Salvation vs. Discipleship

If you look at other accounts of Jesus Christ explaining how to receive everlasting life you will find the same focus on belief rather than behaviors.  John 4:10-26 and John 11:25-26 both stress belief.  When you hear people add other requirements beyond believing in Christ for everlasting life it should raise some questions. Why didn’t Jesus mention these other requirements.  Where is a passage in the Bible that lists all of them together?  I can give you the answer to the 2nd question, there isn’t one.  People who say such things must skip around to put together a narrative that matches their claims.  But you transferring meaning from one context to another is a bad interpretive method. 

When the Lord was talking about discipleship, He might use some of the same words as when evangelizing but He was attaching different meanings to those words.  The context in which a word is used determines it’s meaning not the lexicon.  That is because most words have more than a single meaning.  Take the word angle.  It can mean the intersection of two lines, a direction or an opinion.  The sentence in which it is use is how you know which definition to attach. The word saved is used over 100 times in the New Testament.  Only about a third of them deal with salvation.  You must look at the context to determine from what is one being saved.  For example, in Luke 8:48 Jesus told a woman her faith and cured her of a hemorrhage.  The word cured is translated the Greek word Sozo.  Here is a case where the translators knew He was not speaking of her eternal destiny. 

Jesus Christ is God. He invented language.  He knows how to use language.  Therefore, you can rest assured He knows the difference receiving everlasting life and discipleship.  He knows that everlasting life lasts forever.  And He knows the rationale behind the offer of everlasting life.  He is the one who died to make it possible!

2 Corinthians 5:18-19 Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation, 19 that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation.

Jesus Christ reconciled the world to God while on that cross.  He died for your sins and mine which is why God no longer imputes (charges) our sins to us.  Jesus Christ took them away, John 1:29. We have the commission to carry the good news of reconciliation to the world.  And it is good news! 
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2 Corinthians 5:20-21 Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us: we implore you on Christ’s behalf, be reconciled to God. 21 For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.