What Must I do to be Saved?

Point 3: God’s Plan for Your Salvation is Broader than You Think


Even during the lifetime of Jesus and the early Church, saving your physical life was a priority. God's desire is that you live a long, healthy life. "Your faith has made you well" = "Your faith has saved you." Jesus spent a tremendous amount of his time healing people. Acts of healing continued to be important in the early Church.

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Mark 5:35-43; Luke 7:11-17, Even during the lifetime of Jesus and the early Church, saving your physical life was a priority. (10/15/19)

We saw that the Old Testament is primarily concerned with saving physical lives, and we know that the New Testament is primarily concerned with saving eternal lives. Nevertheless, Jesus spent an enormous amount of time healing sickness and disease that could have led to death (we knew that), and occasionally restoring life to young people (which always comes as a bit of a surprise to me).


John 11:17-44, Even during the lifetime of Jesus and the early Church, saving your physical life was a priority. (10/16/19)

Of course the most familiar miracle of raising a person back to life is Jesus' raising of Lazarus. He had not just died, like the little boy raised by Elijah or the little girl raised by Jesus. He wasn't even on the way to burial, like the widow of Nain's son. No. Lazarus had been in the tomb for four days. Martha says bluntly that the body would already have started to stink. Even so, Jesus raises Lazarus the same way he did the little girl and the widow's son, by telling him to get up.


Acts 9:36-43, 20:1-12, Even during the lifetime of Jesus and the early Church, saving your physical life was a priority. (10/17/19)

Peter and Paul both raised people from the dead. Eutychus, raised by Paul, was "a young man," which would seem to be continuing the trend we saw of three young people returning to life. Like Lazarus, Dorcas may not fit the pattern, because she seems to have been a widow. Or maybe in five cases we shouldn't even look for a pattern. A couple of weeks ago, Pastor Pam drew our attention to the fact that Dorcas is a "disciple," the only woman to be called a disciple.

My favorite part of these passages is "they took the youth away alive, and were not a little comforted." How comforting it should be to us, when we contemplate our own resurrection on the last day, to have these concrete examples of people whom God has restored to life!


Acts 27:21-26, 37-44; Acts 28:1-10; Even during the lifetime of Jesus and the early Church, saving your physical life was a priority. (10/18/19)

Many lives are saved in this brief incident during Paul's transport to Rome for trial under Caesar. Two hundred seventy-six persons escape alive from a terrible storm and shipwreck. Paul himself is unharmed after being bitten by a snake that the natives of the island clearly considered to be deadly. Finally, Publius's father survives dysentery, and many others are healed. All this just so that Paul could get to Rome safely!

Notice the irony in vss. 28:4-5. Paul was indeed a "murderer," in that he delivered many of the early Christians to trial (e.g., Acts 9:1); however, in the meantime his presence has resulted in the preservation of all the lives on the ship.


Genesis 6:3; Exodus 20:12; Deuteronomy 5:16, 6:1-2, 11:20-21, 25:15; Psalms 91:14-16; Proverbs 3:13-20, God's desire is that you live a long, healthy life. (10/21/19)

God's desire is that you live a long life. According to Wikipedia, as of October 20, 2019, the oldest living person whose birth date could be verified was 116 years and 291 days old. The oldest person whose lifespan was well verified died at 122 years and 164 days. The Bible's estimate of a long life as 120 years is right on. Scripture also links obedience to God and the knowledge of God, wisdom, to long life. There are no guarantees in this world, but as a rule of thumb, people who live according to God's laws do tend to live longer than criminals and others who flout God's laws, so the Bible is right about that, too.


Leviticus 11:9-25, God's desire is that you live a long, healthy life. (10/22/19)

A long time ago, in lieu of working, a bunch of us grad students in paleontology were discussing why a person would keep kosher, specifically why we might eat one thing and not eat another thing. The final word, which happened to be from a Jewish student, was "Because God said so." And that is correct; however, many of the rules also bear a strong resemblance to ordinary food safety rules. Clean and unclean have to do mainly with ritual suitability or unsuitability. Nevertheless, most unclean "foods" also have the potential to be bad for your health. For example, I can never remember whether to eat oysters in months with or without an "r," but it's easy not to eat oysters. Similarly, some predators carry parasites: don't eat them. Some crawling insects are clean little vegetarians, but other spread disease: don't eat them.


Leviticus 13:18-37, Exodus 21:28-36, Deuteronomy 22:8, God’s desire is that you live a long, healthy life. (10/23/19)

While remembering that clean and unclean are actually about ritual acceptability, we also notice that much of the Law of Moses is devoted to regulations that affect public health and safety, e.g., food safety (we saw an example yesterday), quarantine, animal control, and building codes. The priest functioned as public-health officers as well as clergy. Probably animal control and building codes were in the jurisdiction of the administrators that Moses appointed in Exodus 18:25-26. All of these regulations tend to increase life expectancy.


Exodus 15:22-26, God's desire is that you live a long, healthy life. (10/24/19)

In vs. 26, where God says, "I am the LORD, your healer," the word for "healer" is an ordinary word (in both Hebrew and Greek) for healing a wound or curing a disease. I looked at most of the occurrences, and it seems to be used almost exclusively in a physical sense. For the most part, diseases and wounds are healed, although in some cases water, land, altars, houses, and backsliding are also healed.


Isaiah 35:1-10, God's desire is that you live a long, healthy life. (10/25/19)

God is concerned with both physical and mental health. When John asked Jesus whether he was the "one who is to come," Jesus referred to this passage and told John's disciples to report what they had seen, namely, "the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have good news preached to them" (Luke 7:22).


Ezekiel 34:1-16, God's desire is that you live a long, healthy life. (10/28/19)

God denounces the rulers, or shepherds of Israel, for not taking care of the sheep, or ordinary people. Among other failings, the rulers have not healed the sick or bandaged the wounded. You and I would be well advised to avoid becoming God's enemy by taking care of those around us.


Isaiah 58:1-12, God's desire is that you live a long, healthy life. (10/29/19)

Chronic hunger is bad for one's health, and homelessness significantly reduces life expectancy. God expects us to do something about these conditions (vss. 7, 10).


Deuteronomy 7:6-15, God's desire is that you live a long, healthy life. (10/30/19)

I can't tell you that obeying all of God's commandments will make you live long and prosper, because that's not necessarily so. Nevertheless, I can tell you that dis-obeying the commandments – many of which form the basis of Western criminal and civil law – will shorten your life expectancy. God prefers both that you obey his commandments and that you live a long, healthy, and prosperous life.


Luke 8:42b-48, 7:36-50, "Your faith has made you well" = "Your faith has saved you." (10/31/19)

Jesus spent a tremendous amount of his time healing people, and he often said, "Your faith has made you well"; the Greek can just as accurately be translated, "Your faith has saved you." God's plan for salvation includes physical wellness.

Word Study: Sesoke is a past tense of our old friend sozo/save. Today we see two passages where the same Greek phrase is translated both "Your faith has made you well; go in peace" (most translations for Luke 8:48) and "Your faith has saved you; go in peace" (most translations for Luke 7:50).


Luke 17:11-19, "Your faith has made you well" = "Your faith has saved you." (11/01/19)

Leprosy not only makes you sick, it makes you unclean, and we saw a few days ago that only the priest can pronounce you clean. Ten men come to Jesus because they have leprosy, and he sends them to the priests. On the way, they are made clean/katharizo (vs. 14). One notices that he has been cured/iaomai and comes back to praise God and thank Jesus (vs. 15-16). Jesus says, "Your faith has made you well/sesoken se." I had never noticed Luke's distinction between the nine men who were made clean and the one man who was cured, let alone that only he was made well. Do you suppose he was also the only one saved/sesoken?


Matthew 12:9-23, Jesus spent a tremendous amount of his time healing people. (11/04/19)

Apparently the legality of healing on the Sabbath was a matter of intense debate in the first century, so it was reasonable to ask Jesus, a famous teacher, for his opinion. It wasn't all that reasonable for the Pharisees to decide to kill him when his answer wasn't what they wanted. Jesus spent a lot of time healing, on the Sabbath as well as on other days.


Luke 5:15-26, 6:17-19, Jesus spent a tremendous amount of his time healing people. (11/05/19)

One way we know God wants us to be physically healthy is that Jesus spent a lot of his time returning people to physical health.

The verse that catches my eye, however, is Luke 5:20: "And seeing their faith, he [Jesus] said to him [the paralyzed man], 'Fellow, your sins are forgiven you.'" Remember that the first manuscripts had no verse divisions, or even punctuation. So the way this goes is that some "men" come, and "they" can't get their friend through the crowd, and "they" go up to the roof, and "they" let him down through the roof. The paralyzed man is not a part of "them." But then what happens? Jesus sees "their" faith, and forgives the man's sins! I hope that you have enough faith to get my sins forgiven!


John 5:1-14, Jesus spent a tremendous amount of his time healing people. (11/06/19)

Most often we see sick people coming to Jesus to be cured or being brought to him by friends or family members. Sometimes Jesus just notices a sick person and decides to do something about it. The sick man in this case had probably just about given up hope, but when Jesus tells him to get up and go, he gets up and goes.

In vs. 14, Jesus is not saying that the man was sick because he sinned. He is saying that the consequences of sin are much worse than being sick.


Luke 7:21-22, 13:10-17, Jesus spent a tremendous amount of his time healing people. (11/07/19)

The leader of the synagogue wasn't angry (or doubtful) that Jesus had healed, he was angry that it had happened on the Sabbath. His reasoning was this: work is forbidden on the Sabbath; healing is work; therefore healing is forbidden on the Sabbath. Jesus had a different reasoning: healing is doing good; doing good is allowed on the Sabbath; therefore healing is allowed on the Sabbath. This was a hotly debated topic in the first century.


Matthew 8:1-17, Jesus spent a tremendous amount of his time healing people. (11/08/19)

You see a lot of threes in Matthew; it was his favorite number. For example, you see groups of three related parables (e.g., lost sheep, lost coin, lost son) or three groups of fourteen generations in the genealogy of Jesus. Even when it came to healing, Matthew is likely to pick out three examples from a larger set. Notice that "many people" were healed on this day, but Matthew tells us about the healing of a leper, a servant, and a sick woman. None of the three is "important" enough to be named, but all are important enough for Jesus to take time to heal them.


Mark 10:46-52, Jesus spent a tremendous amount of his time healing people. (11/11/19)

Bartimaeus, like everybody else, had heard of Jesus' healing miracles, and he wanted one. He was absolutely confident that if only he could get Jesus' attention, he'd get his miracle. That faith either saved him or made him well; take your pick.

Word Study: Here's our friend sozo/save, make well.


Acts 3:1-16, 4:21-22, Acts of healing continued to be important in the early Church. (11/12/19)

After the ascension of Jesus, the Church became the body of Christ, so we shouldn't be surprised that faith continues to result in works of healing.

Word Study: I'll just remind you to read more than one translation. In Acts 3:16, the Good News Bible and some others read that faith "has made him well," but this is not the same Greek word we've been seeing for "made well" and "saved." A number of translations have "has given him perfect soundness" (or similar words), which is closer to the Greek.


Acts 9:32-35, 16:16-18, Acts of healing continued to be important in the early Church. (11/13/19)

Healing in the early Church included relief from both physical and mental ailments, just as when Jesus himself healed people.

Word Study: In Acts 9:34, the word translated "makes well" is more like "cured," not sozo /make well/save. In 16:16, the Greek actually has "the way of salvation," so we are starting to see a shift to the concept we are most familiar with, i.e., eternal salvation.


1 Corinthians 12:1-11, Acts of healing continued to be important in the early Church. (11/14/19)

Some of the Corinthians had gifts that they thought were superior to the gifts that others had. Paul says, "Get over yourself! Not everybody has the same gift, but everybody has a gift, and all of them are important, because they come from the same Spirit and serve the same Lord." One of the gifts is the power to heal.


James 5:13-20, Acts of healing continued to be important in the early Church. (11/15/19)

God never stops working on salvation, but we're going to take a break and think about something else over the holidays. To review briefly what we've seen so far: I especially like the way James links prayer to two kind of healing: physical healing and the forgiveness of sins. In this broken world, God's plans sometimes go awry because of our sin, but God always has a plan for salvation that starts from right now.


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
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