So Great a Salvation

So Great a Salvation

“How will we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?” (Heb 2:3)

“Sirs, what must I do to be saved” They said, "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household." (Acts 16:30)

When Paul and Silas were broken out jail by by God, the jailer asked a very important question. However, I don’t think he was asking the question we often attribute to his words. This man was ruined as a jailer and was likely to lose his life. I think he was interested in saving his skin, not his soul. Of course Paul’s answer addressed the man’s question in a way that was different yet relevant. As Jesus pointed out to his disciples, when we have the kind of salvation to which Paul referred, the fact that your employer will soon have you executed no longer carries the same consequence that it did without this life. (See Matt 10:28)

So, when Paul uttered those famous words so often quoted but seldom explained, “Believe in (or on) the Lord Jesus.” he was providing an answer to both questions.

When I was in grade school, my Sunday School teacher encouraged us to “witness” to our friends. So that week when I was with my friend, I asked him if he had ever been “saved.” He enthusiastically said “yes” and then proceeded to tell me of the time he lost his brakes on his bicycle and thought he would be killed because he was coasting down a steep hill that “T”d into a busy highway. I don’t remember the details of his harrowing experience, but somehow he had been saved from what he thought was certain death. What I remember do remember is that he didn’t attribute it to God and I was left without any other approach in my witnessing tool kit so I didn’t pursue the conversation any further.

So what does it mean to be saved? Let’s break this down into a few questions to understand the scope of the inquiry.

• What is salvation - what is the nature of salvation
• From what are we being saved? In what way are we being saved?
• To what are we being saved?
• How does it happen
• Does it come upon us
• Do we have to do anything - what is our role
• What is the result of this salvation?
• How do you grow in respect to salvation (1 Pet 2:2)
• Is this the same as seeing the kingdom of God? (John 3:3)
• Is this the same as entering or getting into the kingdom of God? (Matt 21:31, Matt 19:23 - 26, Mark 9:47, John 3:5)

After we get a possible handle on what it means, we will have to come to the question of how does it happen, or how do we become saved? The question of the jailer is relevant here. What must we do to be saved? This question is much more controversial than you may initially think. The answers range from “absolutely nothing” to some form of cleaning up our act, or performing some payment.

Simply saying believe in (or on) Jesus won’t provide an answer. This is why the next verse says “And they spoke the word of the Lord to him together with all who were in his house.” (Acts 16:32) This raises the question of what is the “word of the Lord?” Do you think your answer to that question would be same as your answer to this one? What do you think they said to him?

We have what appear to be very clear words from Paul to the believers in Rome when he said, “if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.” (Rom 10:9)

These simple sayings are easy to remember, and certainly were given as an answer to the question of how we become saved. But we are not honoring our claim to believe the entire Bible if we assert these are the only answer, or that they fully address the entire question of how one may be saved.

Jesus himself said that there will be people who confess him as Lord who are removed from His presence “Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter. Many will say to Me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?' And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; DEPART FROM ME, YOU WHO PRACTICE LAWLESSNESS.’” (Matt 7:21 - 23)

Again in Matt 25, Jesus tells of a day when he will judge “all the nations” by separating them as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. The sheep will be invited to come and inherit a kingdom while the goats will be commanded to depart into the eternal fire.

I realize that people have very elaborate explanations to explain why these are not speaking of issues of salvation. However, even if their interpretation is correct, it supports my point here. These simple “believe in Jesus” sayings are not the only word on the topic. The Bible provides many other passages that need to be considered. This is a complicated topic. Unfortunately, by taking a simplistic view, it has been made complicated in large part by the prevailing western Christian teaching of recent centuries. In an attempt to square seemingly contradictory teachings, many in the Christian church have erected elaborate houses of cards that often rely on natural language defying acts to remain standing.

But I am getting ahead of myself. I left several questions on the table that must be answered.

From What are we Being Saved

The first part of the answer to this question was announced by the angel who told Joseph what to name the boy who had been conceived of the Holy Spirit in Mary. “You shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.” (Matt 1:21)

But this is only mildly helpful because it raises another question. In what way are we saved from sin? We will have to save this question for later so we can pursue the one at hand.

The next part of the answer comes from Jesus when He said “Whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? (Matt 16:25 - 26) If you compare that with Matt. 10:28 “Do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.” you see that we can be saved from the destruction of our soul and body in hell.

Now, it may seem, we are getting somewhere. But wait, there’s more.

In Luke’s gospel we have a record of Jesus saying “For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.” Luke 19:10 This is a little confusing because he just finished telling Zaccheus that salvation has come to the house of Zaccheus because he was in fact, a son of Abraham. (Luke 19:9) But let’s not get caught up in the issue here about why salvation had come and the fact that it came to his house, but that Zaccheus was being saved from his "lostness".

In Mark’s rendition of the great commision we have these words, “He who has believed and has been baptized shall be saved; but he who has disbelieved shall be condemned.” (Mark 16:16) So we can see that being saved is contrasted to being condemned, or that we are being saved from condemnation. This is similar to John 12:47 “I did not come to judge the world, but to save the world.” which indicates salvation from judgement.

Another related passage is in Paul’s letter to the Romans. “Having been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him.” (Rom 5:9) Here salvation is from the wrath of God, but notice it is also future tense. In regards to the wrath of God, we are not in a state of salvation, but yet anticipating it.

Also in Romans, Paul mentions that “in hope we have been saved” (Rom 8:24). From what are we being saved in this passage? Surprisingly, it is our decaying, physical body. The hope of which he speaks is for the redemption of our body.

1 Corinthians 1:18 tells us that the word of the cross is the power of God “to those who are being saved.” This is contrasted with “those who are perishing.” So those who are in the process of being saved are being saved from perishing.

Here is an interesting one. At the end of Peter’s sermon on the day of Pentecost, he exhorts the people to “Be saved from this perverse generation!” Hm, what could that mean?

There are many more passage like this. I would like to cover them all, but we won’t have time here to do it. So let me make an assignment. Go home, get a concordance and lookup every new testament verse with the word save, or saved. If you have access to a computer you can go on mywsb.com (My word search Bible) and use that. Then write down a statement explaining from what we are being saved. See if you can get it to fit all the verses that are obviously talking about the salvation of one’s soul.

How can we categorize these various passages? We could probably categorize these several different ways. Let me provide one way to look at it.

Salvation (rescued) from:

• Our enemy - Luke 1:67 - 79
• The reign of the devil - the world, hell
• Sin - Matt 1:21, Luke 7:48
• Death - the impact of mortal death, escaping second death
• Judgement - 1 Thess 5:9
• Current judgement - under the law
• Future judgement - the stored up wrath
• Loss of life - Matt 16:25 Whoever wishes to save his life will lose it
• This different than dying. Losing our life is being condemned to live a life that is not life at all (1 John 5:12)

I have jumped around a bit here. So you may be understandably confused as to my point. So let me give you three "take-aways." These points are really over-arching points for this entire series, so I will return to them several times in subsequent topics. 

1. Salvation today is generally presented as a facile idea. (Facile means "appearing neat and comprehensive only by ignoring the true complexities of an issue.") We should not approach it as such. We do nobody a favor by over simplifying it. We in fact complicate it by trying to make it simplistic
2. Salvation is multifaceted. This is the corollary to the previous point. When we speak of salvation, we tend to mean having your sins forgiven and going to heaven some day. However, the Bible uses it in a much broader sense. Salvation is larger than "being saved." I think using the term saved has lost its value to us. I think there are much better terms that carry the Biblical idea. I think Jesus used a good phrase with Nicodemus - born again - or possibly born from above (a possible translation from the Greek). How about “in Christ” or a Christ follower, or a disciple of Christ? This would work well also. I prefer to focus on the life that is our salvation, so I may prefer spiritually alive - or having spiritual life.
3. Jesus taught about salvation. Does the Word of Jesus fit into our gospel of Salvation? If you do a careful study of the gospel that was taught by the apostles and other early Christians, you will find that it was exactly what Jesus told them to teach - the teachings of Jesus. The idea of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the perfect storm of scriptural miscommunication. This is where our culture has created for us a preconceived notion that leads to a misconception. The Gospel of Jesus, of “The Lord” or “Our Lord” was and is the good news proclaimed by Jesus. This may include the news “about” Jesus, but it is much more than that. It is the good news that Jesus proclaimed. We need to learn what that was and also proclaim it. We should make it “our gospel” just as Paul made it his gospel.(See Rom16:25)

My next post will address the next question, "To what are we being saved."

Thanks for reading.

Tory

PS - Would you like to listen to the audio from this message? Here is a link.