We Believe: The Doctrine of Salvation
Whereas last week we focused on the message that Jesus preached, this week we will narrow in on the significance and results of his life and work.
We summarize this in the idea of salvation.
Salvation is the sum total of everything God did for us to deliver us from our lost condition in sin and bring us into a right relationship with him.
The heart of salvation is the gospel message which includes regeneration, justification, sanctification and glorification.
Doctrine Statement: We believe that salvation, planned in eternity and promised throughout Scripture, is God’s gracious act of rescue whereby he delivers lost and sinful people through faith in Christ’s redemptive work. Because of his great love, God makes people spiritually alive in Christ through regeneration by the Holy Spirit. By grace, God forgives and justifies people through faith, apart from works, conferring upon them all the benefits of union with Christ, including the gift of God’s righteousness, the indwelling Holy Spirit, and adoption into his family.
God planned salvation in eternity.
God saves people by grace through faith.
The Holy Spirit regenerates lost, sinful people.
Believers are united with Christ.
God credits righteousness to believers.
God Planned Salvation in Eternity
Ephesians 1:3-6 ESV
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.”
In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul exalts God for the salvation he gave to those who are in Christ.
He wanted all believers to join him in celebrating the greatness of God and the salvation that belongs to us in Jesus.
Paul referred to this salvation as the riches of God’s glorious inheritance in the saints.
God already chose us in Christ before he created the world so that we might be set apart as his children, forgiven and without blame.
Believers differ in understanding Paul’s language of God’s eternal choice and its relationship to his foreknowledge.
But what is certain is that God planned our salvation before we existed.
He knew we would need his mercy and deliverance from sin before he created the universe.
It is like parents who don’t expect their children to be functioning adults when they are born, but have nine months to prepare for the years ahead of sacrificial care, feeding, instruction, discipline and provision that they will need to offer the child for it to make it in the world.
It is no surprise to God what our weaknesses are, or what we would have to sort through to learn to love him and honor him well in our imperfect frames.
In his infinite love, wisdom and grace, he makes no mistakes and is determined to work in his children and through his children for his glory.
Psalm 103:8-14 ESV
“The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. He will not always chide, nor will he keep his anger forever. He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us. As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him. For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust.”
The only way that we lose, is if we give up on Christ.
He does not quit us unless we quit him, and even then, he has shown us by sending Christ that he continues in gracious pursuit.
This is why our relationship with God is continually described as a covenant with the example of marriage as our enduring picture.
“There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, in the end, “Thy will be done.” All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. Those who knock it is opened.”
-C.S. Lewis in The Great Divorce.
So how do predestination and free will interrelate?
Romans 1:24-25
“Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever!”
God wrestles with sinful humanity until he doesn’t - we must live in the fear of the Lord.
The wrath of God is ultimately God turning us over to what we desire and the consequences that follow.
“What sinners want is not hell but sin. That hell is the inevitable consequence of unforgiven sin does not make the consequence desirable. It is not what people want — certainly not what they “most want.” Wanting sin is no more equal to wanting hell than wanting chocolate is equal to wanting obesity. Or wanting cigarettes is equal to wanting cancer.”
-John Piper
But God wants to save us.
*Paul clearly states that God was motivated by love in planning our salvation.
*His choice to save us was not made reluctantly or under obligation but by his good pleasure.
*God loves us, and it pleases him to save us.
*It is a comfort to know that we were already in God’s mind and heart long before we were born.
*God wants each of us assured of his great love for us and eternal commitment to fulfill his salvific purposes for us.
We should often pray Paul’s prayer that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ would give us wisdom and revelation to know him and the hope he has given us.
His great power ensures we will receive the riches of his glorious inheritance secured for us by his Son.
God has planned a great salvation for everyone who trusts in Jesus Christ.
But how does God save people?
God Saves People by Grace Through Faith
Ephesians 2:8-10 ESV
“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”
Paul emphasized in all his writings that salvation is God’s gracious gift to us who believe; it is not something we earn or achieve through our good works.
He consistently taught that we are sinful and that no amount of good works can make up for our sins.
***There is nothing we can do to become deserving of God’s salvation.
So, God planned and acted to save us, not because he was obligated to do so, but because of his great love for us.
Because of the richness of his mercy, he chose to make us alive in Christ even when we were dead in our sins.
We experience this salvation when we believe the good news that God sent his son to suffer and die for our sins and rise from the dead to immortal life.
God is the one who saves us through his Son, Jesus Christ.
We do not save ourselves by earning a righteous standing through good works.
This cannot qualify us for God’s salvation.
*What this means is that salvation is his gracious gift to us, secured by Jesus and freely given apart from works.
*As a result, none of us have any grounds to boast about ourselves.
*We can only boast in Jesus.
*Knowing God saves us by grace through faith produces peace in our souls.
*If we think we must work to earn God’s salvation, we will live with constant anxiety, wondering if we have done enough.
*Or we may succumb to an ugly pride through ignorance of our sinfulness.
**This pride will make us critical of others we deem to be less holy.
*Our hearts can only find rest when we embrace God’s gracious gift of salvation in the light of his holiness and our sinfulness.
The Holy Spirit Regenerates Lost, Sinful People
Titus 3:4-7 ESV
“But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.”
Paul wrote to Titus to instruct him on how to lead the church in Crete.
He repeatedly emphasized the need to teach the believers to live godly lives full of good works.
Formerly, they were like all humans, sinful and sinning.
But God had saved them.
The Holy Spirit brought their spiritual rebirth, just as Jesus discussed with Nicodemus (John 3).
This new birth did not happen because they had done anything to deserve it but because God was merciful, kind, and loving.
The Holy Spirit renewed them to live a new life of godliness.
Therefore, they could renounce sin and live for God as they awaited the return of Jesus Christ.
Elsewhere, Paul adamantly taught that all of us have sinned and are incapable of fundamentally altering our internal sinful condition.
He described us as dead in our sins and enslaved to evil ways.
This is the concept of total depravity.
Ephesians 2:1-7 ESV
“And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.”
*Indeed, all humans are sinners by nature and by choice.
Consequently, without the Holy Spirit, we are helpless to bring about our spiritual regeneration to be like God in holiness and righteousness.
Only God can bring about this change through the Holy Spirit, who imparts God’s new life to lost, sinful people.
It is his work that causes us to be spiritually regenerated and renewed.
“What the law tried to do by a restraining power from without, the gospel does by an inspiring power from within.”
-Catherine Booth, co-founder of the Salvation Army
We must never forget that we did not save ourselves.
Before we were born of the Spirit, we could not see or enter the kingdom of God.
But because we believed in Jesus, God granted us the right to become his children.
He caused us to be born again by the Holy Spirit.
*This is God’s direct influence in and action upon your life.
*God is not far away, but draws near to intimately relate with you.
Therefore, let us pray that God would empower us to boldly communicate the good news of Jesus Christ to others so that others might also experience the Holy Spirit’s regenerating work.
Believers are United with Christ
Galatians 2:20 ESV
“I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
Paul wrote to the Galatian believers to emphasize that the basis of God’s salvation was what Jesus had already done.
Paul taught that all believers are in Christ, and Christ is in them.
They are all one in Christ Jesus, children of God with equal standing.
Galatians 3:27-29 ESV
“For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.”
Each of them had received the Spirit of God’s Son into their hearts, crying out, “Abba! Father!”
Paul wanted to assure them of their union with Christ so that they might learn to live their lives in and through Christ.
***There is no power, person, or presence that can destroy your spiritual union with Christ.
Romans 8 makes this abundantly clear.
Let us, therefore, grow in our awareness of his presence in our lives.
God Credits Righteousness to Believers
Romans 3:21-24 ESV
“But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,”
In the great exchange, Christ voluntarily took the punishment for our sins upon himself, and in return, gave us his righteousness.
*When God looks upon us, he sees us clothed in Christ’s righteousness.
*Though we are still not yet what we will be, he already regards us as righteous in Jesus.
*Therefore, we can boldly walk with God in the abundance of his grace.
*Because of God’s gift of righteousness, we need no longer live under any sense of divine condemnation.
God is not against us; he is for us.
***We must reject every word, thought, and feeling that contradicts God’s declaration that we are righteous in Christ.
*We can always go to him for help and grace even when we feel unworthy because Jesus’ perfect obedience to the Father is the basis of our relationship with him.
So we end with these questions today:
Why is it significant that God planned a believer’s salvation before he even created the universe?
How do you think God views you? Why?
“Tell rebellious men that God is reconciled, justice is satisfied, sin is paid for, the judgment of the guilty is revoked, the condemnation of the sinner canceled, the curse of the Law blotted out, the gates of heaven opened wide, the power of sin conquered, the guilty conscience healed, the broken heart comforted, and the sorrow and misery of the Fall undone.”
-A.B. Simpson, founder of the Christian and Missionary Alliance church
