What is instant salvation?

From the foregoing remarks our readers may be saying, well all this seems to portray salvation rather as a process than an instantaneous act. If such are your thoughts, my friend, let me assure you once for all that the matter of your salvation, your passing out of nature's darkness into God's wonderful light is absolutely instantaneous. In the history ofevery soul that becomes a true believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, there is a moment when the line of decision is crossed and that moment means a change...

Awakened to my awful condition, do I cry out like one of old, “What must I do to be saved? “ The answer is, beautifully simple: “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved” (Acts 16:31). When am I saved? The moment I believe on the LORD JESUS. It is a very wonderful thing that such a simple word as “Believe” at the beginning of the text should be followed by such a wonderful word as “Saved” at the end of it, but we can understand it when the name of “The Lord Jesus Christ” lies midway between the two words. To Him be all the praise!

The moment you turn to Christ, the moment you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, that moment you get salvation. The moment the sinner accepts Him, acknowledges Him, and confesses Him, that moment is salvation the present, and eternal portion of the believing one. You get what the jailor got. He got salvation; for, I find: "And he took them the same hour of the night, and washed their stripes; and was baptized, he and all his straightway. And when he had brought them into his house, he set meat before them, and rejoiced, believing in God with all his house" (vers. 33, 34). He was told to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and I read he believed in God. Why was that? What he had heard led him to see that the blessed Man, the Lord Jesus Christ, of whom he had been told, was really God; that the blessed One, who became Man, that He might die for his sins, and save him, was the eternal, blessed Son of God. Accepting that truth, and believing that truth, in the simplicity of a little child, he believed in God "with all his house." Mark that! Not only he himself, but all his house were marked for blessing. Paul had found his man, but he got a good many besides.

God's salvation is a present possession of the sinner the moment he accepts it by faith.

C.C. — The moment a man believes the gospel, in God’s sight he is saved. He may not yet know it. The Word of God will assure him of that. The apostle does not hesitate to say of believers, “Ye are complete in Christ.” We have everything in Christ, yet need to have them ministered to us all through our life here.

Salvation is immediately the portion of those who receive the Lord Jesus. "This day is salvation come to this house." Man's thought naturally is, that he must worship and serve God now, and risk being eventually saved; but God's way is to give us salvation at once, and to receive our service and worship, because we are saved. Paul taught the Corinthian saints this doctrine. He says, "Ye are washed, ye are sanctified, ye are justified … Ye are not your own; for ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's." But how wonderful is the blessing of present salvation, the knowledge that Christ Himself is now our life and righteousness, and that because He lives, we shall live also! "More happy, but not more secure, The souls of the blessed in heaven."

Of course, there are many things that are ours already, and do not come under the head of promises. The forgiveness of my sins is not promised to me when I get to heaven, but is mine the moment I believe on the Lord Jesus. So with salvation, although there is an aspect of salvation that is future. But the moment I believe on the Lord Jesus I am saved from God’s righteous judgment against me for my sins; I am saved from hell, and the future is divinely assured. So with justification. That is mine also.

We are nowhere told in Scripture that we have to “wait until we come to die, either to be saved or to have knowledge of it. 1 John 5:13, “These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God, that ye way know” - that salvation is ours NOW, the moment we believe.

Nothing can meet the urgent cry of a troubled conscience, but the one perfect sacrifice of Christ; offered to God, for us, on the cross. "For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us." There, and there alone, it will find a perfect answer to its every claim; because there it will find, through believing, all ground of doubt and fear removed, the whole question of sin eternally settled, every divine requirement fully met, and a solid foundation laid for present, settled peace, in the presence of divine holiness. Christ, "delivered for our offences, and raised again for our justification," settles everything. The moment we believe the gospel, we are saved, and ought to be divinely happy. "He that believes on the Son has everlasting life." (Rom. 4, 5; John 3.)

Well then, you come to Him. But you come to Him as one that cannot do without Him. You come to Him as one that will be lost in hell for ever without Him. You come to Him as one that is in despair without Him and hence, beloved friends, the moment you come to Him you are saved on the spot. Why? Because the work that saves you is done and all that you need is to believe it. All that you need is to put your trust in Him. That is the whole thing. There is no other thing. You cannot do anything.