Salvation
Why we Believe what we Believe
(The Baptist Faith and Message)
(Message 6)
Ephesians 2:8
Introduction: For students of language, one of the most
interesting things to study is the change or development of language. Think
about how words and their meanings have changed over the years. A hundred years
ago gay meant to be happy or light hearted, cool meant to have a slight chill
or to be cold and hip was a part of the body above which the belt was fastened.
And you don’t have to go that far back to see the effects of changing language,
if you have a teenager at home you know exactly what I’m talking about. When I
was growing up if something was extraordinary or exceeded the normal standards
of expectation, we said that it was “far out,” or “cool.” Today if something
exceeds the normal standards it is said to be “sick,” or to be, “the bomb.” I
mention this to highlight the fact that as language changes and precise
communication becomes more complicated, words have a tendency to lose their
impact and meaning.
Nowhere has this been more pronounced than
in the church. When I was growing up terms like, “Giving your heart to Jesus,”
or “being born again,” were often used to speak about salvation but over time,
like a lot of other language, in the minds of many these terms have lost some
of their impact and as a result we have searched for words or phrases that help
us communicate the need of salvation to a younger generation. It is to that end
that we as Christians need to be clear and unambiguous as we present the gospel
of Jesus Christ to others.
Part of my reasoning for teaching this
series on doctrine is to help us, as a body of believers, to become more
theologically precise; to once again reassign meaning to terms like, “being
born again,” so that when we use these terms there is a common understanding as
to what we are talking about.
We come today to the doctrine of salvation,
which, in theological jargon it is called, “Soteriology,”
coming from the two Greek words, “Soter,” meaning to
save or deliver, and “logos,” which means word. Thus, Soteriology
is simply a word about salvation.
Of all the doctrines of the Bible, the
doctrine of salvation is one with which every Christian should be familiar. Not
only because our salvation depends upon it, but because it is the one message
which we as God’s people have been commissioned to share with the world around
us and it is the only message whereby lost people can come into a personal and
saving relationship with God the Father through Jesus Christ the Son.
Over the last several weeks we have been
following the general outline of our confessional statement, the Baptist Faith
and Message. Here’s what it says in article 4, in reference to the doctrine of
Salvation.
“Salvation involves the redemption of the
whole man, and is offered freely to all who accept Jesus Christ as Lord and
Savior, who by His own blood obtained eternal redemption for the believer. In
its broadest sense salvation includes regeneration, justification,
sanctification and glorification. There is no salvation apart from personal
faith in Jesus Christ as Lord.
A. Regeneration, or the new birth, is a work of God’s grace,
whereby believers become new creatures in Christ Jesus. It is a change of heart
wrought by the Holy Spirit through conviction of sin, to which the sinner
responds in repentance toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Repentance and faith are inseparable experiences of grace. Repentance is a
genuine turning from sin toward God. Faith is the acceptance of Jesus Christ
and commitment of the entire personality to Him as Lord and Savior.
B. Justification is God’s gracious and full acquittal upon
principles of His righteousness of all sinners who repent and believe in
Christ. Justification brings the believer unto a relationship of peace and
favor with God.
C. Sanctification is the experience, beginning in
regeneration, by which the believer is set apart to God’s purposes, and is
enabled to progress toward moral and spiritual maturity through the presence
and power of the Holy Spirit dwelling in him. Growth in grace should continue
throughout the regenerate person’s life.
D. Glorification is the culmination of salvation and is the
final blessed and abiding state of the redeemed.
For the purpose of our study, we are going
to keep it simple and discuss salvation within the context of three simple
points. We will begin with our need,
then move to God’s provision and then conclude with our response.
I. Our
Need
As we studied last, the doctrine of man, in
the
Understanding the universal nature of sin,
we should consider some of the consequences or realities of sin.
Sin does several things. First of all, sin separates
us from God.
Isaiah 50:1-2 assures us that our sin
separates us from God. It says, “Thus saith the LORD, Where is the bill of your mother's divorcement, whom
I have put away? or which of my creditors is it to whom I have sold you?
Behold, for your iniquities have ye sold yourselves, and for your
transgressions is your mother put away. Wherefore, when I came, was there no man? when
I called, was there none to
answer? Is my hand shortened at all, that it cannot redeem? or
have I no power to deliver? behold, at my rebuke I dry
up the sea, I make the rivers a wilderness: their fish stinketh,
because there is no water, and dieth for thirst.”
In the Garden of Eden, before the fall, Adam
and Eve had fellowship with God, but after the fall, their fellowship with God
is broken. The result is that all of us are born out of fellowship with God.
The Bible tells us that our problem is one
which we cannot solve. That means that there is nothing we can do within our
own ability to get back to where Adam was before the fall.
When confronted with these biblical truths,
people have come up with different ways of dealing with man’s problem.
One popular philosophy is that if you are
just good enough, if you do enough good deeds while you are on earth, that
someday, when you stand before God He will put all of your good deeds on one
side of the scale and all of your bad deeds on the other side of the scale and
if your good deeds outweigh your bad deeds then you’ll get into heaven.
The only problem with that philosophy is
that it is not biblical. The bible tells us that we cannot be saved by works.
Titus 3:5 tells us “Not by works of
righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by
the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost;”
and Ephesians 2:8-9 says For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works,
lest any man should boast.
Our problem is not lack of self esteem, as
some would have us believe. Our problem is not ignorance or lack of knowledge;
if man has anything today he has intelligence and information. Our problem is
that we are sinners and that our sin separates us from God.
But not only does it separate us from God,
it condemns us before God. The scripture is clear is in Romans 6:23 which says
that the penalty for sin, or God’s just punishment for sin, is death. Ezekiel
18:4 says that the soul that sins shall die.
It is important to remember that when we
talk about any one doctrine, we must remember to be consistent with all the
other doctrines of the bible. For instance, when talking about the doctrine of
salvation, we must be consistent with the doctrine of God. We know God is
righteous and perfectly just. That means He must punish sin. To do anything
less would not be in keeping with His character. He is a just God and His
justice demands full payment for our sin.
Therefore our understanding of how and why
God saves us must be biblically consistent, or what God has revealed to us
about Himself. You see, because God is righteous and
just, He must punish sin and because we are all sinners, we are condemned
before God. And knowing that we cannot do anything in and of ourselves to
escape our just punishment, our plight is really rather desperate.
That’s why the Bible tells us that salvation
is rooted and grounded in the character of God Himself. Not only is God just,
but God is loving and as a loving God He wants to save
sinners.
The Bible tells us in 2 Peter 3:9 The Lord is not slack concerning his
promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not
willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
II. God’s
Provision
Remember that God created us for His glory
and for fellowship. As long as we remain in our sin we can neither be in
fellowship with Him, nor can our lives give Him glory. In order for us to live
for our created purpose we must somehow be reconciled to God. This is the great
story of salvation. The Bible states this very clearly in 2 Corinthians 5:19
when it says, 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.
The Bible tells us that salvation is from
the Lord. That is, if it were left to us we would forever be lost. God is the
one who initiates and consummates our salvation. It is His work alone. There
are several things about salvation every Christian should understand.
First we need to consider the WHY of our salvation. Why did God save
us? The reason God saved us has more to do with who God is instead of who we
are.
The Bible tells us that God is merciful –
Psalm 103:17 says, But the mercy of the
LORD is from
everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear him, and his righteousness unto
children's children;
Lamentations 3:22-23 says, It is of
the LORD'S mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not.They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.
The principle word used for mercy in the Old
Testament is the word, hesed, which describes God’s
steadfast lovingkindness. You see, it is God’s mercy
which stays His hand of judgment against us. It is because He is loving and
compassionate. That’s what Lamentations 3 tells us.
But not only is God merciful, but He is
gracious. God’s grace is simply God’s unmerited favor towards us. We do not
deserve it; we did nothing to merit it or to earn it; again, it is grounded in
God’s character. Because God is merciful and loving and gracious, He offers us
salvation. He does not offer us His salvation because of who we are; He offers
it to us because of Who He is. That means that because of God’s mercy He does
not punish us the minute we sin, and because of His grace, He offers us
forgiveness of sins, salvation from the penalty of sin and eternal life.
Our hymns teach us profound
theological truths. One of them says, “Marvelous grace of our loving Lord,
grace that exceeds our sin and our guilt. Yonder on
But secondly we consider the HOW of
our salvation. How did God make it possible for us to be saved? This is where
we want to talk about the atoning work of Christ, or the doctrine of the
atonement. There are many today who don’t like to talk about the cross or the
shed blood of Jesus. They say it is bloody, violent and barbaric. Instead they
like to talk about the example Jesus set or the love that He wanted us to share
with each other. But folks without the blood atonement we have no hope of
salvation.
The Bible story is this: since we are all
sinners and thus under the condemnation of sin, and since we could not do
anything to bring about our own salvation, John 3:16 says, 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.
You see God’s justice demanded a sacrifice
which would pay the price for our sins. Our own lives were already forfeit
because we were under the condemnation of our own sins. Only a sinless person
could pay the price and be an acceptable substitute for us. That’s why God sent
Jesus to die on the cross for us. Because Jesus was sinless, He was an
acceptable sacrifice for our sins. The Bible says in 1 John 2:2 that He is the
propitiation for our sins, not only for ours but for the whole world. This
simply means that Jesus was a sacrifice which turned away the wrath of God.
And when He died on the cross, He died in
our place. This is what we mean when we talk about the substitutionary
atonement or the vicarious death of Jesus. Very simply put, Jesus died in our
place. The death of Jesus was foreshadowed by the sacrificial system under the
old covenant in the Old Testament. You remember that in ancient
When Jesus died on the cross He took our
place and paid the penalty for our sins. That’s why the cross is central to our
understanding of salvation. Hebrews 9:22 says that without the shedding of
blood our sins cannot be forgiven. On the cross Jesus, the Lamb of God who
takes away the sins of the world, shed His blood to atone for our sins. As Baptists we believe that it was
absolutely necessary for Jesus to shed His blood on the cross, otherwise the
just demands of a Holy God could not have been met and we would have no hope of
salvation.
Jesus says the same thing in Matthew 26:28
at the last supper table. He told His disciples, For this is my blood of
the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.
Revelation 1:5 says, “And from Jesus Christ, who is
the faithful witness, and the
first begotten of the dead, and the prince of the kings of the earth. Unto him
that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood,”
Again, the hymns of our faith give witness
to our understanding of this truth.
What can wash away my sins? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. What can make me whole
again? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. Oh precious is
the flow, that makes me white as snow, no other fount I know, nothing but the
blood of Jesus.
There is a fountain filled with blood, drawn
from Emanuel’s veins, and sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their
guilty stains, lose all their guilt stains, lose all their guilty stains, and
sinners plunged beneath that flood, lose all their guilty stains.
You see because the blood of Jesus was shed
for you and me, for our sins on Calvary’s cross, there is no other way for us
to be rid of our sins except through Jesus.
Jesus said in John 14:6, Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the
truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.
One of the foundational truths of our
doctrine of salvation is that there is no other way to get saved except through
Jesus. While this is extremely exclusive on one hand, it is nonetheless what
the Bible teaches.
There are many who have a problem with that
truth.
Some, known as pluralists, say that there
are many roads to God. After all, they reason, how could God love the world and
yet allow so many people to live and die without having a chance to accept the
free gift of eternal life in Jesus? Their problem, of course, is that their
theology is not biblically based but is rooted and grounded more in their fallen
sense of what they deem to be right and wrong.
God would have been justified in sending us
all to hell. None of us deserved to be saved. The love of God is seen in that
He has made it possible for any of us to be saved. But at the end of the day we
cannot escape the words of Jesus Himself Who said that He is the only way to
God the father.
That means the Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus
and all others who fail to put their faith in Jesus Christ alone, have no hope
of heaven. Jesus Himself claimed to be the only way. But let’s not forget what
Romans 10:13 says, For whosoever shall call upon the name of the
Lord shall be saved.
You see, salvation is offered freely to all
who accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. But Jesus Himself says in John
3:18, He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he
that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the
name of the only begotten Son of God.
So there you have it. God saves us because
of Who He is and He did it through the finished work of Jesus Christ on the
cross. Jesus died in our place. Because He was sinless He was an acceptable
sacrifice to satisfy the just demands of a righteous God.
But how do we receive this gift of
salvation? While it is freely offered to all who will believe, what is the
process whereby we become recipients of His grace and become Christians?
III. Our
Response
Perhaps you’ve heard preachers talk about
giving your heart to Jesus, or being born again, and you’ve wondered what
exactly they were talking about. When it comes to our response the Bible gives
us some clear instruction.
- Repentance
The first thing the Bible says is that we
must repent of our sins. Preaching at Pentecost Peter called upon the crowd to
repent and be baptized, each of you, in the name of Jesus the Messiah for the
forgiveness of your sins.” And preaching to the Athenians on Mars Hill, in Acts
17:30 Paul said that And the times of this ignorance God winked at;
but now commandeth all men every where to repent:
Repentance
simply means to stop going one way, to turn around and to go another way. R. L.
Scarborough, who was president of the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary
in
Repentance is not popular these days. Many
people want to get to heaven without having to change who they are. They want
to add Jesus to the many other things in their lives. But Jesus tells us that
we cannot come to Him that way. We must take up our cross and follow Him. In
repentance we turn away from sin, and in faith we turn to Jesus Christ as our
Savior. That brings us to the subject of faith.
- Faith
The Bible tells us in Ephesians 2:8-9 that
salvation comes by grace through faith. That is, God’s grace makes it
available, and we must accept it by faith. Salvation comes to us by the grace
of God, but faith enables us to reach out and receive it.
Faith
means to believe. It means to put your trust or confidence in someone or
something. Many times in the
Bible the command is to believe, this is referring to faith. In order for us to
receive the salvation offered in Christ Jesus, we must abandon any hope we
might have in our own goodness, or in our ability to get to heaven on our own
merit, and we must put our faith, our confidence, our
trust, in Jesus Christ and what He did on the cross.
The
great preacher Charles Spurgeon once said, “Why is faith so essential? It is
because of its receptive power. A purse will not make a man rich, and yet
without some place for his money, how could a man acquire wealth? Faith of
itself could not contribute a penny to salvation, but it is the purse which
holds a precious Christ within itself. It holds all the treasures of divine
love. If a man is thirsty, a rope and a bucket are not in themselves of much
use to him. But yet if there is a well near at hand, the very thing that is
needed is a bucket and a rope, by means of which a man may draw water out of
the wells of salvation and drink to his heart’s content.”
Faith is not simply
knowing that Jesus died for your sins, it does not merely mean agreeing
that Jesus died for your sins, many people have religious knowledge but do not
have a personal relationship with Jesus. Faith means making a personal decision
and commitment to surrender control of your life to the Lordship of Jesus and
to trust Him and Him alone to save you. This is what we are talking about when
we ask if someone wants to give their heart to Jesus, or to ask Him into their
heart. That’s what it means to exercise faith.
Which brings us to what
happens when you trust Him.
- Regeneration
By
repenting of your sins and placing your trust in Jesus Christ as Lord and
Savior, the instant that takes place, the Bible says you become a new creation,
you are given spiritual life, or you are born again. The theological term is
regeneration, which simply means that you are made new in Christ.
2 Corinthians 5:17 says, Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is
a new creature: old things are passed away; behold,
all things are become new.
And the Bible says God gives you eternal life.
That means once you are truly saved, you can never be unsaved. Once He gives
you spiritual life, you are His from that time forever more.
When you ask Jesus to forgive your sins and
place your trust in Him, not only does He create in you a new person, as we
have studied in weeks past, He places His Spirit within you and He will never
leave you nor forsake you. He will always be with you. He writes your name in
the Lamb’s book of life and when the roll is called up yonder, you’ll be there.
But till then He will work in your heart and your life to grow you in your
spiritual life to a greater maturity. This is what we call, sanctification.
- Sanctification
Once you place your faith and your trust in
Jesus Christ, He begins a process of growth and spiritual development in your
life which will never completely stall.
Philippians 1:6 says, Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in
you will perform it until the
day of Jesus Christ:
That
means that God, who has begun the work of transforming you into the image of
Jesus, will continue to do His work in you till Jesus returns. This is
Sanctification
Conclusion:
So there you have it, it’s really rather simple.
We are sinners, and sin separates us from God and condemns us to eternity in
hell. God loves us and sent His only Son Jesus to die on the cross to pay the
penalty for our sins. Through His death, burial and resurrection He defeated
sin and death and Hell and made it possible for all who will place their trust
in Him to have their sins washed away and receive eternal life. All you have to
do is believe; to place your trust in Him.