SALVATION FOR ALL WHO BELIEVE
LESSON FOR THE JUNIOR CLASSES
STUDY SCRIPTURE: ROMANS 10: 5-17
KEY VERSE
“For “Everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved”. Romans 10:13
To some of us the word all has a rather strange meaning. When you are given some candy or sweets and your parents tell you to share it among everybody, they mean that you should give all of the children that are there some of the candy. But sadly some people like to think that all only refers to their close friends or close family and not to everybody as their parents intended.
That is a problem that we see some of the people in our Lesson had. God had given certain promises to the people of Israel because God had made certain promises to Abraham. God had made a covenant with Abraham and with all the children and descendents that he would have. But God told Abraham that through him everybody on the face of the earth would be blest and would eventually be taken into that special covenant relationship with God.
All that Abraham’s children had to do was to obey the 10 Commandments in the Book of Exodus chapter 20 which stated that they should love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, all your strengths, and their neighbour as themselves.Our study
Practice makes perfect. Everybody in Israel was told that they should obey all the laws of God which were based on the first two commandments about loving God and loving their neighbour. When they practice all these laws they would come to understand what God was really like and what He wanted from them.
But sadly they came to think that God loved only them.
But they found it too difficult to do all of that. Faithfully and with great strength and determination they set up a system with laws that they had created which were in many cases against what God wanted. When Jesus came to earth and taught them and corrected them many of the religious leaders did not like it.
But Jesus insisted that what God intended was that all people on the face of the earth would be blessed because of Abraham’s faith in God. Anybody who had that kind of faith in God, who trusted God, believed His promises, and believed everything that God had said was true, would be saved by God. A person did not have to do things to be saved. When they believed in God and had faith in God, God the Father would change their hearts and then they would be able to do the good things that God wanted them to do. But they could not do it by themselves in their own strength. They had to always depend on God for strength to do what God wanted.
God the Father is very special and loving and kind and because of that He made people and He made the entire Earth and the universe so that it could be enjoyed.
But sadly The Father wanted everybody to know about the great love that He had for all the people on earth. God’s love was so great and broad He did not exclude anyone FROM His love. But the people in the nation of Israel who had been given the Commandments of God and the teachings of God and the teachings of the prophets that God sent to warn them did not listen to God and did not believe God. It wasn’t only them that did not want to believe God. The people in other nations didn’t believe God either for they all did all kinds of wicked things to each other
When Jesus came very few people wanted to listen to the truth from God the Father. Only a relatively few listened and were saved.
The Apostle Paul therefore had to insist in a Letter that he wrote to the Church in Rome that “faith” in God the Father and Jesus meant “faith” in His word. Having “faith” was the most important thing for when a person came to believe in Jesus their faith would lead to their salvation and all the blessings God the Father had provided for every single human being.
Everyone who believed and had firm faith in Jesus would be saved. That is a most important message. You should tell everyone about that love of God to all men, women, and children and how He will save them.