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Salvation

Preamble

You and I have something in common. We are both sinners and we are dying. We said (see About Sin) that sin is of such terrible consequences that it can separate us from a loving and Holy God - forever! Some teach that this separation is to purify and prepare us for heaven but nowhere in the Bible is this to be found. Hell, which is eternal separation from God, is not to purify but to punish. And as unthinkable as that may seem, it is very, very true.

The Good News is that God has done something about sin and the sinner. He has provided a way of escape - a means whereby we can be certain - absolutely certain - of joining God in His glorious presence forever. Let us look at what God has done about sin, and the provision He has made for the sinner. This is the Good News of the Gospel!

Some 2000 years ago, a jail keeper asked his prisoners, "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?" It is a good question, and one that every person in every quarter of the globe asks. Many may not ask the question explicitly, but at the deepest level, people ponder this question. "What must I do to find life; what must I do to be delivered from those things that are breaking and degrading and defeating me?" The tragedy is that so few find the answer because they look for it in the wrong place. The long history of the world offers proof that no absolute answer to the great problem of man's salvation is to be found on a human level. There is only One Who has the answer. There is only One Who can say" "Look unto me, all ye ends of the earth, and be ye saved for I am God and there is none else." There is only One Whom God has made to be "a Prince and a Savior," and He says "I am the way, the truth and the life."

The Need for Salvation

Our generation has to a large degree lost the sense of sin. When we lose the sense of sin, we also lose sight of the need for salvation. George Bernard Shaw wrote "Modern man isn't worrying about his sins, why should he?" All that is needed is for man himself to "work out the beast, and let the ape and the tiger die." In spite of a global history of conflict, two World Wars and continuing lesser conflicts, some still cling to the pathetic belief in the essential goodness of the human heart. But if we let the searchlight of God's truth play upon the culture of our time we find that the "wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually" (Genesis 6:5). Man is in revolt against his Creator. This is the story of our generation but it also is the story of every generation. We see the need for salvation wherever we look. We see the dreadful results of sin everywhere. Whether it is Tokyo or Toronto, Washington or Warsaw, Columbus or Cambodia, it makes no difference. As Christians we must tell our generation that "unless they repent they will most surely perish" (Luke 13:3). Sin is the destroyer of life (see About Sin) defiling all that it touches and no amount of tinkering with external things will be of any avail. What God's Word declares, the history of man proves. Sin is man's ruin, and from sin we MUST be saved!

The Plan of Salvation

Good news: there is a plan of salvation! The whole Bible declares the plan and promise of salvation. At the very moment man fell into sin, God promised the Savior. Through all the tortuous windings of man's sinful history runs the straight and undeviating path of divine redemption. Listen to some of the wooing words in the story of redeeming love: "He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities." "Surely he has borne our grief's and carried our sorrows." "The Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which is lost." "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." The theme NEVER changes. We are always being reminded that God, the Father Almighty, is pledged to rid the universe of sin and that, in order to do so, He will send His Son to take away the sins of the world. At the heart of this plan is the Son of God, Jesus Christ. "God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world," cries John, "but that the world though Him might be saved." This is why Christ came - He came to save His people from their sins. There is no other explanation of His coming. "The Son of God was manifested that he might destroy the works of the devil" (1 John 3:8).

The plan of redemption is beyond all human understanding. We cannot plumb the depths of the knowledge and wisdom of God. Yet the plan itself is clear; so clear indeed that a little child can comprehend it. There is a Cross at the heart of the plan and on that Cross the Son of God is lifted up to die. But why the Cross? We could answer in many ways, but perhaps the best way to answer is a seeming oft-forgotten hymn that says it all:

There is a green hill far away,
Outside a city wall,
Where the dear Lord was crucified,
Who died to save us all.

We may not know, we cannot tell,
What pains He had to bear;
But we believe it was for us
He hung and suffered there.

He died that we might be forgiven,
He died to make us good,
That we might go at last to heaven,
Saved by His precious blood.
 

This is why there is a cross at the heart of history. Christ died that men might be forgiven. He died so that men might be saved from evil and made good. He died in order to open the kingdom of heaven to all believers. The love of God and the sin of the world meet at the Cross. They meet there because God planned it and because the Son of God is offering Himself freely a ransom for the sins of the whole world and is bearing their sins in His body - bearing the judgment of a Holy God on sin, standing in the sinners' place, dying the death that is the wages of sin. The apostle Paul sums up the entire Gospel in one verse: "God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (2 Corinthians 5:21). Because of this sacrifice, God can justly forgive sin. "I will forgive their iniquities and their sins I will remember no more," declares Jeremiah. But there is more than that... God declares to all who believe in Jesus as Savior and Lord that He will receive them as His sons. God deals with sin - He makes it possible for sin to be forgiven while He Himself remains just. Where He finds such faith He gives His Holy Spirit and a soul is born from above. In this way, full redemption from the effects of the fall are secured. This is the plan of salvation - a divine, miraculous, supernatural, beyond-our-understanding plan.

Our Response to the Offer of Salvation

Great pressures will be exerted upon any man to whom the word of the Gospel has come. He will be tempted to delay, to procrastinate, to presume upon the Grace of God, even to neglect what he has heard. He will imagine that any day he so chooses he will be able to respond and obtain salvation. But you will not find that in the Bible. Always the call is for immediate action. There is danger in delay. "Now is the accepted time; behold! now is the day of salvation." God spoke to Noah, saying "My spirit shall not always strive with man." And He says the same to this generation. It is folly to trifle with God.

But you ask, what must I do? The apostle Paul answers this very question: "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ." That is what you must do. That is what God is waiting for - this action of faith on your part. God is waiting on you to yield yourself to Him as Lord and Savior. It is an irrevocable act. You get off the throne of your life and you put Jesus Christ on the throne. You recognize your sin; you recognize you stand condemned before a just and Holy God. You cannot save yourself, you are "...strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world," Ephesians 2:12. You put all of your hope - actual, real trust, in what God has done for you in Jesus Christ. You invite God to save you. Pray a simple prayer:

Dear Lord, I know I am a sinner. I know I have offended you. I am sorry and I ask you to forgive my sins and accept me into your kingdom. I thank you that your Son, Jesus Christ, took the punishment I deserve. I want you to become Lord of my life. In Jesus Name, Amen.

God says the Gospel is "the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth." "He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life."

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