Besides showing people forgiveness of sins, justification by faith, and eternal life, we need to show them verses that tell them they are saved. The best verses for this are Romans 10:9 and 10, which say, “If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; for with the heart there is believing unto righteousness, and with the mouth there is confession unto salvation.” In addition, verse 13 says, “Whoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” We may also use Acts 16:31: “And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you shall be saved, you and your household.”
We must stress these four main points from the Word: they are forgiven, they are justified, they have received eternal life, and they are saved. We can give them more, but these four items are very necessary. We cannot do too much by one contact alone. After preaching to them, we may only do the first thing, that is, help them to pray. Then the very next day we may go to contact them again to help them realize that the Lord Christ is the living Spirit. Perhaps then there will be time to help them with these practical verses. If we do not have enough time, we can leave something for the third contact. We should not try to do everything at one time.
We have seen three main items related to helping people to be saved. We must help them to pray to “close the deal”; we must help them to realize that Christ is the living Spirit, that they have to receive Him by opening their heart and their spirit; and we need to help them with some practical verses. We should also help people to know that they are saved by the Lord through the church. They have to realize their relationship to the church. From the very beginning we have to help the new believers to know the Body. They will never forget what they are impressed with at the very beginning. We have to explain to them that from this time on they need to come to the church meetings. They have to come to contact the brothers and to have fellowship with the brothers.
When someone is saved through us, we should immediately help him to realize the church life. Then we should recommend two or three brothers or sisters as their new companions in the church. This will be a great help to them. Every new believer, every new convert, will have at least two or three brothers as Christian companions. We all have to learn to help people in this way.
After a meeting for preaching the gospel, we should ask the new believers to come for three nights of follow up. In this way we can immediately give them some training. We should not think, though, that these are their meetings, so we should not come. Rather, it is our turn to come to practice. Then after this follow-up work, we can baptize them. On the following Lord’s Day, we will have a good number of new believers in the Lord’s table meeting. These will be the “new folks” in our family. Then we can help them to know a little bit about the church, and they will realize that the church, the Body, is their home. We should also help them to know that we do not preach the gospel individualistically; we preach the gospel in a Body way, a corporate way. From the first day they should know that this is the church preaching the gospel, not to bring people to heaven, but to bring people to the church. Then we will see the difference. We have to believe that after only two weeks they will bring many people to believe. They will function even better than we do.
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