If you could only know one kind of promise in the Bible, this would be the one. Every other promise rests on it.
Salvation means being rescued. In the Bible it means being rescued from sin and its result, which is death, and being brought into a living friendship with God that never ends. People search for Bible verses about salvation for all kinds of reasons. Some want to be sure of their own. Some are not sure God would take them. Some are praying for someone they love.
Whatever brought you here, these promises were written with you in mind. Below you will find what God promises, what He asks of you in return, and honest answers to a few questions people often ask, including the one about seventy years.
The whole gospel in one verse
A religious leader named Nicodemus came to Jesus one night. He was a Pharisee and a ruler of the Jews, and he had questions. Jesus told him that a person must be born again, and Nicodemus could not understand how. In that conversation comes the verse named at the top of every page of this site. Most readers take it as Jesus speaking, though some think John is adding his own comment here:
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.
John 3:16-17 (KJV)
Look at the parts. The reason is love. The gift is the Son. The door is open to whosoever. The condition is to believe. The result is everlasting life instead of perishing. And Jesus added that He did not come to condemn the world, but to save it.
What God promises, and what He asks
Many salvation promises come with a simple response attached. Here they are side by side, so you can see how plain they are.
| Verse | What you do | What God promises |
|---|---|---|
| John 3:16 | Believe in His Son | You will not perish but have everlasting life |
| Romans 10:9 | Confess Jesus as Lord, believe God raised Him | You shall be saved |
| Romans 10:13 | Call on the name of the Lord | You shall be saved |
| 1 John 1:9 | Confess your sins | He will forgive and cleanse you |
| John 5:24 | Hear His word and believe | Passed from death to life, no condemnation |
| Acts 2:38 | Repent and be baptized | Forgiveness and the gift of the Holy Ghost |
Confess and believe: Romans 10
That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. For the scripture saith, Whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed. For there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek: for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him. For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.
Romans 10:9-13 (KJV)
Paul wrote this to the church in Rome, a mix of Jewish and non-Jewish believers. He wanted them to see that salvation is not hard to reach. You do not have to climb up to heaven or dig down into the deep. It is as near as your own mouth and heart.
Two words in that last verse matter a great deal: whosoever and shall. Whosoever means there is no one God turns away. Shall means it is a sure thing, not a maybe. Paul was quoting the prophet Joel, which shows this promise was not new. God had been offering it for centuries.
Grace: a gift you cannot earn
For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.
Ephesians 2:8-9 (KJV)
Grace means favor you did not earn and could never pay back. Paul wanted the believers in Ephesus to be very clear about that.
If salvation could be earned, we would always wonder if we had done enough. And the people who did the most would have something to brag about. God shut that door. Salvation is His gift, received by faith, and nobody gets to boast. Good works still matter. In the very next verse Paul says we were made for them. But they are the fruit of being saved, not the price of it.
Bible verses about repentance
Scarlet made white
Isaiah spoke to Judah and Jerusalem in a time when the people kept up their worship services but treated the poor and the widows cruelly. God told them to wash, stop doing evil and learn to do good. Then He offered this:
Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.
Isaiah 1:18 (KJV)
Scarlet and crimson were deep, lasting dyes, very hard to wash out of cloth. Nothing people could do would get that stain out. God said He could. Let us reason together means come and talk with Me. Repentance starts as a conversation.
Turn, and be refreshed
On the day of Pentecost, after Peter told the crowd that the Jesus they crucified was Lord and Christ, they were cut to the heart and asked what to do.
Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. For the promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the LORD our God shall call.
Acts 2:38-39 (KJV)
Not long after, Peter told another crowd at the temple to repent and be converted that your sins may be blotted out. To blot out is to wipe the writing off a page. And Jesus said there is joy in heaven over one sinner who repents. Turning to God is not a gloomy thing. It is the start of joy.
Eternal life starts now, and it is held safe
Many people think of eternal life as something that only begins after death. Listen to the tense Jesus used in John 5:
Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life.
John 5:24 (KJV)
Hath, not will have. Is passed, not will pass. The believer already has everlasting life and has already crossed over. Then in John 10, speaking of His sheep, Jesus said:
And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.
John 10:28 (KJV)
Your hold on Him may feel weak some days. His hold on you is not. John later wrote a whole letter partly so that believers would know that ye have eternal life. God does not want you guessing.
If you have already failed God
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
1 John 1:9 (KJV)
The apostle John wrote this to believers, people who were already saved and still stumbled. Notice the words faithful and just. God forgives because He is faithful to His promise, and because the price for sin has already been paid by Jesus. Forgiving you is not God bending the rules. It is God keeping His word.
And it is never too late. One of the criminals crucified beside Jesus turned to Him in his last hours and asked to be remembered. He had no time left to do good works or be baptized. Jesus promised him paradise that very day.
Does God promise us 70 years?
Many people search for this, so here is an honest answer. The seventy years come from Psalm 90, the only psalm credited to Moses in its heading, where it is called a prayer of Moses the man of God.
The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.
Psalm 90:10 (KJV)
Read the whole verse and you can see it is not a promise. It is a sad description of how short human life is: seventy years, eighty if you are strong, and even those years are full of trouble and then gone. Moses had watched a whole generation die in the wilderness. The point of the psalm comes two verses later, a prayer that God would teach us to number our days so that we get a heart of wisdom.
Some people also point to Genesis 6:3, where God said man's days would be a hundred and twenty years. Bible teachers read that verse in different ways, and many take it as the time left before the flood, not a lifespan. Either way, God does not promise a set number of years. What He promises is far better: life with Him that does not end at all.
If you want to receive this promise today
There is no special form of words that saves anyone. God looks at the heart. But if you want to turn to Him now, you could pray something like this, in your own words:
God, I have sinned, and I cannot fix it myself. I believe You sent Jesus, that He died for my sins and that You raised Him from the dead. I turn to You now. Forgive me, make me clean, and make me Yours. Thank You for the gift of eternal life.
If you prayed that, tell someone, find a Bible teaching church near you, and start reading the Gospel of John. You do not have to have it all figured out. You just have to keep walking with Him.
Read them one at a time
Book One goes through Genesis, Exodus and Leviticus, including the night in Egypt when God said that when He saw the blood on the door He would pass over that house, a picture the New Testament ties to Jesus. Every promise has its own page with the King James verse, who it was made to, any condition, what it meant then, what it means for you and a prayer.