Salvation—Is Believing in Jesus Enough?

The apostle Paul said in 1 Corinthians 13:11, “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways.”

Well, when I was a child, I thought you got to heaven by just being a nice person. 

My parents never took me to church, and the closest “Sunday school education” I received was from old Bible cartoons produced by the same animation company that made The Flintstones. I thought they were fun stories, but by high school, that’s all I thought they were.

Stories. 

In my teen years, I believed in God but thought religion was for simpletons. I thought it was time to “put away childish things.” Fortunately, that all changed after some of my Christian friends urged me to consider the evidence for their faith.

I devoured the religion section of our school library and downloaded as many debates between Christians and atheists as I could on my parents’ slow dial-up internet. About six months into my journey, my idea of God went from an unknown “first cause” to a Trinity of persons, one of whom became incarnate as the man Jesus Christ.

I started calling myself a Christian, but I faced a dilemma: although my Catholic friends had brought me to faith in Christ, to me it seemed that their religion complicated Jesus’ simple gospel with unnecessary rules and rituals. 

Even after they invited me to attend Mass, I kept thinking, why would I need to go to Mass, or say the rosary, or worry about purgatory, or go to confession? Isn’t the Bible clear on this? Believe in Jesus, and you will be saved. 

As I studied the Bible, however, I saw that it didn’t present a clear answer to the question, “How do I get to heaven?” Every time I found one passage that seemed to offer a simple answer, I would find another, sometimes in the same book or letter in the New Testament, that gave a different answer.

Eventually, I saw that the Christian system of salvation didn’t make sense apart from the Church: the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church that Jesus founded.

I can imagine a lot of people saying to me, “Salvation doesn’t come the Catholic Church. It doesn’t come from any church! Salvation comes from the blood of Jesus Christ!”

I see where they’re coming from.

It wasn’t the Catholic Church that was crucified for my or your sins. It wasn’t the Catholic Church that rose from the dead to justify me before God. It was Jesus Christ who did those things. That’s why the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) says that “all salvation comes from Christ the head through the Church which is his body” (846).

The Bible says that the church of the living God is the pillar and foundation of truth (1 Tim. 3:15). Many of us first heard the gospel from a leader or member of a church—like a pastor, a missionary, or our own parents. As St. Paul writes, “How are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without a preacher?” (Rom. 10:14). And to be obedient to Christ, Christians usually seek out someone in a church (usually a pastor) to baptize them instead of just baptizing themselves. Most also feel that it is their duty to attend a “good” and “Christian” church.

But which one? 

I will show you that salvation in Jesus Christ requires obedience to Christ and to the one visible Church Christ established for the purpose of gathering the entire human race into God’s new covenant.

That’s because Catholic doctrine contains the complete answer to the question, “What must I do to be saved?”

If you’re Catholic, you might be nodding your head in agreement with what you just read. Or maybe you’re shaking your head, wanting to understand it all better. And if you are not Catholic, you’re probably feeling skeptical.

So, to you now I offer the words of the prophet Isaiah: “Come, let us reason together” (Isa. 1:18). 

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