It is essential that every soul understand and experience salvation for himself. Consider this question that Jesus asked: “What is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” (Matt. 16:26).Please pause a minute. Read that question again, and instead of “a man”, insert your own name. What now? Surely your response is, “I want the salvation Jesus offers.”
What kind of a salvation do you and I need? It’s a matter of three imperatives.
First, we are confronted with our acts of sin against the law of God. “Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law; for sin is the transgression of the law” (1 John 3:4). Is any person without guilt? No. “All have sinned” (Rom. 3:23). Every person knows in his heart that he has done deeds the ought not to have said, and left undone duties he ought to have done. “All (are) under sin” (Rom. 3: 9). And “the wages of sin is death” (chap. 6:23). Therefore, we need to be saved from the guilt of and penalty for our sins.
Second, we are confronted with our inherent disposition to evil. The Bible refers to this as the sin that dwells in us, in our “flesh,” and as the law, or rule of sin, in the members of our bodies (Rom. 7:1,19, 23). This inbred sin uses our minds, eyes, ears, lips, hands, sand feet to commit acts of sin, although these faculties of themselves are not sinful. Therefore, we need to be saved from indwelling sin.
Third, we have to contend with sickness, sorrow, accidents, trouble, old age, and death, which are the results of sin. Therefore, we need salvation from these effects of sin in our bodies, we shall see how God takes care of these needs.
Man’s greatest question, “What must I do to be saved? Can be answered in six words: “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ” (Acts 16:30, 31). Unfortunately, believing on Christ has been watered down to a mere mental assent that Jesus is the Son of God and that He died on the cross for our sins. This assent is essential, but believing on Christ for salvation is receiving Him into your inner self as your personal Saviour.
The Bible equates believing on Christ with receiving Christ. “As many as received him (Christ), to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name” (John 1:12).
The following verse declares that those who received Christ “were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” Born of God is identical with being “born again”, or “born of the Spirit” (John 3:3, 8). Thus John 1:12, 13 shows that a penitent believer is born again when by the Holy Spirit he truly receives Christ into his inner self.
According to Romans 4:6-8, when a penitent soul receives Jesus as his personal Saviour, God imputes, or places to his credit, the righteousness of Christ to cover his past sins. The penalty for his sins is reckoned as having been paid by Christ’s death on the cross. Then the contrite one, his guilt removed, stands before God as if he had not sinned.
This is God’s solution to the first aspect of the sin problem. But the sinner is immediately confronted with other problems: “How may I today be kept from falling back into my former sins? How shall I be saved from practicing known sins?” The answer in part is in John 1:12, 13.
God has provided that when the believing one receives Christ as his personal Saviour for the remission of his past sins, he is synchronously born again. He is changed on the inside by receiving a new heart, or a new mind. By the Holy Spirit, Christ takes up residence in his renewed mind, to live in him a life of obedience, joy, and victory day by day.
This solves the second part of the problem of salvation from sin. Day by day the believer is willingly directed and controlled by the indwelling Spirit. Thus there is a progressive changing by the Holy Spirit into the spiritual image of Jesus (2 Cor. 3:18) and a spiritual growth into Christian maturity.
The third problem of salvation from sin – that of salvation from sickness, troubles, death – is resolved when Jesus comes again. Then the Christian will receive an immortal, incorruptible body, and will be saved forever from committing sin, and from sickness, sorrow, old age, and death.
We note that the Bible uses he terms saved and salvation in three ways – referring to the past, present, and future. There are texts that refer to salvation as a past accomplishment for those who have received Christ. For example: “For by grace you have been saved through faith” (Eph. 2:8); “We have been saved, though only in hope” (Rom 8: 24) or “We were saved”; “God…hath save us” (2 Tim. 1:8,9. in the original language these texts tell us that the surrendered persons has been saved from his past sins. He was saved from them at the moment of surrender.
There are other texts that refer to Christians as being saved: “To us who are being save” (1 Cor. 1:18); “By means of which (Christ’s death and resurrection) you are being saved” (1 Cor. 15:1-4); The Lord added to their number day by day those who were was saved” (Acts 2:47), or “those whom be was saving”. These scriptures refer to a present, day-by-day salvation in which the believer is kept from sin. Being saved day by day is accomplished as Christ lives in him. Paul referred to this in Galatians 2:20: “I have been crucified with Christ; the life I now live is not my life, but the life which lived by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself up for me”.
There are other tests in which saved and salvation are applied to the third aspect of salvation. For example: “Christ…shall…appear the second time without sin unto salvation” (Heb. 9:28). Paul redemption when salvation from sin is completed for Christians (see Eph. 4:30). Then they are glorified with Christ. “When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory” (Col. 3:4).
According to Isaiah 25:9, when God’s people see Jesus coming back to earth, they will exclaim, “Lo this is our God; we have waited for him, and he will save us.” They have been saved from the guilt, the penalty, and the dominion of sin. But at His appearing they say, “He will save us,” for then, mad immortal, they will go with Jesus to heave – saved for eternity!
This third phase of salvation is referred to in 1 Peter 1:5 as a salvation that is revealed at the last day for those who receive Christ and are kept by His saving power. Jesus referred to this when He said, “He that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved” (Matt. 24:13). Paul referred to it when he said, “Now” is our salvation nearer than when we believed” (Rom. 13:11).
The first two phases of salvation are distinct but inseparable, like the designs on the two sides of a coin. The first phase includes the draying by the Holy Spirit, conviction, faith, repentance, yielding to the pleading of the Holy Spirit, confession, full surrender, pardon, being born again, becoming a child of God by adoption, baptism, and receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit.
No one should attempt to mark out for every person an exact order in which these happen. Why not? Because there are wide differences in education, culture, and personality. Hence, there is bound to be a wide difference in the way each individual reacts to the preaching of the gospel of salvation. And the Holy Spirit works in different ways, as He chooses.
But there is one common denominator: Christ is received into the inmost soul by the Holy Spirit and there is a rebirth.
Eternal life begins for you when you are born again. Christ, living in the renewed heart by the Spirit of life, is the first instalment of eternal life. The person who receives Christ has everlasting life and “is passed from death unto life” (John 5:24). He has passed from being dead in sin to being alive unto righteousness in Christ. He has passed from being appointed to eternal death to having eternal life in Christ.
However, he has eternal life only as he retains Christ as his personal Saviour. Some say, “Once saved, always saved.” But the Bible says, “For we are made partakers of Christ, if we hold the beginning of our confidence stedfast unto the end” (Heb. 3:14). We are among the saved only as the Saviour dwells continually in us.
And Jesus said: “He that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved” (Matt. 24:13). This second phase of salvation includes the daily crucifixion of self so that the life you live is not your life but the life Jesus lives in you (Gal. 2:20). The experience is maintained and deepened by a spiritual renewal each day through a fresh infilling of the Holy Spirit, daily prayer and feeding upon the Word of God, a morning-by-morning surrender and consecration, bearing the fruit of the Spirit, doing good to others, a daily conformity to Christ’s commandments, attending corporate worship, endeavouring to win others. These bring a progressive transformation into the likeness of Christ and Christian growth to maturity in Him.
Some say, “A Christians cannot avoid committing sins.” If you mean a nominal Christian, perhaps, this is true. But it is not true if Christ is living in a person. “Whosoever abideth in him sinneth not: whosoever sinneth hath not seen him, neither known him” (1 John 3:6).
When a Christian has Christ living in him he need never commit sin. Sin will no longer be the controlling factor in his life. He will be kept from sin to the extent that he is directed by the mind of Christ. He has victory over sin to the degree that he appropriates by faith the imparted righteousness of Christ. His full transformation into the spiritual image of Christ is determined by the extent to which he continually yields to the in working of the Holy Spirit.
Some people accept the erroneous concept that Christians, saved by grace, are released from the obligation to obey the Ten Commandments. But the Word of God declares that Christ is “the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him” (Heb. 5:9). Obeying Christ includes obeying the Ten Commandments, because they are a part of His character. He taught that all of the ten are binding upon His followers (Matt. 19:16-19; Luke 10:25-28).
The gospel of Jesus Christ does not use the Decalogue as a means of salvation, but it does hold the law up as God’s standard of righteousness for the Christian. James points out that we shall be “judged by the law of liberty,” which he shows to be the Ten Commandments (James 2:10-12).
The gospel provides God`s way of obedience to His law of obedience to His law in those who are saved by grace. Paul asked, “Shall we sin (or transgress the law), because we are not under the law, but under grace?” He answered emphatically, “God forbid” (Rom. 6:15). The righteousness of the law is fulfilled in those who live not according to the flesh, or sinful impulses springing from our human natures, but according to the Spirit (Rom. 8:3,4).
The doctrine that grace release Christians from obeying the Ten Commandments frustrates grace, even as depending upon obedience to the law for salvation frustrates grace.
Many are caught in the error that Christ’s death abolished the Ten Commandments. His death did abolish the Mosaic laws concerning animal sacrifices, new moons, the Jewish feasts of the Passover, Pentecost, and the Feast of Tabernacles, the seven yearly Sabbaths, and so on (Col. 2:16,17; Eph. 2:15). On the other hand, His death confirmed forever the validity of the ten-commandment law, with its weekly, seventh-day Sabbath.
Christ died to pay the penalty for man’s transgressions of the law of God. If this law could have been abolished, or set aside, Christ need not have gone to the cross. The New Testament repeatedly refers to the Decalogue as being binding upon Christians (James 2:8-12; 1 John 3:4; Rom. 7:7, 12; 13:8-10; Eph. 6:2).
The supreme law of God in both the Old and the New Testaments is to love God with all our hearts, and to love our neighbour as ourselves (Deut. 6:5; Lev. 19:18; Matt. 22:35-40). These principles of righteousness, expressed in God’s ten words upon the two tables of stone given under the old covenant at Sinai, are engraved by the Holy Spirit upon the renewed heart of the Christian under the covenant of grace (Heb. 8:8-10). Since Christ is the law in living form, the law written upon the heart of those born of the Spirit leads them to live the same kind of life Jesus lived on earth.
We know that regardless of how completely a Christian is saved from committing sin, or how fully he reflects the image of Jesus day by day, he is still subject to sickness, sorrow, trouble, old age, and death. He needs to be saved forever from these effects of sin. Paul referred to this as the believers´ “waiting for…the redemption of our body” (Rom. 8:23) at Jesus` second coming.
We read “that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Cor. 15:50). “Flesh and blood” is a general statement referring to mortal man. No mortal, corruptible body can enter heaven. The sin scarred bodies of believers will be changed to immortal ones at the second coming of Christ (Rom. 15:51-55) so that they may be taken to heaven. Then the redeemed will be saved forever from the possibility of sinning, and all its evil effects, and will have everlasting joy.
The three aspects of salvation include all the experiences and spiritual attainments a believer has in Jesus. Salvation is an all-inclusive attainment in Him. It sets before every person infinite possibilities. Reconciliation, plus justification, plus regeneration, sanctification, and glorification, , equals full salvation for a transcendent eternity with the Lord.
If a person has met God’s conditions, he can say, “I have been saved from the guilt and penalty of my sins by the death and priestly intercession of Christ. I am being saved from being controlled by indwelling sin because Christ is living in me. And I have the blessed hope that when Jesus comes I shall be saved forever, saved from all the effects of sin in my present mortal body.”
What is the situation in Christendom for the preaching of this true gospel of salvation? There are preachers who deny that Jesus is the eternal Son of God. They have no true salvation to proclaim. Other preachers are to be commended for proclaiming the scriptural first and second aspects of salvation, and for their belief in our Lord’s second advent. However, they do not tie in this third phase of salvation with the Second Coming as Jesus, Paul, Peter, and John did.
Why this omission? Mainly because the concept of the righteous being taken to heaven when they die leaves no place for the third aspect of salvation, immortality at the Second Coming. There is bound to be some confusion regarding salvation when people do not take the whole Biblical concept into account.
God made man for the highest and holiest state of enjoyment. But it is attained only by those who follow through for full salvation. Salvation by the blood of the Lamb will be the song and study of the saints in heaven (Rev. 5:8-10; 7:9, 10).
Our heavenly Father so loved each individual – even in his most sinful state – that He gave His best Gifts – His own Son – to make salvation available. And the Son, in His everlasting love for man, gave the His all to save him. Christ gave up His equality with the Father, came to this world in human form to live a life of perfect obedience to His Father’s law, and then suffered and died on the cross as our Surety and Substitute.
Let us show our love to Him by gladly accepting Him and His salvation from guilt and the penalty for past sins. He will then live in us day by day to keep us from sinning.
If you have made that decision, “hold fast the confidence… unto the end” (Heb. 3:6). If you have not, Jesus is appealing to you to let Him into your life by the Holy Spirit. Open the door of your life and let Him in. in love to Him determine you will be His, fully and always.
No comments:
Post a Comment