God’s Word for You

Acts 16:30-31 What must I do to be saved

by Pastor Timothy Smith on Friday, October 2, 2020

30 Then he brought them out and asked, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” 31 They said, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved. You and your household.”

We know the jailer’s story. He had just been through an earthquake. Thinking his prisoners had escaped, he was about to take his own life when he was stopped by the very prisoners he assumed were set free. Paul had called out: “Do not harm yourself, we are all here!” The jailer called for lights. He rushed in. He fell on his knees before Paul and Silas. Covered in their own blood and now doubtless covered in dust from the shaking of the prison, the prisoners stunned this Roman citizen. He assumed that there would be some task, some fee, some offering he might make in order to join the lowest rank or echelon of being a Christian. He feared for his soul, and suddenly he knew that the Greek and Roman view of the soul was not enough. These men, these prisoner-preachers, knew things he had never even dreamt of. But they were not like the philosophers or the Gnostics. They didn’t keep their teaching a secret. They didn’t play mind games in order to get themselves power. They shared, even when they were doomed to die.

This was the religion that was true. Finally the jailer had encountered the one thing missing from his life, the one thing that made sense of his life. Willing to do anything, he asked, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” We shouldn’t overlook his humility. He, the jailer, was addressing his own prisoners as “sirs,” Kyrioi in Greek. “Lords.” Their chains, fallen from the walls, were probably still attached to their hands or feet. They were covered in blood and dust. The filth of such a prison calls to mind things best left unsaid. Yet they were lords; princes of salvation. The Roman bowed before such prisoners, begging for release from his own prison of doubt, terror, and emptiness.

But true salvation isn’t about works; it isn’t about doing anything. It is a gift to be received. “To the man who does not work but trusts God who justifies the wicked, his faith is credited to him as righteousness” (Romans 4:5). So the cause of our righteousness is Christ, and we put out trust in Christ.

In Greek thought, Aristotle said that questions of “Why,” that is, questions of change, movement, or existence, have four “explanations.” His term for “explanation,” Greek aitia (αἰτία), is sometimes translated “cause,” but “explanation” or “answer” is probably better in modern English. The four explanations of a thing can be illustrated this way. Say that I wish to give a friend a small gift, a soap carving. The first explanation of the carving is its matter or material cause. In this case, it would be a bar of soap. The second explanation of the carving is the form or formal cause. I choose that the carving will be something traditional, like a whale. The third explanation is the agent, also called the efficient or moving cause. What makes the form appear in the material? This is me myself, the artist. This is the work I do with a paring knife, a spoon, a stick, or some other device in the material. Finally, there is the final explanation, the purpose. Here is the receiving of the gift by my friend. They have not brought it about, but only received it, and set it on a shelf or behind their soap dish for a touch of friendship, with beauty, if I am a good sculptor, or comedy, if I am not.

So it is with salvation and the answer to the jailer’s question: “What must I do to be saved?” The material of salvation is God’s grace, love that we do not deserve but which God chooses to give. The form of that salvation is his entire plan of salvation, from the promise given to Eve in the Garden as the serpent was cursed (Genesis 3:15) to the expansion of that promise to Abraham, Jacob, and David, and the foreshadowing of that salvation in the sacrifices of the tabernacle, each of which prefigured Christ in some way. “Day after day every priest stands and performs his religious duties; again and again he offers the same sacrifices which can never take away sins. But when this Priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God” (Hebrews 10:11-12).

Third, the agent of salvation came: Christ himself. He achieved our salvation with his active and passive obedience. Actively, he obeyed the Father’s will perfectly without sin: “We have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin” (Hebrews 4:15). Passively, he allowed himself to be put to death as the atoning sacrifice for our sins; for my sins. “He humbled himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross” (Romans 2:8).

Fourth, the end purpose or final explanation of our salvation is the fulfillment of the Father’s plan. It is simply our reception of the gift and our place with God eternally in heaven. Like the gift of the soap carving, the receiver is free to toss it away, and there are some who toss away the gift of salvation. But that does not lessen the grace of God who gave it.

This salvation that the prisoner-preachers offered as God’s own apostles was not just for the jailer. There is no lowest rank or echelon of Christianity. A saved believer is what we all are, brothers and sisters of Christ, children of the Holy Father. And it was not reserved for one man alone. The jailer could bring his family along in faith as well, his whole household. Faith and salvation are gifts best shared. They do not diminish when we share them, as if we are sharing French fries. The more of our faith we share, the more we will discover that we have. Salvation comes through the simplest of means. Jesus said to make believers by baptizing and by teaching, and those are still the tools we use: the means of grace.

Grace, plan, Christ = gift. This is all there is to it. Share it and cherish it.

In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith

 

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