How can I not go to hell?

When the question, "What must I do to be saved?" rang from the agonised lips of the prison warder at Philippi, the inspired answer did not bid him pray, or strive, or make vows, or anything of that sort. He was told to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved. Nothing that he could do could secure God's salvation. The doing had all been done by Christ. All that is left for the sinner is the appropriation of the results of His mighty work by simple faith.

But what is the jailer told to do? God's answer to man's query is exquisite in its simplicity. "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house," falls on the ears of the awakened sinner. How divinely simple. He had only to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and he would be a saved man. There is no word of anything that he must do in order to get salvation. This is a gospel that exactly meets helpless sinners without strength, and no wonder the jailer believed at once. His conversion was a rapid one indeed. One minute asleep in his sins, the next awake and deeply anxious about these sins — and straightway thereafter he hears the gospel and believes it, and rejoices in God with all his house.

If, instead of forgetting God, you turned to God; if, instead of living for yourself and rejecting the Lord Jesus, you owned your guilt and need and believed in Him as just the Saviour you need, as the One whose precious blood shed on Calvary can wash your sins away, you would be saved and become the possessor of everlasting life—a life that you would begin to enjoy here and now. Moreover there would be no condemnation for you. The dark judgment-cloud of hell would disappear out of your sky.

But perhaps you bow to God's Word, and seeing your guilt and sin, tremble in view of "judgment to come." It is well with you if so, and better still if you are willing to take God's way of salvation. He it is who alone can save. He has, so to speak, let down a rope from above, long and strong enough to meet any and every sinner's case, no matter how many or heavy his sins may be. Christ is God's way of escape from the lake of fire, and if you would escape the due reward of your deeds, my friend, you must trust to Him.

Let us now fix the eye, for a brief moment, upon the third cross. On it we behold — what? A guilty sinner? Not merely that. The penitent thief was that. They were in the same condemnation. No one need go to hell simply because he is a sinner, inasmuch as Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, "even the chief." There is not a sinner this day, outside the precincts of hell, who is not within the reach of God's salvation if he only feel his need of it. No one need be lost, merely because he is a ruined, guilty, hell-deserving sinner.

Nor does this apply only to Israel. “For God so loved the world.” This love is so marvelous that the beloved, only begotten Son of the Father was given by Him as a sacrifice for the sake of the whole world. Yet its value cannot be known by anyone who does not believe in Him: this applies only to “whoever believes on Him.” No-one (Jew or Gentile) is excluded except by his own unbelief. This is true as regards the kingdom of God: either one will be blessed in it by having eternal life, or he will perish in the tribulation, and for eternity. Of course it is also true as regards those who now have opportunity to receive Christ. Either they believe Him and have eternal life, or they shall perish eternally.

How awful the fact that every one of us is described in this verse. Yes, born in this very condition, and held fast prisoners by the devil, the god of this world — so fast that, however you, my reader, may desire to deliver yourself from the power of sin, you cannot. Every effort is utterly vain. I believe that such is the awful dominion that sin has over man, that if all the men in the world, and all the angels in heaven, were to unite to deliver one soul from the power of sin and Satan, they could not do it. I think I hear you saying, "If that's the case, I must have been dreaming. I thought a man could repent at any time, and give up his sins, and then God would forgive him; and so I have not been particularly troubled about it. I have thought there is time enough yet." My reader, if this is your thought, you could not well be under a greater mistake. How awful if you should go on in this fatal delusion until the door is shut, and you are lost! Now, come, try your plan. Try to repent — try to give up all your sins — try to love God with all your heart — try to keep His holy law. The effort, sincerely made, will soon convince you of your hopelessly sinful state; but even if you could succeed in such all effort, there would still be the fearful weight of past sins. No amount of bitter remorse could undo, or wipe away, one past sin. Judas is a solemn beacon as to this; he tried this way; but he found it the way to hell. Sorrow for sin is but a very small part of true repentance. Your mind must be entirely turned from sin to God. There is but one only way by which this can be done. "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up; that whosoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life." To repent before you believe would be as if the bitten Israelite had to be healed before he looked at the brazen serpent. No, no. Faith in the love of God, as seen in the death of Jesus, alone can produce true repentance. The moment I believe in Jesus, my mind must be changed toward God. If you have been brought to look at Jesus lifted up on the cross, dying for your sins, and now lifted up to the highest glory — if He is your entire trust — you are, and shall be, certainly saved. "For through him is preached the forgiveness of sins; and all that believe are justified from all things." But if you have not looked, and do not thus look, on Jesus lifted up — if you are trusting in anything else — you are as certain, should you die in this state, to perish, as though you were just now in hell.

There will always be sorrow for sin in the heart of the one who repents, but repentance is more than sorrow for sin it is a complete change of mind, that turns the whole man as the helm turns the ship. The Thessalonians repented when they turned to God from idols. Saul of Tarsus repented when he cried out to Jesus, whom he had hated, "Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?" A young man whom I met repented when he said to me, "I've had a look into eternity and I want to be saved." Repentance comes when the light shines into a man's heart and he becomes honest to God and confesses the truth, and casts himself upon God's mercy. When the publican stood afar off and would not so much as lift up his eyes to heaven, but smote upon his breast saying, "God be merciful to me a sinner," he repented, and there was joy in heaven over him and he went down to his house justified. But repentance does not save the sinner, it is God that does that. "It is not thy tears of repentance or prayers, But the blood that atones for the soul."

It is so with the first thing: in repentance in order to salvation. God has to show us what sin is. I do not say it is by chastening; but still He has to bring us face to face with our sins, that grace may be grace, and salvation be from sin as well as from wrath to come. It is the necessity of His holy government that "Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish." Not that repentance is the price we pay for salvation in anywise; for Christ's work is the only price of what to us is absolutely free. Repentance only makes us learn how needed and free it is.

Faith without works is dead, but it is faith that saves, not faith and works. The works come in as the evidence of the reality of the faith, and very important they are. I am suspicious of the man who tells me that he believes in Christ and yet is not "zealous of good works."