"For there is no respect of faces with God. For as many as sinned without Law will also perish without Law. And as many as have sinned within Law shall be judged through Law. For it is not the hearers of the Law who are just before God, but the doers of the Law will be justified." - Romans 2: 11-13

Romans is probably the second most doctrinal letter that Paul wrote. What I mean by that is that in it he stressed very greatly the importance of knowing what you believe and why you believe it.

Not simply, ?I believe this because it was told to me,? not simply ?I believe it because my pastor told me it was so? or ?my parents told me it was so,? not just ?because this is the way I was raised.? If I believed the way I was raised, I would still be on the road to Hell!

I was raised up in a dead church. There was no truth there. There was not even a reflection of the true Gospel.

I was not told in truth of who Jesus Christ is. I was not told how to be saved. I was given a list of good works that I could do and told that if I did them all faithfully, that I could go to Heaven, but that is not what the Bible says.

If you get anything at all out of this book, I pray that you will understand that the Christian faith is not about religion. It is about relationship.

What I mean is that it is not about whether you are Baptist or Methodist or Lutheran or any other denomination. It is not about attending an independent church like the one that I pastor.

It is about you, personally and individually, having a one on one relationship with Jesus Christ.

So often when I say that, people respond with things like, ?Well, that is a neat analogy.? It is not an analogy. It is a one on one personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

As well as you know your parents, as well as you know your siblings, as well as you know your best friend, and as well as you know your spouse is exactly the type of relationship you want to have with Jesus. This means more than being able to say, ?Well, I know about Jesus.? It means actually knowing Him in a way in which you actually sit down and pray and ask Him a question and you know that He is going to answer.

It also means being obedient to that answer, whether you like it or not. When we talk about what it is to be saved, one of the steps of salvation is submission to His authority in your life. The Bible calls it receiving Him as Lord, which means taking off our desires, putting it aside and putting on His will for our lives.

Paul sums it up later in Romans, when he talks about how he was raised and the religion he was raised in. He was a Jew by birth, and before he realized who Jesus is he hated the Christian Church.

He was the greatest persecutor of the Christian Church at that time. But later in His life, looking back at his former religion, he wrote concerning those of the Jews who had not received Christ and had therefore forfeited the promise given to Abraham.

?Brothers, truly my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is for it to be saved. For I bear record to them that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge. For they, being ignorant of God's righteousness and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves to the righteousness of God. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness for everyone who believes. ? - Romans 10: 1-4

What he was saying is, ?They are on fire for what they think God is, but they do not know who God is.? Unfortunately, the situation in the modern church is that many people who proclaim, ?Yes, I am a Christian,? do not really even know what that means.

If you have ever read Brother Chester Martin?s book, ?God?s Plan For You,? and actually looked up the verses he gives you, you have received a very clear explanation of the plan of salvation. But now we need to look back at Romans 2: 11, ?For there is no respect of faces with God.? because what he is telling us there is that the people who are so on fire for rules and regulations and saying ?Well this is what you have to do to be a part of our church and to go to Heaven,? but are just referring back to manmade doctrines, do not get it.

There are people who will tell you, ?If you want to be saved you have to be baptized.? The Bible does not say that. It says that if you are saved you will desire to be baptized, because it is something that Christ commanded all believers to do and a saved person will desire to please Him.

It does not matter how many times you get baptized, if your heart is not right, you will not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. If you have not submitted to His authority in your life, the door to eternal life remains shut to you and there is no other way to open it.

So there is no partiality with God and verses 12 and 13 go on to say ?For as many as have sinned without law will also perish without law, and as many as have sinned in the law will be judged by the law. (for not the hearers of the law are just in the sight of God, but the doers of the law will be justified;? Now I want to take a moment and explain the title of this book, ?Three Questions Everyone Must Ask.?

Throughout the pages which follow I will be teaching a series on the basic fundamental principles of what Christians should believe, according to the Bible.

In each Chapter I will strive to lay out for you the exact scriptures you can go to find support for each of the doctrines I will be discussing. As I do this there are three questions I am going to want you to be thinking about.

The first of these questions is posed by Pontius Pilate in the Gospel of Matthew. He was charged with deciding the fate of Jesus Christ and he was under so much pressure to side with three variant factions that he was beside himself.

His wife sent him word that she had suffered greatly in a dream because of Jesus, and urged him to have nothing to do with Son of God. The man who was for all practical purposes his boss, the roman authority over him said basically, ?Do not let this rebellion keep going, put it down right now.? Then he also had the Jewish priests, the Pharisees and the Sadducees, claiming that Christ had declared Himself King of the Jews and was therefore an enemy of Caesar.

So under the pressure, Pilate allowed Christ to be put to death. He washed his hands of the matter and he allowed them to make their own decision, when he had the authority and the power to say, ?No, this man does not deserve to die.? We even know that he did not believe Christ was guilty because at one point he declared it directly.

But in the middle of all of his pondering over his predicament, in Matthew 27:22 he asked a question which every living person, both saved and unsaved has to ask. The question is, ?What then shall I do with Jesus, who is called Christ?"

If you are not saved, if you do not yet have that one on one relationship with Jesus Christ, this is the question that should be weighing most heavily upon your mind. What are you going to do with this Jesus who is called Christ?

If you are saved, then you must ask, "What am I going to do today with this Jesus who is the Christ?" In John 6: 61, Jesus asked a question of those who were questioning His teaching that the only way to Heaven is through Him. ?Does this offend you?" In fact it did offend them, and many of them ceased to follow him, because they were so caught up in their manmade rules and the legalism of keeping the law that they totally missed Grace when it stood right in front of them.

If you are not yet saved, then you have to ask yourself. Does this offend you? Does the idea that Jesus Christ is the only way to Heaven offend you? Does it bother you, because you want to cling to something else? Do you say to yourself, "Well, I think that I am good enough to work my way into Heaven?"

The Bible says that is not true. The Bible says that there is no person alive today, walking around on this earth, who is capable of working our way into Heaven.

The only way that we can get there is by God?s grace and the sacrifice of His Son, Jesus Christ, and remember that there is no partiality with God. If you think that you can get there a different way than what God said, you are wrong.

In John 11: 26, after declaring to Martha that He is the Resurrection and the Life, Jesus asked her, "Do you believe this?" Until she had the faith to believe this and therefore to command that the stone over the tomb should be rolled back, her brother Lazarus remained dead, but once she had the faith Christ commanded the dead man to come out of the tomb and he did.

So there are the thee questions I want you to consider now, as we will be coming back to them over and over again. What are you going to do with this Jesus who is called Christ, receive Him as the only way to Heaven or reject Him as being just some teacher?

Does what the Word of God says about the various doctrines we will studying offend you? If so, you need to change your heart.

Finally, do you believe what the Word of God says and that it is the authority in which we should find our answers to these questions? If you can find one verse in scripture to which you answer ?No,? then you need to ask yourself if you really believe in Jesus.

Some people tell me, ?I am a Christian, but I do not believe in a literal, six day creation.? The Bible says of Jesus in John 1: 3 ?All things came into being through Him, and without Him not even one thing came into being that has come into being.?

That means if you doubt the six day creation, if you think that it took millions of years to form the universe, then you are doubting Jesus Christ.

I am going to tell you right now everything you have to do to get saved. I am going to urge you, even if you call yourself a Christian, to ask yourself, "Have I done this?"

The first thing the Bible says you have to do to be saved is to believe with all of your heart that Jesus Christ is the only begotten Son of God, that He died on a cross for your sins and that that sacrifice is enough in and of itself. You do not have to work it off. There is nothing to work off, because your debt is paid. Romans 10: 9-10 says, that "Because if you confess the Lord Jesus, and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth one confesses unto salvation."

Most people who call themselves Christians stop there and say, "Well, I believe in Jesus, so I must be saved." But James 2: 19 says, "You believe that there is one God. You do well. Even the demons believe and tremble."

They tremble in fear, because they know that they are going to a place which in the Greek is called Tartarus. It is a lake of fire, which in English is called Hell. When they go there they are going to suffer eternally, as will any soul which does not get saved before they leave this life. So it is not enough to just believe. Do you believe what the Word of God says whole-heartedly?

The second thing which the Word of God says that you have to do to be saved, is repent. Most people do not even understand what that is anymore.

The modern church, that portion of it which actually mention repentance, has watered it down until people believe that all it is to repent is to apologize to God. If you ask most professing Christians if they have fully repented the typical response is something like "Yeah, I told God I was sorry for my sins."

So? Have you repented?

To repent has two literal meanings in the Greek. First, it is to change your mind concerning something and, second it is to turn away from it.

Have you changed your mind about what the Word of God says sin is? Have you taken the things that you thought were good but the Word of God says they are bad, realized that they offend God and therefore become offended by them, and then ceased to do them?

Have you really repented?

Some people tell me, "Well, I keep the Ten Commandments." That's nice.

Have you allowed Him to set you free from bondage to the law of sin and death? Have you allowed Him to remove all doubt from your heart?

Let us look for just a moment at Romans 14: 23, "But, the one doubting, if he eats, he has been condemned, because it is not of faith; and all that is not of faith is sin." That means if you are not sure whether something is a sin and you go ahead and do it without searching the Word of God to find out, then it is sin.

Going a bit deeper, you can sin in your mind. Read I John 3: 15 and tell me how long it has been since you committed murder. "Everyone hating his brother is a murderer. And you know that no murderer has everlasting life abiding in him."

I want you to ask yourself if you have ever been angry with someone. Yes, that is right. You are guilty, but the beautiful thing about the Gospel message is this: Jesus says that you can be forgiven. Do you repent? Do you change your mind concerning your sin? Do you decide that there is a better way than having anger?

The third thing which the Bible says you must do to be saved, is to call on the name of Jesus Christ in prayer. Romans 10: 13 says, "whoever shall call on the name of the Lord will be saved."

You may be thinking, as I once did, "Well every time I pray I end it with 'In Jesus' name.'" That is not what the Bible is talking about. What Paul is telling us here is that to be saved we must personally ask Jesus to be our Savior.

This does not mean telling your pastor or your elders, "I want Jesus to be my Savior." Have you personally asked Him to by your Savior?

I have a friend named Chad. We are pretty close and we talk nearly every day. I had the honor of leading him into just the sort of relationship with Jesus Christ that I have been discussing. We have taken mission trips together and he is active in the Church I pastor.

For the two of us to be friends though, in order for us to have the relationship that we have, there had to be a point where we met face to face and we talked and decided that we were going to be friends. I know that the very first time we met I decided, "I like that guy."

We started spending more and more time together and now we are the closest of friends, but it had to start with that first contact. We had to, each of us, make a choice to have a personal relationship.

I can tell you all about Jesus Christ. I can tell you exactly how to get to know Him. But no one can get to know Him for you. You have to choose to begin that relationship, by bowing you head and saying with the fullness of your heart, "Lord Jesus, I know I need you to be my Savior."

The fourth and final thing the Bible says you have to do to be saved is given in John 1: 12-13, ?But as many as received Him, He gave to them authority to become the children of God, to those who believe on His name, who were born, not of bloods, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but were born of God.? We must receive Him as Lord and Savior.

That means submitting to His authority, opening up the Word of God, seeking His will for how He would have you to live your life and pray, asking Him, "Lord, how do you desire for me to be a vessel for Your ministry?" If you ask with your whole heart, He will show you in His Word and if you continuously strive to follow that vision, then you have received Him as Lord.

Maybe you began reading this book thinking, "I am a Christian" but now you are thinking, "There is some of that I have not done." If that is the case, ask Him right now to help you to make that right.

If you have received Jesus Christ as your Savior after reading this chapter, please let me know. It is my heartfelt desire to be in faithful prayer for you as you begin your new life as my Brother or Sister in Christ. You may e-mail me or you may contact me via snail mail at:
Brother Philip A. Payne, Pastor
%Holy Mountain Mission Corps
116 North Green Street New Ross, Indiana 47968.