He then brought them out and asked, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”
They replied, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved—you and your household.” (Acts 16:30-31 NIV)
The Philippian jailed asked, “what must I do to be saved?” And in one form or another, it is a question that every believer, and some unbelievers, have asked. What must I do? It is our human tendency to think that we must in some way earn such a great gift, to do something to be worthy of it. But the reality is that there is nothing I can do to earn my salvation; there is nothing I can do that will begin to make me worthy of this gift.
Paul’s response to the jailer is to simply believe in the Lord Jesus. But what does it mean to believe in Jesus? For many people, the word ‘believe‘ is synonymous with intellectual assent; I believe that George Washington was the first president of the United States. But the word used here means much more than that. In means ‘to trust in’ or ‘to rely on’. When Paul tells the jailer to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, he is telling him to surrender to the lordship of Jesus; to trust Jesus with his life. The proper response to God’s gift of grace is surrender; to allow him to accomplish his good work in me. It’s not about what I do; it’s about what God does.
