Master, What Shall I Do To Inherit Eternal Life?

I find it interesting how different the same intro can lead only four months apart. In November, I wrote the blog post "Master, What Shall I Do To Be Saved? (Luke 10:25)." Here I duplicated the first two paragraphs and it naturally took a different direction.

Eternal life and salvation, or being saved, are synonymous terms. You cannot have one without the other and you cannot loose one without loosing the other. Another term also synonymous with these is inheriting or entering the kingdom of God.

Some people believe that to be saved the only thing that must be done is "confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and ... believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead" (Romans 10:9); that is enough, it is as good as done, the final judgement of salvation has been declared upon their soul, they are saved. However, this is not what Jesus taught. In fact this scripture, which is true and written in future tense, cannot be taken out of the context of everything taught by that apostle or all of the apostles and the teachings of Jesus Himself.

But in the beautiful interaction that Jesus had with this lawyer in Luke 10:25-37 we learn that we must do more to be saved. If not, it would have been very different. In response to this question Jesus would have simply said, 'confess me with thy mouth and believe in thine heart that God shall raise me from the dead.' But this is not what He said. He said, "this do, and thou shalt live;" of course referring to the previous verse which is a call to action. If the lawyer did what was required of him, he would live; meaning he would have eternal life and be saved.

This could of course be reworded accurately to say, 'love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind, and thou shalt be saved', and 'love thy neighbor as thyself, and thou shalt be saved.' If the lawyer had not asked further questions, it would not have been clarified but, we would know absolutely from this single interaction that actions, or works if you will, are required to be saved. Christ didn't say, 'this have in your heart, and thou shalt be saved.' He said, "this do," showing directly that to love is an action verb requiring action.

The follow up question and the associated parable/allegory clarify that to love requires action and He finishes that by saying, "Go, and do thou likewise." This again repeats the answer to the original question and can be accurately reworded to say, 'love thy neighbor as thyself by shewing mercy on him, and thou shalt be saved.' To love and show mercy are action verbs as evidenced again be the Savior.

The next question that some would wonder after reading this is, am I'm trying to pit the words of Christ against the words of His apostles later on in the New Testament? I am not trying to do this. In fact, I do not believe that there is a contradiction but I will leave that for another blog post. The words of Christ in this interaction show that salvation is conditional on our actions by saying 'if you go and do this, then you will be saved.'