We Believe In Jesus: The PriestSample

Responding to Christ with Trust: Hebrews 10:19-22

Scripture teaches that Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross is the only effective basis for God’s gift of salvation. Christ died on the cross to save sinners. To use the vocabulary we learned earlier, he propitiated God, satisfying God’s justice and wrath, in order to expiate, or take away, the guilt of everyone that has faith in him. 

And that faith is critical. In order to receive the forgiveness of sins that Christ offers, we have to trust him, and him alone. We have to believe that he is the Son of God who died for our sins, and that we are forgiven only because of the sacrifice he offered for us. Scripture speaks of this trust in places like John 20:31, Romans 10:9-10, and 1 John 4:14-16.

Followers of Christ must trust that our salvation is based on Jesus’ sacrifice, and that it’s effective only because of his work. No one else can save us. 

As Peter preached in Acts 4:12:

Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved (Acts 4:12).

We can’t earn salvation. No church or saint can give it to us. We must trust only in the merits of Christ and his sacrifice to save us.

When we put our trust in Jesus alone, we can have confidence and joy before God. Jesus faithfully did everything the Father commanded. And we can be assured that he will faithfully do everything he has promised to us as well. As we read in Hebrews 10:19-22:

We have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus … since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith (Hebrews 10:19-22).

The confidence mentioned here could also be called trust. It’s the firm belief that Jesus’ sacrifice is sufficient to atone for our sin, and that there is no way it can fail to save us. 

One of the signs that we are saved is that we have a sense of being saved. We have a sense of being part of God’s family. The Bible says that the Holy Spirit testifies with our spirit that we’re children of God. And so, true children of God have a sense of that adoption. But that doesn’t mean we can’t have fluctuations in the degree of certainty or assurance that we do have about our salvation. We do want to be growing in that assurance, but it certainly can come and go over time. We need to seek to understand the gospel, to preach it to ourselves everyday so that we understand what Jesus has done for us when he took our place, and help one another. That’s what we do in fellowship, we help one another be more sure of our adoption, of our salvation, of our forgiveness, that the Holy Spirit presses this home to us as we sit under the preaching of the word and we grow in our confidence in Christ and what he’s done for us. So, the assurance of salvation every believer has comes and goes from day to day, but there should be in general, a continual growth in it over time. – Dr. K. Erik Thoennes