Spiritual salvation comes as a gift of God's grace (i.e., His undeserved favor, love, kindness, help and spiritual enablement), but it can only be received and become personally effective in individuals' lives by the response of faith. To understand the process of salvation, we must understand these two words.

Romans 5:21

so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

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Saving Faith

Faith in Jesus Christ is the only condition or requirement for receiving God's free gift of spiritual salvation. Faith is not only a matter of what a person believes about Christ; it is also an active response from the heart of those who truly desires to accept Christ as Savior and to follow him as Lord

Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. - Luke 9:23

This means that faith is more than intellectual acknowledgement That Jesus Christ is God's Son who died to pay the price for our sin. True Biblical faith-the kind that bring spiritual salvation-involves an active trust by which a person surrenders complete control of his or life to Christ and commits to following His purposes.

Main Elements Of Faith

The new testament's description and pattern of faith includes four main elements:
(a) Faith involves firmly believing that Christ died for our sins and rose from the dead to brig us life, then trusting in Him as our personal Lord and Savior. It involves believing with all our hearts (Romans 6:17, Ephesians 6:60), surrendering our wills and devoting ourselves completely to Jesus Christ and His purposes as revealed in the Bible.

(b) Faith involves repentance and a complete turning toward God in order to follow Christ. True Biblical faith always involves sincere humility and repentance.

(c) Faith includes obedience to Jesus Christ and His Word. Such obedience must become a way of life, inspired by our trust in Christ, by our gratitude to God and by the life transforming work of the Holy Spirit (John 3:3-6, Hebrew 5:8-9). It is an "obedience that comes from faith".

Through him we received grace and apostleship to call all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from[a] faith for his name’s sake. - Romans 1:5

For this reason, faith and obedience go together. In fact, they cannot be separated when it comes to serving God and following Christ. True saving faith is not possible without the commitment to sanctification.

(d) Faith includes a passionate, personal devotion to Jesus Christ that expresses itself in complete and selfless trust, love, gratitude and loyalty. In a personal relationship with Christ, true faith cannot be separated from love; the two completely work together as though they were the thread of the same cloth. Both faith and love represent a personal act of surrender and self-sacrifice directed toward Christ (Matthew 23:37; John 21:15-17; Act 8:37; Roman 6:17).

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(2) Faith in Jesus as Lord and Savior is both the act of a single moment and an ongoing attitude of action that must continue to grow and gain straight. Because we have faith in the definite person who loves us and gave His life for us, our faith should become greater. Trust and obedient-two of God's primary requirement in our lives-develops into loyalty and devotion (Romans 14:8).

And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again. - 2 Corinthians 5:15

Loyalty and devotion then develops into a strong sense of personal attachment to and love for the Lord Jesus Christ (Philippians 1:21; 3:8-10). This kind of faith in Christ brings us a new relationship with God and spares us from His final judgement against sin (Romans 1:18; 8:1). Through the new relationship, we become "dead to sin" and alive in Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit who lives within us.

Thanks for reading, The next is God's Grace.
God bless you.
Shalom.

[NIV Study Edition Bible]

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