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Could "Believing" in Jesus
PREVENT you from being "saved"?
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Paul says:

Romans 10:9

If you shall confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, and shall believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, you shall be saved.

Most Christians would read this passage as saying: you must believe that Jesus is God in order to be saved, and yet when asked what one needs to do, to have eternal life what did he say?

Matthew 19:16

One came and said to him, Good Master, what good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life?  And he said to him, Why do you call me good? [there is] none good but one, [that is], God: but if you will enter into life, keep the commandments.

Jesus does not put the focus on himself.  There is no need to believe that Jesus is God or even Messiah.  Rather, Jesus says simply to keep the commandments, stressing also, that there was only one that was good; and it was not him.  Only God is good.

It is ironic that the one thing that many Christians believe will save them is the one thing that is PREVENTING them from being saved; believing that Jesus is God.  Why would that be?

In the verse that we just read, Jesus says that the way to eternal life was to keep the commandments.  What then would be the most important commandment to keep?

Mark 12:28

One of the scribes came, and having heard them reasoning together, and perceiving that he had answered them well, asked him, “Which is the first commandment of all?”  And Jesus answered him, “The first of all the commandments [is], Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord:  And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all thy strength: this [is] the first commandment.  And the second [is] like, this, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. There are no other commandments greater than these.”  And the scribe said to him, “Well, Master, you have said the truth: for there is one God; and there is no other but he:  And to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the soul, and with all the strength, and to love [his] neighbor as himself, is more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” 

So the belief in One God is the greatest commandment, as Jesus said and was confirmed by the scribe.  And although Jesus believed he was certainly inspired by God, to claim that he WAS God would violate this (the first or greatest) commandment.  Since Jesus said that keeping the commandments was the way to eternal life, from a Jewish perspective, to believe that he was God would be the worst thing that you could do.

For the Greeks, however, this was not so.  They had a god for EVERYTHING. To believe that Jesus was NOT God would be un-natural for them. So as the beliefs developed among the early Greek (Gentile) Christians, they struggled to comprehend the Hebrew (Jewish) concept of Messiah.  But their understanding of what Messiah was, was quite different than the Hebraic (Jewish) understanding.

So if the Jewish understanding of Messiah is NOT God coming to the earth as a man in order to save mankind, what was Messiah to do, and how then are we "saved"?

Continuing with the verse above:

Mark 12:34

And when Jesus saw that he answered discreetly, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God”.

The kingdom of God was the message that Jesus preached. It is what he called the “good news” or the gospel.  This was the message that Jesus says he was sent to deliver.

Luke 4:43

And he said to them, I must preach the kingdom of God to other cities also: for therefore am I sent.

What exactly is the kingdom of God?  It is that time in the future when the lost northern kingdom of Israel is reunited with the saved southern kingdom of Judah, and Messiah will rule over both of them during an era of peace.

Jeremiah 31:31

Behold, the days come, says the LORD, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day [that] I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they broke, although I was an husband to them, says the LORD: But this [shall be] the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, says the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people.

The key prophecy to be fulfilled in order for this to happen is the RETURN of the northern kingdom.

The Hebrew word for "repent" is tshuvah and is better translated as "return".  So when Jesus was saying, “Repent for the kingdom of God is at hand”, he is saying “return”.

Who is he expecting to return? 

Jesus believed that he was the Messiah that dies.  In Jewish tradition that Messiah is called Messiah ben Joseph.  The task that Messiah ben Joseph was to accomplish, was (through his death) the return of the northern kingdom. This is how the northern kingdom is "saved"; they are brought back from exile, and are no longer "lost" among the nations.

Jesus said that he came to “save that which was lost” in Matthew 18:11, and in Matthew 15:24 he says that he was ONLY sent to "the lost sheep of the House of Israel".

The northern kingdom was a nation of rebellious people who did not follow God nor keep his commandments. The main sin of the nation was idolatry (following other gods).  By making Messiah into God, many people, who believe that today they are part of the northern kingdom, are guilty of precisely the same sin as their forefathers; the sin of idolatry.

It is the biggest obstacle preventing the northern kingdom from returning. The task of abandoning the Greek version of Messiah is not easy; there is much in Christian theology that hinges on the belief that Messiah is God.  There seems to be much more UN-learning to do before the northern kingdom is truly "saved".