"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," we read in St. John"s Gospel (3:16). In the New Testament we find other references to believing in the Saviour; so it behooves us to know what this means.
As a child, before coming into Christian Science, I was taught that to believe "in him" meant to accept, without mental reservation, the teaching that Jesus was the Son of God, who for all mankind and for me, personally, had taken the world's sins upon himself, had suffered, and had been crucified, in order that we might have eternal life.
Mary Baker Eddy says in the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 146), "Scholasticism clings for salvation to the person, instead of to the divine Principle, of the man Jesus; and his Science, the curative agent of God, is silenced." Jesus consistently identified himself not as a corporeal being, but as the Christ, the Son of God. He commended Peter for his identification, when in answer to the question (Matt. 16:15), "But whom say ye that I am?" Peter replied, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God."
