Acts 4:12-13
Salvation is Found in No One Except Jesus
12 Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.”
13 When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus.
John 14:6
The Way to God
6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
Salvation Through Confession
9 If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved.
Purifying Us Through Confession
9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.
Matthew 9:9-13
The Calling of Matthew
9As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector's booth. "Follow me," he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him.
10While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew's house, many tax collectors and "sinners" came and ate with him and his disciples. 11When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, "Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and 'sinners'?"
12On hearing this, Jesus said, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. 13But go and learn what this means: 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice.' For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners."
Jesus the Lamb of God
29 The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!
God Sent His Son to Save the World
16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
17 For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.
Salvation is the saving of our soul from the sins that we have done...The fact that we sin goes all the way back to the Fall of Man in Genesis three...We have sinned, so we need forgiveness...We need this forgiveness from God (who is Absolutely Moral) for our sins...God's Plan, timely and complex, was to send His Son for us -to forgive us of our sins...You have to know that you sin to be forgiven and to find and have salvation...This was a problem for the Pharisees, when Jesus was recruiting Matthew, to be one of His disciples...He told the Pharisees, He did not come for the righteous, but specifically for sinners...The Pharisees could not be saved until they knew that they were sinners...Jesus did not come for those who think or thought they were righteous...So you have to freely admit and declare with your mouth that you sin and "Jesus is LORD."...Then we are forgiven of our sins by His Father and He purifies us from all our unrighteousness...
God sent His own Son, who has been with Him from the beginning to pay our sin debt...Jesus paid our ransom for our personal sins...John the Baptist said that Jesus would be the One who takes away the sin of the world...We are forgiven because He died on the cross for each of our sins...We still sin and God knows it...But He will continue, if not complete His Plan, when He sends His Son back to our earth, in His Second Coming...Then in the Spirit and the continuation of His salvation work, God will cleanse and renew all things...He will make all things new (Revelations 21:5)...
The Great Saints Peter, John and Paul teach us that salvation is found through Jesus Christ...In fact, St. Peter and St. John say in the Acts of the Apostles that salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven that which we can be saved...Jesus exemplifies this point of being our Only Redeemer, when He told all the Twelve disciples that no one comes to the Father except through me...Like John the Baptist, we must admit that Jesus is the One who takes away our sins...And as St. John writes when we confess and believe that Jesus is the Son of God -then we will have everlasting life...