What must I do to be saved?

'What must I do to be saved?' is asked almost word for word twice in the book of Acts, once by a jailer at Philippi (Acts 16:30) and echoed in spirit by the crowd at Pentecost, 'Brothers, what shall we do?' (Acts 2:37). Both times, God's messengers gave an answer that did not depend on status, background, or achievement. Salvation was, and still is, available to anyone who will ask this question honestly.

It is worth noticing who was asking. A Roman jailer responsible for guarding prisoners, and a mixed Jerusalem crowd that had just been told they helped crucify their own Messiah — neither group had any natural claim on God's favor. Yet both received the same open invitation. That should encourage anyone who feels their own history disqualifies them from asking the same question sincerely.

It is tempting to answer 'what must I do' with a list: attend church, give money, keep the commandments, be baptized, do enough good deeds to outweigh the bad. Scripture forecloses that approach directly. 'A person is not justified by the works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ' (Galatians 2:16). If salvation could be earned, then 'Christ died for nothing' (Galatians 2:21) — His death would have been unnecessary. The very fact that God sent His Son to die shows that human effort was never sufficient to save us.

A wealthy young ruler once asked Jesus a nearly identical question, 'what good thing must I do to get eternal life?' (Matthew 19:16). Jesus exposed the impossibility of that approach by pointing him to the full weight of God's law, which the man could not actually keep, leaving him to walk away sad rather than surrender his self-sufficiency (Matthew 19:20-22). The lesson is not that good works are worthless, but that they were never designed to be the payment for sin.

This is not because good works are bad; it is because our best works cannot pay a debt that requires a perfect, sinless life to satisfy. 'All our righteous acts are like filthy rags' before a holy God apart from Christ (Isaiah 64:6).

What Scripture consistently calls for is repentance and faith, two sides of a single turning. Jesus' opening message was, 'The time has come...Repent and believe the good news!' (Mark 1:15). Repentance is turning away from sin and self-rule; faith is turning toward Christ, trusting Him alone to save you. When Paul summarized his own preaching, he described 'turning to God in repentance and having faith in our Lord Jesus' (Acts 20:21).

To the jailer's urgent question, Paul and Silas gave the clearest possible answer: 'Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved' (Acts 16:31). Believing here means more than intellectual assent; it means placing your full weight and trust on Jesus as the One who died in your place and rose again.

Paul gives a fuller picture in Romans: 'If you declare with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved' (Romans 10:9). Confessing Jesus as Lord means more than using His name; it means submitting your life to His rightful authority over you. Salvation is not adding Jesus to an otherwise unchanged life; it is surrendering the throne of your life to Him.

This confession is not a magic formula to recite while your heart stays unmoved. James warns that even demons 'believe' certain facts about God and shudder (James 2:19), yet that kind of belief saves no one. Saving faith joins the mind's agreement with the heart's trust and the will's surrender — believing that Jesus is who He said He is, and entrusting your whole life to Him because of it.

Once someone is saved by grace through faith, obedience naturally follows, not as the price of salvation but as its fruit. 'For we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do' (Ephesians 2:10). Baptism, church membership, and a changed life are the normal outworking of genuine faith (Acts 2:41-42), evidence of what has already happened inside a person, not preconditions for it.

This is why the New Testament can say in one breath that we are saved by faith alone, and in the next breath expect that faith to be visible. 'Faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead' (James 2:17). Works do not save you, but genuine faith always, eventually, works.

So what must you do? Stop trusting anything else, including your own effort, to make you right with God. Admit your sin honestly before Him. Believe that Jesus Christ died for your sins and was raised from the dead. Confess Him as your Lord and Savior. 'Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved' (Romans 10:13) — that promise is as true for you today as it was for the jailer at Philippi.