, literally, the children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and so on, of Jacob, whose name God changed to Israel. When God brought them up from Egypt, they were a related group of tribes wandering around in the desert, not a modern nation!

Anyway, a few hundred years have passed since yesterday's reading about the tabernacle, or tent of worship. Worship was still centered around the tabernacle in the time of David, and God is still talking about "his people" as a whole, not about individuals.


1 Kings 6:1-13; John 14:1-11, "I will dwell among the children of Israel and will not forsake my people Israel." (04/04/19)

Back in the days when I worked, I got a promotion that entitled me to a teeny little private office, and my boss worked hard to get one for me. Several months later, I told him that I wanted to go back to a double, with the understanding that only my own interns would share the office with me. Rolling his eyes, he got a double office for me and my interns. He said a couple of times that I could have a private office with the interns right across the hall. I said to him, "What's the point of having puppies if you keep them in the barn?"

When David first got the idea of building a house for God instead of a tent, God's response was, "You aren't the one to build me a house [a building]; I'm going to build you a house [a dynasty]." God went on to say that David's son could build the physical house, and Solomon did just that. The word for the "house" that Solomon builds is the ordinary Hebrew word for house. (Some translations have "temple," but trust me, it's "house.") God said that he would "dwell among the children of Israel and will not forsake my people Israel." So it's interesting to me that Jesus talks about "his Father's house." It's also interesting that nearly all of the pronouns and verbs that Jesus uses in speaking to his disciples here are plural. He's saying that he'll come back and take the whole group to his Father's house. We are God's puppies, and he wants us in the house with him.


1 Peter 2:1-10, "Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people." (04/05/19)

We tend to think of the New Testament as being about the salvation of individuals, but this letter from Peter shows that this is not completely true. Peter is talking about salvation (vss. 2-3) of "you all," not "you personally." The whole section is about how we as a group have become God's "people." The word for "people" in vss. 9-10 is not "more than one person"; a people is a group, not a bunch of individuals. Peter emphasizes this idea by referring to the ideas in the book of Hosea, where Hosea gives two children, Not-My-People and Not-Loved, the new names of My-People and Loved (see study tip for March 25).


Jeremiah 30:18 – 31:1, "And you shall be my people, and I will be your God." (04/08/19)

You know how I'm always telling you to read at least 10 verses before and after the verse or passage you think you're interested in? This applies even at the end or beginning of a chapter. In the prophets, sections are very frequently marked off by "Thus says the LORD," as you see in Jeremiah 30:18. You might expect the next chapter to begin "Thus says the LORD," but noooo – that comes in verse 31:2 . Verse 31:1 is the end of the oracle that begins in 30:18.

The northern kingdom, Israel, fell into sin and apostasy and was invaded and defeated, and the people – the ten lost tribes of Israel – disappeared from history. Far from learning from their brothers' mistakes, the people of the southern kingdom, Judah, began to imitate them. Jerusalem was besieged, defeated, and razed. The survivors were deported to Babylon. Things were bad. The prophet Jeremiah, mostly known as "the weeping prophet," does provide a glimmer of hope, however. Once the exiles have learned their lesson, God will bring them back and rebuild the city (30:18), replenish their population (30:19), restore their own government (30:21), and take them back as his unique people (30:22 and 31:1).


Jeremiah 31:31-37; 2 Corinthians 3:1-4; 1 Thessalonians. 4:9-12, "They shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD." (04/09/19)

God is concerned that his people (a singular noun in Hebrew and Greek) has a heart condition, namely, that we keep breaking the covenant. God decided to fix this in two ways, first, by writing the law on our hearts, and second, by making a one-sided covenant that we can't break. Paul takes up the theme of writing on our hearts and being taught directly by God. Note, however, that this covenant and the writing on the hearts appears to be for the people as a whole in both these cases, not with individuals. God wants to save us in groups. We'll get to individuals later.


Jeremiah 32:36-44; Hosea 1:1 – 2:1, "And they shall be my people, and I will be their God." (04/10/19)

God is still talking about heart conditions and about taking the people as a whole for his own. God loves us enough to let us learn from the consequences of our sins and then to take us back.


Ezekiel 11:15-21, 34:25-31, "I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them." (04/11/19)

The prophet Ezekiel speaks to the Jews while they are in exile in Babylon. It's worth noting that as a rule in the Old Testament the "heart" is the place you do your thinking, which is why God says that they need a new heart to "walk in my statutes and keep my rules." Since we believe that we think with our brains and feel with our hearts, we are likely to conclude that vss. 19-21 suggest a lack of compassion, when in fact they suggest a lack of obedience. The great theologian Bob Dylan has a song that says, which is the same message that Ezekiel brought from God.

Lyrics © 1979 by Special Rider Music


Ezekiel 36:21-32, "It is not for your sake that I will act, declares the Lord GOD." (04/12/19)

Have you noticed that heart surgeons never operate on people with healthy hearts? God says to Ezekiel, "Tell these people that they have an unhealthy heart, and I'm going to operate on it. But tell them it's for my sake and my purposes, and not because they are special!" We are only special because God loves us; God doesn't love us because we are special. God is still working on saving a group, a people, who will do his will and cooperate with his plan to save the rest of the world.


Joel 2:21-32, Surprise! Salvation is for all peoples, even our traditional enemies. (04/15/19)

It's bad enough that Pastor Pam says we have to love our enemies, but here's God saying he'll save everyone who calls on his name. Even our enemies ??


Zechariah 2:1-11; Revelation 21:1-2, 22-27, Surprise! Salvation is for all peoples, even our traditional enemies. (04/16/19)

Whenever the Bible uses the term "nations," it means "everybody who isn't Jews (OT) or Christians (NT)." The prophet Zechariah brought the message from God that after the city of Jerusalem was restored (remember that the Babylonians razed the city and took the people into exile), "Many nations will cling to the LORD ... and will become my people." Then in Revelation we get the same message about the New Jerusalem that will come down to earth at the end of time: "The nations will walk in its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it. Nothing unclean, or anyone who does anything detestable, and no one who tells lies will ever enter it. Only those whose names are written in the Lamb's Book of Life will enter it." We believers have always been focused on the idea that God loves us, but all too often we forget that God loves our enemies and is determined to save them and get their names into the Book of Life.


Zechariah 8:20-23; 1 Corinthians 14:21-33a, Surprise! Salvation is for all peoples, even our traditional enemies. (04/17/19)

I love this beautiful image from Zechariah: every Jew will lead ten foreigners to the God who is with them, even though they all speak different languages. Paul says that preaching should be in languages that people understand; my two favorite groups who are working on that are Faith Comes By Hearing and the Wycliffe translators. Oh wait, I forgot BEE World, whose idea is to train up pastors and church workers to do their own translations!


Isaiah 19:1-25, Surprise! Salvation is for all peoples, even our traditional enemies. (04/18/19)

If Israel had two enemies never slated for reconciliation, they were Egypt and Assyria. When Isaiah started prophesying against Egypt, the Jews were probably saying, "Right on! Preach it! Egypt deserves everything they get!" Imagine their surprise when Isaiah announces that Egypt "will turn to the LORD, and he will respond to their pleas and heal them." Even more surprising is that Israel, Egypt, and Assyria will form a triple alliance. But the greatest surprise of all comes when the LORD says, "Blessed be Egypt my people, Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel my inheritance." God wants to save all peoples, including our enemies.


John 10:16-26, Surprise! Salvation is for all peoples, even our traditional enemies. (04/19/19)

For several weeks, we have been reading what scripture has to say about what we must do to be saved. Let's review. First, we learned that this is a very old question. Throughout the Bible, at least as far back as the books of Deuteronomy, the psalms, and the prophets, and at least as far forward as the book of Acts, people have been asking the same question.* Second, scripture says repeatedly, again throughout the Old and New Testaments, that God doesn't want to lose anybody but rather to save everybody. We just spent three weeks reading that God wants to save entire nations and not just individuals; while this is largely an Old Testament idea, we also see it here and there in the New Testament. For example, Jesus says to the people of Jerusalem (who saw themselves as God's chosen flock) that he has other sheep, belonging to another flock, and that eventually they would all be united into one flock. The main thing to remember about a flock is that it has more than one sheep in it; Jesus appears to be talking about the salvation of groups.

Totally off the subject, what's up with vss. 19-21? As we saw before, demons cause illness, both physical and mental. Jesus has just restored sight to a man blind from birth. Some of the crowd is arguing that Jesus has a demon and is insane because of it. Others are arguing that a person who has a demon couldn't possibly cure blindness, because demons cause illness, they don't cure it.

* By the way, we also saw that the answer is not a secret. Scripture is really clear about what we need to do, we just don't want to do it!


More of What Must I do to be Saved

Point 1: God Wants to Save Everybody Point 2: You Can Reject God's Plan for Your Salvation (Not Recommended) Point 3: God’s Plan for Your Salvation is Broader than You Think Point 4: How the Bible Answers the Question
Copyright 2019, 2020 and 2021 by Regina L. Hunter. All rights reserved. This page has been prepared for the web site by RPB.

Opinions expressed on this page are solely those of the author, Regina Hunter, and may or may not be shared by the sponsors or the Bible-study participants.  Thanks to the Holy Spirit for any useful ideas presented here, and thanks to all the readers for their support and enthusiasm.  All errors are, of course, the sole responsibility of the author.

Our Sponsors:
St. John's United Methodist Church, "Transforming Lives Through Christ."
 2626 Arizona NE, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87110

St. John's Music Ministries now has a YouTube channel, bringing you free concerts and choral music. Check it out!

Traditional worship services are held Sundays at 8:15 and 11:00 a.m. in the sanctuary.  Casual worship services are held Sundays at 9:30 a.m. in the Family Life Center.  Jazz Vespers are held monthly on the second Saturday at 5:00 p.m. in the sanctuary. St. John's feels especially called to the worship of God and to the service of our neighbors through our music program.

Storm Dragon SoftwareTM

Ducks in a Row, Inc.
This website is supported in part by the generosity of Mrs. J. Jordan.