To believe in the only begotton Son of God. To accept his sacrifice for sin and to trust him for the salvation of your soul.
He did come to show us the right path, but this path was to trust in Him and His sacrifice as the reason for God to accept us, forgive us, and give us a new birth--to eternal life.
The path was NOT one of 'doing good deeds'--because none of us could ever be good enough. The path was to be honest about our failure to live righteous lives, and to trust in God to save us by His power (and not by ours).
"No one can be made right with God by following the law. The law only shows us our sin. But God has a way to make people right with him without the law, and he has now shown us that way which the law and the prophets told us about. God makes people right with himself through their faith in Jesus Christ. This is true for all who believe in Christ, because all people are the same: Everyone has sinned and fallen short of God’s glorious standard, and all need to be made right with God by his grace, which is a free gift.
They need to be made free from sin through Jesus Christ. God sent him to die in our place to take away our sins. We receive forgiveness through faith in the blood of Jesus’ death. This showed that God always does what is right and fair, as in the past when he was patient and did not punish people for their sins. And God gave Jesus to show today that he does what is right. God did this so he could judge rightly and so he could make right any person who has faith in Jesus. So do we have a reason to brag about ourselves? No! And why not? It is the way of faith that stops all bragging, not the way of trying to obey the law. A person is made right with God through faith, not through obeying the law" (Ro 3:20–28)
"When people work, their pay is not given as a gift, but as something earned. But people cannot do any work that will make them right with God. So they must trust in him, who makes even evil people right in his sight. Then God accepts their faith, and that makes them right with him." (Ro 4:4–5.)
I mean that you have been saved by grace through believing. You did not save yourselves; it was a gift from God. It was not the result of your own efforts, so you cannot brag about it." (Eph 2:8–9.)
In other words, there was no true path WITHOUT His death on the cross as a substitute for our punishment. It was HIS blood --as a sacrifice-- that allowed God to declare us free from the debt of sin. Forgiveness came from His death.
So through Christ we will surely be saved from God’s anger, because we have been made right with God by the blood of Christ’s death. (Ro 5:9)
In Christ we are set free by the blood of his death, and so we have forgiveness of sins. How rich is God’s grace, which he has given to us so fully and freely. (Eph 1:7–8)
His sacrifice was his own blood, and by it he set us free from sin forever. The blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a cow are sprinkled on the people who are unclean, and this makes their bodies clean again. How much more is done by the blood of Christ. He offered himself through the eternal Spirit as a perfect sacrifice to God. (Heb 9:12–14)
We did not need to be given instructions--we needed to be given LIFE… Because we were spiritually dead, we could not obey God or please God anyway.
"When you were spiritually dead because of your sins and because you were not free from the power of your sinful self, God made you alive with Christ, and he forgave all our sins. He canceled the debt, which listed all the rules we failed to follow. He took away that record with its rules and nailed it to the cross. God stripped the spiritual rulers and powers of their authority. With the cross, he won the victory and showed the world that they were powerless." [Col 2:13–15.]
We needed forgiveness of sins, but we needed more than forgiveness -- we needed to be raised from our spiritual death, we needed to be born-again, born from above. Forgiveness came from His death, and eternal life for us came through His resurrection from death. It is a gift--not a reward for walking a good path:
"The payment for sin is death. But God gives us the free gift of life forever in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Ro 6:23)
"Give praise to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. In his great mercy he has given us a new birth and a hope that is alive. It is alive because Jesus Christ rose from the dead. He has given us new birth so that we might share in what belongs to him. It is a gift that can never be destroyed" (1 Pe 1:3–4.)
"You have been born again, and this new life did not come from something that dies, but from something that cannot die. You were born again through God’s living message that continues forever." [1 Pe 1:23.]
"Jesus answered, “I tell you the truth, unless you are born again, you cannot be in God’s kingdom.” Nicodemus said, “But if a person is already old, how can he be born again? He cannot enter his mother’s womb again. So how can a person be born a second time?”
But Jesus answered, “I tell you the truth, unless you are born from water [physical birth] and the Spirit, you cannot enter God’s kingdom. Human life comes from human parents, but spiritual life comes from the Spirit. Don’t be surprised when I tell you, ‘You must all be born again.’ The wind blows where it wants to and you hear the sound of it, but you don’t know where the wind comes from or where it is going. It is the same with every person who is born from the Spirit.” [Gospel of John 3:3–8.]
"Some people did accept Jesus. They believed in his name ['Jesus' means 'He saves']. He gave them the right to become children of God. To be a child of God has nothing to do with human parents. Children of God are not born because of human choice or because a husband wants them to be born. They are born because of what God does. [ Jn 1:12–13.]
"God chose to give us new birth through the message of truth. He wanted us to be the first and best of everything he created" [Jas 1:18.]
And, since one man--no matter how good--cannot offer but one life as a substitute for one other person, it took the SPECIAL HUMAN-DIVINE person to offer His one INFINITE LIFE as a payment for all men, for all sins:
He gave his life to pay for our sins. But he not only paid for our sins. He also paid for the sins of the whole world. (1 Jn 2:2.)
The next day John the Baptizer saw Jesus coming toward him. John said, “Look! The Lamb of God! He takes away the sin of the world! [Jn 1:29.]
Every day the Jewish priests stand and do their religious service, often offering the same sacrifices. Those sacrifices can never take away sins. But after Christ offered one sacrifice for sins, forever, he sat down at the right side of God. And now Christ waits there for his enemies to be put under his power. With one sacrifice he made perfect forever those who are being made holy. [Heb 10:11–14.
Jesus is the kind of high priest we need. He is holy, sinless, pure, not influenced by sinners, and he is raised above the heavens. He is not like the other priests who had to offer sacrifices every day, first for their own sins, and then for the sins of the people. Christ offered his sacrifice only once and for all time when he offered himself [Heb 7:26–27.]
Christ did not enter a sacred tent made by people. That tent was only a copy of the true one. He entered heaven itself. He did it to stand in front of God for us. He is there right now. The high priest enters the Most Holy Room every year. He enters with blood that is not his own. But Christ did not enter heaven to offer himself again and again. If he had, he would have had to suffer many times since the world was created. But now he has appeared once and for all time. He has come at the end of the ages to do away with sin. He has done that by offering himself. People have to die once. After that, God will judge them. In the same way, Christ was offered up once. He took away the sins of many people. He will also come a second time. At that time he will not suffer for sin. Instead, he will come to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him. [Heb 9:24–28.]
Christ entered the Most Holy Place [up in Heaven] only once—and for all time. He did not take with him the blood of goats and calves. His sacrifice was his own blood, and by it he set us free from sin forever. The blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a cow are sprinkled on the people who are unclean, and this makes their bodies clean again. How much more is done by the blood of Christ. He offered himself through the eternal Spirit as a perfect sacrifice to God. [Heb 9:12–14.]
