Salvation: God's Gracious Gift to all people!

Salvation is exclusively the work of Holy God. He is the one that we sinned against. He is the one who will not tolerate sin in His presence. He is the one who must judge sin. He is the one who determined to save sinners like us before the world was created and before sin ever entered the world! Salvation shows us how deep and wide the love of God is. 

God Will Judge Sinners!

Psalm 37:9-10  For evildoers shall be cut off: but those that wait upon the LORD, they shall inherit the earth. 10) For yet a little while, and the wicked shall not be: yea, thou shalt diligently consider his place, and it shall not be. 

Psalm 37:20  But the wicked shall perish, and the enemies of the LORD shall be as the fat of lambs: they shall consume; into smoke shall they consume away. 

Psalm 37:38  But the transgressors shall be destroyed together: the end of the wicked shall be cut off. 

Isaiah 13:9-11  Behold, the day of the LORD cometh, cruel both with wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land desolate: and he shall destroy the sinners thereof out of it. 10) For the stars of heaven and the constellations thereof shall not give their light: the sun shall be darkened in his going forth, and the moon shall not cause her light to shine. 11) And I will punish the world for their evil, and the wicked for their iniquity; and I will cause the arrogancy of the proud to cease, and will lay low the haughtiness of the terrible. 

Isaiah 26:21  For, behold, the LORD cometh out of his place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity: the earth also shall disclose her blood, and shall no more cover her slain. 

Romans 3:9-12  What then? are we better than they? No, in no wise: for we have before proved both Jews and Gentiles, that they are all under sin; 10) As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one: 11) There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. 12) They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one. 

Isaiah 64:6  But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away. 

In this very small sampling of texts describing God's judgment, we see that He must and will judge sin. The question is this: Are you willing to stand before holy God in your sins and be judged by your works, which are inherently corrupt? We learned that God keeps a book in heaven that has all of our sins and transgression recorded because they are sins against Holy God. He will judge each person for their sins.  

God judges all sin by Christ Jesus!

2 Corinthians 5:18-19  And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation; 19) To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation. 

Paul pulls back the curtain of the doctrine of reconciliation so that we can see what God did for us through Jesus Christ's substitutionary death on the cross. 

What is reconciliation? When we reconcile our checkbook, we are verifying that each credit and debit entry was properly recorded and that our checkbook is in balance. 

The word "reconcile" means to bring two parties who are in a state of disagreement back together so that the relationship is restored. In the spiritual sense of this word, until the moment that God saves us and we are born again, we are at enmity with God. This means literally that mankind has been at war against Him and His judgment lies upon us. 

How did God reconcile mankind to Himself? He accomplished this through the substitutionary death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Remember, we spoke before of God becoming a man in the person of Jesus Christ? Jesus is fully God and fully man. It cannot be said more plainly" "God was in Christ."

One main distinction between Jesus Christ and you or me, is the virgin birth of Christ. Although Joseph filled the role as Jesus' earthly father, God was His Father and the virgin birth miracle is from having the Holy Spirit of God implant the "seed" of God in her womb. What this means is that the original sin nature that we all inherit from Adam was not passed on to Jesus. 

This is what Paul means when he says that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself. 

The Father judged our sins in Christ!

2 Corinthians 5:20-21  Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God. 21) For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. 

Born again Christians are made brand new creations in Christ. We are now His ambassadors seeking to live by the light of God's word in a decaying, sin riddled world. Our great mission is calling out to other people with the gospel, to be reconciled to God through repentant faith in Jesus Christ. 

What is the mighty anchor and miracle of our salvation? The Father made His Son, Jesus Christ to be sin for us. His only begotten Son who never knew sin, was made sin for us! 

Perhaps we can better understand the agony of Christ sweating drops of blood as He prayed in Gethsemane, asking the Father to remove the cup (Luke 22:39-45). This cup represented the sins of all humanity, every single person that ever lived.  It also represented the sinless Son of God who was supposed to drink this cup filled with the vile, disgusting dregs of our sins. When the Father turned out the lights of heaven for three hours until Christ cried out "It is finished", it was because our sins were placed on Christ. Our Father could not look on His son because of our sins! (See Matthew 27:45-46; John 19:30). Christ fully paid once for all for all the sins of humanity.

Jesus bore our sins in His body to save us. 

1 Peter 2:24-25  Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed. 25) For ye were as sheep going astray; but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls. 

People in the Old Testament had to offer a lamb without defects in order to be saved, and they had to kill it and apply it's blood. This is how Jesus literally fulfilled the function of a perfect, innocent substitute, bearing our sins in His body on the cross and shedding His precious blood. 

We were the lost sheep, gone far astray from our God but in love and mercy, the Father sent Jesus to bear our sins, pay for them and give us resurrection life. It was His ultimate act of being the Good Shepherd, as He voluntarily laid His life down for us so that we might live (John 10). Therefore, God is calling people to hear and respond to the gospel of Jesus Christ. 

Jesus removed the curse.

Galatians 3:13-14  Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree: 14) That the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ; that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.

You remember about the curse that God put on man and the world because of the fall into sin? Jesus removed the curse by redeeming us through His death on the cross. He reconciled us to God. 

Jesus is the only Mediator we need!

1 Timothy 2:3-6  For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour; 4) Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth. 5) For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus; 6) Who gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time. 

What pleases God? His will is for all people great and small, to hear the gospel of Christ and respond with repentant faith. God wants all people to be saved or born again and He provided the way through Jesus, His Son. The Son of God is the only one who can be the mediator between sinful man and holy God. The basis of salvation is His sacrifice for us on His cross. 

Thoughts to Ponder...

Salvation is by grace not by works. We have nothing that we can offer God except to give ourselves to Him in repentant faith. If there were any works that we could do that would pay for our sins and remove the guilt and shame associated with sin, most of us would certainly seek to do them. However, God alone knows how to remedy man's sin, transgression and iniquity.

The only way that the sins of all humanity for all time could be wiped away is for God to become a man, through the work and person of His Son, Jesus Christ (Hebrews 9, 10). 

Right away we can see that this is the reason we cannot "work" hard enough or long enough to pay for our sins.  The very best efforts that any man, woman or child can offer God is still tainted by our sin nature and by our sin choices. Thus, our very best works done with good intentions are corrupt and vile. This is why God sent His Son, Jesus Christ to be our Savior to do for us what is impossible for us to do for ourselves. 

The Holy Law of God and the pattern that God gave to Adam and Eve, show us three foundational truths about salvation.  

God initiated salvation.

God initiated the way of salvation so that mankind could learn it and obey what God said by faith, trusting that God would do for us what He said He would do. Thus salvation is always about the grace of God toward man. God has always, in every generation, made a provision for fallen man to have a relationship with Him. 

In the Old Testament, that meant offering a specific animal that had no defects, laying a hand on the head of the innocent animal and as it's throat was slit and the blood spilled out, by faith, trusting that God would cover that person's sin. This really is a summary of how man could be rightly related by faith to God throughout the entire Old Testament. 

However, the sacrifice of animals could only provide a temporary covering for sin but each sacrifice clearly pointed forward to the future coming of Jesus Christ as the Lamb of God.

God calls all people to be saved. 

God calls out to sinful men, women and children to reason with them about their sins that they might come to repentant faith and accept His provision of salvation in Jesus Christ. He seeks us out just as He sought out Adam and Eve after they sinned. 

God requires an innocent substitute.

God showed us that there must be an innocent substitute who dies in the place of a sinner. Innocent blood is shed to provide a covering for our sins. Jesus Christ was killed as our innocent substitute and His blood was applied to the heavenly altar. Sinners who call out to God for salvation through faith in Jesus Christ, will have their sins covered and receive the new birth and eternal life. 

Choose grace not judgment. Choose life not death. Choose joy not torment. Choose to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.

Bob