What Would It Mean to Trust Jesus?

At some point, investigating Christianity needs to stop being just an interesting question.

If you become convinced that Jesus really is who he claimed to be — God entering our world, fully human and still fully God — and that God really raised him from the dead, then the question becomes personal:

What do I do with that?

You do not have to become religious enough.

You do not have to clean yourself up first.

You do not have to understand every Christian belief, solve every moral question or promise God you will never get anything wrong again.

You trust Jesus and what he has done for you.

What does it mean to trust Jesus?

In the last Resource I described faith as trust based on evidence.

It begins when you become convinced that Jesus can be trusted.

But trust goes further than agreeing that something is true.

I can believe an aeroplane is capable of flying without getting on it.

Trust happens when I step aboard.

Christian faith works in a similar way.

It is more than agreeing that Jesus existed.

It is trusting who he is, what he said and what he did.

Christians believe that in Jesus, God entered our world and lived as one of us.

He was fully human.

He knew hunger, tiredness, friendship, grief, rejection and pain.

And yet he was still God.

That means when Jesus spoke about God, forgiveness, sin, life and eternity, he was not simply offering one person’s opinion about spiritual things.

He was revealing God to us.

And when he went to the cross, he was not simply another innocent person suffering unjustly.

God himself had entered our world and was acting to bring us back to him.

Paul puts the response to that very clearly:

Lord means the one who has the right to lead your life — the one you choose to trust, follow and obey.

So saying “Jesus is Lord” is more than agreeing that he is important.

It means recognising that he has the rightful authority over my life.

Jesus is Lord.

God raised him from the dead.

And salvation comes through trusting him.

The resurrection changes everything

The resurrection matters because it validates what Jesus said about himself.

Jesus made extraordinary claims.

He claimed authority to forgive sin.

He said that seeing him was seeing the Father.

He said:

If Jesus died and remained dead, those claims would collapse.

But Christians believe God raised him from the dead.

It is also more than proof about Jesus.

It shows us what Christian hope looks like.

Jesus did not simply survive death spiritually.

He was raised.

And his resurrection is presented in the New Testament as the beginning of what God intends to do for those who belong to him.

So the resurrection points backwards and forwards.

It validates what Jesus said about himself.

And it demonstrates the hope we have that death will not have the final word.

Salvation is received, not achieved

It is very easy to turn Christianity into a system for becoming good enough for God.

Paul says salvation is a gift of grace received through faith, “not by works.”

You do not earn your way back to God.

Jesus has already done what is needed to bring you back to him.

Salvation does not begin when you finally become a good Christian.

It begins when you trust Jesus and what he has done for you.

You do not change your life so that Jesus will accept you. You come to Jesus, and then he begins changing your life.

Why do I need saving?

The Bible says our deepest problem is not simply that we make mistakes.

We were made by God and for relationship with him, but we have tried to live with ourselves in his place.

We want to decide what is right and wrong, what matters and how our lives should be lived without God having the final say.

The Bible calls that sin.

Sin separates us from God.

And because God is the source of life, separation from him leads ultimately to death.

At the cross, Jesus took the punishment sin deserves.

God did not ignore justice in order to forgive us.

In Jesus, justice was satisfied and forgiveness was made possible.

Jesus has done what we cannot do for ourselves.

Salvation is trusting what God has done through him rather than trying to rescue ourselves.

You do not have to fix everything first

It is easy to hear Christianity as a list of things you must change before you are allowed to come to God.

That gets the order backwards.

You may still have major questions about how God wants you to live.

There may be things in your life you do not yet recognise as wrong, habits you know need to change but have no idea how to change, or parts of Christian teaching you are still struggling to understand.

None of that means you have to stay away until you have sorted yourself out.

If we could repair ourselves before coming to Jesus, we would not need a Saviour.

You come to him as you are.

But you also come trusting that he is Lord.

Trust means being willing to let him lead.

What about repentance?

Repentance matters, but it is not an admission price you pay before Jesus will save you.

God is already at work when someone begins to recognise their need for him.

Jesus said the Holy Spirit would help people recognise the truth about their sin, about what it means to be right with God, and about God’s justice and judgement (John 16:8–11), and guide his followers into truth (John 16:13).

And as relationship with God begins, that work continues.

I agree with him.

I turn towards him.

And I begin learning to live differently.

Sometimes God shows us things quickly.

Sometimes he shows us something years later that we had never understood before.

Sometimes we know exactly what needs to change and still struggle to change it.

The Christian life is not a one-off moment of getting everything right.

It is a lifetime of learning to trust God.

Something real changes

When you trust Jesus, Christianity says something actually happens.

You are forgiven.

You are brought back into relationship with God.

You belong to him.

Jesus described it as being born again. Paul described someone who belongs to Christ as a new creation.

And God does not forgive you and then leave you alone to make yourself better.

He gives you the Holy Spirit.

The Spirit teaches, strengthens, corrects and changes us.

That does not mean every habit disappears overnight or every question gets answered immediately.

Christians still fail and still need to confess sin, apologise and change direction.

But God is now at work within them.

That lifelong process of becoming more like Jesus is often called sanctification.

Salvation and following Jesus are not the same thing

Jesus called people to follow him.

But following Jesus is not the test you have to pass before he saves you.

We are not saved because we follow Jesus well. We follow Jesus because we have trusted him to save us.

Salvation begins the relationship.

Discipleship is learning how to live within it.

Over time, following Jesus changes what we value, how we treat people, what we do with what we have, how we respond when we are wrong and who gets the final say in our decisions.

Not because those things earn God’s love.

There is nothing we can do to make God love us more, and nothing we can do to make him love us less. His love for every person he created is already real.

Following Jesus is our response to that love.

When we trust Jesus, we are choosing to put God back in his rightful place.

We stop trying to be our own god — deciding for ourselves what is right, what matters and how our lives should be lived.

And that does bring a challenge.

Because if Jesus is Lord, I am not.

Following him means being willing to lay down my own agenda when it conflicts with his.

Not to make God happy enough to accept me, but because loving God means trusting that his way is better than mine.

Sometimes that will cost us something.

Jesus described following him in terms of denying ourselves and taking up our cross.

Christian love is not simply a feeling towards God.

It is a willingness to trust him enough to give up what I want when what he wants is different.

Obedience does not earn God’s love. It is one of the ways we express our love for him.

That is part of what it means to call Jesus Lord.

So what do I actually do?

There is no magic prayer and no special set of words that makes God respond.

Romans 10 does not say you are saved because you repeated the right sentence.

You are saved because you have placed your trust in Jesus.

That trust includes believing that Jesus is Lord, believing that God raised him from the dead, and trusting what Jesus has done for you through his death and resurrection.

Prayer is simply a way of expressing that trust to God.

You might say:

Those words are not a formula.

Jesus saves you.

The prayer simply gives words to the trust you are placing in him.

This is the beginning

Trusting Jesus is not the finish line.

It is where relationship with God begins.

You do not need to have your life sorted out before you come.

You do not need to know every answer.

You do not need to become a good disciple before Jesus will save you.

You trust Jesus.

You trust who he is.

You trust what he said.

You trust what he has done for you.

And you believe that God raised him from the dead.

The resurrection tells you that Jesus really is who he said he is.

And it gives you hope that the eternal life he promised is real.

Then you begin learning to follow him.

God’s Spirit begins working in you, and over time you discover where your life needs to change.

But salvation is not the reward waiting at the end for people who manage to follow Jesus well enough.

It is the gift with which the journey begins.