Among the people around us, there are people who do not believe in God, but nevertheless are good and do many good deeds. Often we hear the question: “Well, is this not enough? Will they not be saved by their good deeds?”

Among the people around us, there are people who do not believe in God, but nevertheless are good and do many good deeds. Often we hear the question: “Well, is this not enough? Will they not be saved by their good deeds?” I must give an answer. No, they will not be saved. Why will they not be saved? Because our Lord and God Jesus Christ said so when “a lawyer asked him, testing him, saying, Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said to him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart. ...This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself” (Matthew 22:35-39).
If faith in God, if love for God is the first and most important commandment in the law, and the second commandment about love for one’s neighbor follows from this first, receives its power from love for God, then it means that in order to be saved, one must love God with all one’s heart, for this is the first and most important commandment of the law.
What does it mean to be saved? It means to receive eternal life, it means to enter the Kingdom of God, it means to become partakers of this Kingdom! What is the Kingdom of God? What is eternal life?
The Lord Jesus Christ told us this in His great high priestly prayer addressed to God the Father. He said this: “And this is eternal life, that they might know You the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.
(John 17:3). This is eternal life: eternal life in the knowledge of God, in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. This means that without knowledge of God, without knowledge of the Holy Trinity, without faith in the God-man, the Lord Jesus Christ, there is no eternal life, that is, there is no salvation.

St. Luke the Blessed Surgeon