You will never know anything more important than how to be saved. You can be smart about a lot of things, but if you do not ask “What must I do to be saved?” then you have missed out on the most important information in life. Unfortunately, most who call themselves Christians need to ask “What does it mean to be saved?” because they do not understand salvation and are not saved.
Salvation is not an obscure concept in the Bible. Everything in the Bible leads to this moment in a person’s life. It is the work of the enemy to blind people to the clear teachings of scripture such as I will present here. These are not my ideas, but Scriptural concepts you, the reader, will have to answer for one day. Yes, there will be a test over this information. One day you will stand before the Judge of the universe and have to answer that you did know these things and that you taught them to others.
Let’s talk about what salvation is, because that is assumed many times, but maybe we don’t know.

You need to be saved from God

Every human needs to be delivered (saved) from the coming doom (Joel 2:30-32). The disaster coming on earth is the wrath of God. So, we could say we need to be saved from God. However, the coming firestorm is what we have earned by sin.
Not only are we delivered from our sinful pasts, but the Lord, by the power of His Spirit saves us from continuing in sin (Luke 1:77). The Spirit dwelling inside the believer gives a proper burial to one’s sinful deeds (Romans 8:13). Without the Spirit, we cannot live above sin (Romans 8:7). This is probably the primary reason people want to know how to be saved.
Also, the Lord rescues (saves) us from the enemy (Luke 1:71). Because we have sinned, the enemy uses guilt and the natural effects of our sins to keep us down. He wants to see us destroyed because we were made in the image of God.

What does it mean to be saved

The Kingdom of God existed before He created the earth. He had a plan to bring into His Kingdom those who loved Him. Salvation is how we become part of that eternal Kingdom. Those outside the Kingdom are not rescued from the power of the evil one. Those inside are delivered from the evil forces.
God not only had a plan to save humans, but He told that plan through His prophets. One of the key prophets to speak about God’s plan of salvation was Joel. He told of a time when God would pour out His Spirit into human vessels. His prophecy of the coming time was misunderstood by most Jewish readers of the Scriptures. Because he also described the coming days of doom, they thought he meant that God was going to fill people with His Spirit after time had ended. They were wrong.
On the Jewish holiday called Pentecost, right after Jesus had risen from the dead and ascended into the sky, Peter understood what Joel meant. He explained to the crowds that “this is what Joel was talking about” (Acts 2:16-18; Joel 2:28-29). Of course, he was referring directly to how the believers had all received the Spirit with the evidence of speaking with tongues (see here for the purpose of speaking in tongues). Peter went on to quote more from Joel that there would be a terrible judgment in the last days (Joel 2:30-31; Acts 2:19-20). Joel mentioned all this to get to his point that the Lord wanted to save people from the coming doom, but Peter only quoted half of that promise (Joel 2:32; Acts 2:21).
Why did Peter not quote the whole prophecy? Because Joel said, “Whoever calls on the Name of the Lord will be rescued,” and Peter needed to explain to them the Name of the Lord and how to “call on” or “invoke” that name. This is the substance of his sermon: to show that Jesus is the Lord of the Old Testament. He showed them that this Jesus was their Messiah and their Lord God, whom they had crucified.

What must I do to be saved?

When truth-seekers heard Peter’s message, they felt stabbed in their hearts when they realized that they had killed the One who came to rescue (save) them. Then, they came forward and asked Peter and the other apostles, “What must we do?” (Acts 2:37). Their full question was what they had to do to be saved. You can trace this point because Peter quoted Joel about how to be saved. The natural response would be, “What must I do to be saved?” Peter told them the Name of the Lord is Jesus Christ. Their question is what they must do because of this new understanding they had just received.
Peter explained to them how to be rescued: Turn from sin (repent), be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the washing away of sin, and they would receive the same Gift the disciples had just received. Of course, the members of this crowd had gathered because they heard these Spirit-filled believers speaking in languages of many different countries. This same Spirit was a gift for them and “all flesh” (represented by the multiple dialects).

The Spirit comes to save us

After explaining that “calling on the name of the Lord” meant invoking His name in water baptism (read more about the purpose of baptism), Peter went on to finish the quote from Joel 2:32. The Promise of the Spirit is for them, their children, and all afar off (multiple cultures) as many as the Lord would call (Acts 2:39).
After showing how the passage from Joel was about salvation through the outpouring of the Spirit and baptism in Jesus’s Name, Peter went on to urge the listeners to save themselves from the twisted generation they lived in. Clearly this whole chapter is about salvation.
The last verse of the chapter speaks of those who were being saved (Acts 2:42). Since Acts 2 defines for us how to be saved, we understand what it means in subsequent passages of Scripture. Those who are rescued are those who are “in Christ” by water baptism (Romans 6:3-5; I Peter 2:21) and in whom He dwells by His Spirit (Romans 8:9-11, 15; Galatians 4:6).

How do you get saved?

What began in Acts 2 continues afterward. A very devout believer was interrupted by an angel one day while he was praying. Even though Cornelius gave liberally, lived a good moral life, prayed daily, and fasted, the angel said he needed to hear from Peter what things he “must do” (Acts 10:6). Would you believe the same man who preached on Pentecost is the one who brings the message of salvation to Cornelius’s home?
Peter explained how Jesus had come in Spirit power to make a way for anyone who came into covenant with His Name would have sins washed away (thus avoiding the coming judgment). While Peter preached, the Lord confirmed his words by pouring out the Spirit on those receiving his message. They also spoke with tongues and were baptized into the Name of Jesus Christ immediately (Acts 10:44-48).
After that event, Peter explained to other believers that the angel said Peter would come with the message by which the whole “household will be saved” (Acts 11:14). The Spirit outpouring showed that they had indeed been rescued. The Spirit is the seal for our protection (Ephesians 1:12-13) from wrath when the Lord Jesus Himself comes in fiery judgment to destroy those who reject this message (II Thessalonians 1:7-9).

John the Baptist told what it means to be saved

What if you asked John the Baptist, “What does it mean to be saved?” Of course he said Jesus came to take away our sins, so of course he would speak to how to be saved. John announced that he came to introduce the cleansing from sin that is symbolized by water baptism. Then, he explained about Jesus: “The one coming after me will baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire!” (Luke 3:16).
What did he mean by this? Salvation. For John, those who were Spirit-baptized were those who were saved. He explained further in Luke 3:17. Jesus would come to the harvest floor where the wheat was threshed. The purpose of threshing grains was to remove the hull from them so they could be eaten. The worthless husks, hulls, stems, or pieces of straw would be blown into a big pile which they would later burn. The wheat would be stored in the barn.
Obviously, the worthless hulls of wheat being burned is a clear picture of hellfire. Jesus came to harvest those who would go into His barn—the Spirit-filled ones. In John’s theology there are only two types of people in this world: those baptized in the Spirit and those going to hell. How do we know there is no one in between those? Because Jesus “will thoroughly clean out his threshing floor” (Luke 3:17). Those put up in the barn, or the Kingdom of God, are Spirit-filled. Anyone else is not saved from the fire of judgment.

Jesus told us how to be saved

Just before Jesus ascended into the sky, He reaffirmed John’s statement that Jesus had come to baptize with the Spirit. He explained to His disciples that they were about to experience that Spirit baptism in just a few days (Acts 1:4-5). He explained further that when they were filled with the Spirit, they would have power (Acts 1:8). Both of the first two chapters of Acts set us up to realize this was the moment of fulfillment in history. Salvation had come. Jesus, the Savior, had completed what He came to do: rescue us by the His Spirit filling us.
We cannot take away from what is so clearly written about Jesus distributing the Gift of the Spirit with evidence of speaking in tongues and water baptism done by invoking the name of the Lord: Jesus Christ. To teach anything else is to deny God’s own message and so bring doom on ourselves.
The Spirit outpouring set the foundation for this new plan of action called the New Testament, or the New Covenant of God with humanity. We see this did not just apply to the Jews, but to all who would enter the Kingdom. As Jesus taught, entering the Kingdom would come only by being born of water (baptism) and being born of the Spirit (John 3:5) as detailed in Acts. Jesus said these things would occur for believers but only after He had ascended (John 7:37-39).
Jesus bought our salvation from doom by immersing us in Holy Ghost, which is fire-proof. He could only do this by death and resurrection to pour out what He had received. Therefore we must all turn from sin, which brings doom, immerse ourselves into the body of Christ by baptism (thus joining Him in His crucifixion and death, Romans 6:3-5) and accept His gift—which He handed down after he ascended (Psalm 68:18), which is the Holy Ghost (Acts 2:38).

Want to know how to be saved? Take on the Spirit of life that brought Jesus back from the dead (Romans 5:9-10). Want to know “What must I do to be saved?” Enter into the covenant of water baptism in the Name of Jesus Christ (Romans 6; Romans 10:1, 9, 13) even if you have already been filled with the Spirit (Acts 22:16).
Why was Peter the one to answer the question “What does it mean to be saved?” Because Jesus said he would. He told him, “I am giving you the keys of the Kingdom” (Matthew 16:19). If we use any other keys, we will not enter the true Kingdom. Even if they are salvation “keys” given by popular preachers (such as praying the non-biblical “sinners prayer”), they will put us in another kingdom. We must hold to the truth of the Bible and not twist the message of Acts 2 into something other than what God intended. This Promise of Spirit-filled salvation is for you and everyone else the Lord will call.

Below, please share your thoughts and insights on what it means to be saved.