26. What Must I Do to Be Saved
The Book of Acts is the only book in the Bible that asks the direct question, "What must I do to be saved?" and then, concisely and clearly, gives us the answer. Luke tells us that during the second missionary journey, at Philippi, Paul and Silas were thrown into prison, but that after an earthquake miraculously freed them:
The jailer called for lights, rushed in and fell trembling before Paul and Silas. He then brought them out and asked, "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?" They replied, "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved—you and your household" (Acts 16:29-31).
The reply is almost staggering in its simplicity and summarizes in a few short words much of the complex theology Paul patiently explains in his epistles. The fact that all that is necessary to be saved is to "believe" does not mean, of course, that nothing further will be done as a result of that crucial step of salvation. We see in the immediately following verses: "Then they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all the others in his house … then immediately he and all his household were baptized" (Acts 16:32-33), showing that the jailor had more to learn and more to do as a result of his faith, as he continued down the path of salvation.
But there is another aspect to what the Philippian jailer was told that we often read over without thought. Luke tells us the object of the faith needed for salvation is "the Lord Jesus," which is interesting because he stresses this phrase throughout Acts. The name "Jesus" appears 68 times in the book, but it is frequently – to a noticeable degree – combined with the word
"Lord" (which is used some 110 times in the book). Unlike some other books of the New Testament, Acts rarely speaks of Jesus as "the Son" (only four times) or of God as "the Father" (only three times). Instead, Luke usually speaks of "God" (over 160 times) and "the Lord" or "the Lord Jesus."
This selective use of titles for Jesus shows us that rather than stressing the familial aspects of God and his relationship to us, Luke wished to stress for his audience the ruling aspect of the resurrected Christ. This approach of stressing a relationship of obedience and loyalty to Christ as ruler may well have been more understandable to a Gentile audience as opposed to faith in "Jesus Christ" – Jesus the Messiah long expected by the Jews. It is also an approach that balances the simple statement of faith. Faith is all that is needed, but faith in Jesus as Lord helps us to see the loyalty and obedience that stem from that belief. Paul himself speaks of that same obedience based on faith which: "… has been made known to all nations, according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith" (Romans 16:26B ESV).
We do not know the name of this jailer of Philippi or hear of him again after the earthquake incident, but in many ways he is a type of us all. Many of us have to be shaken by events in our lives to bring things into better focus, but whether this is true in our own situations or not, most of us ask the same question at the beginning of the process of conversion. The jailer was fortunate to have Paul present in person to fully answer his question of "What must I do to be saved?" But the answer he received is the same one we find in studying the writings of Paul and summarized so concisely by Luke.