What comes with salvation?

But let us inquire what is included in the salvation which the grace of God brings? The answer is, Everything. Salvation is a precious box containing all I want for time and eternity. It includes salvation from the future consequence of sin and from its present power. To be a divinely-saved person — a person saved by the grace of God, saved by the blood of Christ as every believer is — involves entire deliverance from wrath, from hell, from Satan, from everything that could possibly be against me. A man whom God has saved is surely safe from all. There is nothing doubtful about God's salvation; it is all settled. There is no delay; it is all finished. We have neither to wait for it nor to add to it, but to receive it now and enjoy it forever. The mighty tide of grace rolls down from the very throne of God and bears upon its bosom a full salvation for me. I receive it as a free gift; I bow my head and worship, and go on my way rejoicing.

Salvation is a very large word. It comprehends forgiveness, and deliverance, and peace, and the knowledge that I am justified. It is not only the knowledge that the Lord died for me, that He put away my sins, but that when He died I died, and when He rose I rose. What a blessed thing to have Jesus as your Saviour, to belong to Him, to have God's salvation, and to know it! It was after the Lord had saved Israel that they sang: and were they not entitled to sing? And what is the burden of their song? "I will sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously: the horse and his rider has he thrown into the sea. The Lord is my strength and song, and he is become my salvation;" etc. (Ex. 15:1-2). It is all coupled with a person, the person of the Saviour. He who possesses Christ has God's salvation.

How great the blessing! The salvation of God goes far beyond the mere forgiveness of sins, inestimable as this initial blessing is. The believer in Jesus is washed, sanctified, and justified; he is brought into the family of God and given a place amongst the many sons; he becomes an heir of God and joint-heir with Christ; he is blest with all spiritual blessings in the heavenlies in Christ; and presently the whole blood-washed throng will be lifted right out of the present evil world and be set down in the Father's house on high, there to enjoy divine favour and blessing for evermore. Well does the apostle say — "so great salvation!" What creature tongue is able to declare what God saves His people from, and all that to which He brings them in Christ our Lord?

Make your choice now, my friend: let me counsel you; decide for Christ, make a thorough surrender of yourself to Christ, and what will be the result? The moment you receive the Lord Jesus Christ, that moment salvation is yours. The moment you receive, in simple faith, Him who came from Heaven, and who died, and who is gone into glory, that moment you are entitled to know you have salvation. Salvation is a word that wraps up in itself all the blessings of the gospel. Be you like Simeon, take salvation the very moment you have the opportunity. The 2nd of Luke says that when His parents brought the child Jesus into the Temple, Simeon received Him into His arms, and "blessed God, and said, Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation." That is it, I get everything in Christ, pardon in Christ, eternal life in Christ, He is my righteousness too, my sanctification, and my redemption likewise. Do I receive Christ? Then I receive everything. I get my sins forgiven, my soul saved, and I stand before God in the conscious possession of salvation, His free gift.

We now come to a word of very large meaning, so large indeed that it may be used in a sense that covers other gospel words such as justification, redemption, reconciliation. An instance of the large meaning which may be attached to it is found in Hebrews 2:3, where the mighty intervention of God on man's behalf, which first began to be spoken by the Lord Himself, is spoken of as "so great salvation." In Acts 13:26, the Apostle Paul speaks of "the word of this salvation," using the term in just the same broad sense. So also in Ephesians 1:13, the whole deliverance which has reached us, in all its parts, is summed up in that one word. The Gospel which announces that mighty deliverance is, "the Gospel of our salvation." It is with this large meaning that we use the word in the title of this book.

Let us look, then, first, at the character of the deliverance, or salvation, which this wondrous intervention of God in grace brings. This cannot be learnt by going over the points of systematic divinity [i.e. the creeds of religious systems], but by a reference to the character of man's condition through sin, as unfolded in the word of God, and manifested by the suffering and death of Christ. Whatever there is of moral distance from God, through sin, this salvation, which "the grace of God" brings, meets, and sets aside. "For Christ hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God." Sin in its very nature separates from God; for light cannot have fellowship with darkness; but then it is said, "Ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ." Sin, and death, and Satan's power, and the judgment of God - all marked man's condition of ruin, and all must be met before salvation, full and adequate, can be proclaimed. It is not enough to raise man from his degradation and moral pollution, if such a thing could be, and set him on his pathway to happiness. The conscience must be set at rest on the ground of every claim of God in His righteous holiness having been met, and every possible consequence of sin set aside. And this is the salvation which the grace of God brings. It brings eternal life into this region of death; for "God hath given to us eternal life: and this life is in his Son." It brings in divine righteousness into the midst of condemnation. For "he who knew no sin was made sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him." It brings deliverance from Satan's power; for "through death [Christ] destroyed him who had the power of death, that is, the devil." Nay more, the salvation which the grace of God brings puts us in the very place, and position, and acceptance before God, and makes us partakers of the very life and glory of Him by whom the salvation has been wrought. It has no other measure, and has no lower character. Was ever love like this!

Thus in Romans 5 salvation is very clearly referred to, and put in full contradistinction to what God has wrought for us by the blood of Christ. The apostle says, "God commends his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us: much more then, being now justified by his blood" (it is evidently the same grand truth as the Passover), "we shall be saved from wrath through him." It is clear that salvation here is not simply that a person is purged from guilt, but the real application of Christ's work in all its fulness; only that we have it not yet for our bodies. "We shall be saved from wrath through him. For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son" (this was the beginning), "much more being reconciled we shall be saved by his life." It is plain therefore, that salvation requires and involves not only the death but the life of Christ; that salvation supposes not merely guilt removed through His blood, but ourselves maintained, and to be brought through all difficulties, past, present, and future. Thus it is a complete deliverance from all that can be brought against us; not a going through the world with hope of protective mercy, which is the notion of man, but a complete victory over the foe present and future.

At this point Paul stops, and says, as it were, I cannot tell you more about the blessing. But I must tell you about the Person who has brought the blessing in. You are redeemed out of bondage, and now I should like you to know more about the Person of the One who has redeemed you. He is the image of the invisible God. All fulness was pleased in Him to dwell. You are made meet for heaven. You are delivered from darkness. You are translated into the kingdom of God's dear Son. You are redeemed, you are forgiven. Yet there is even more than this. Peace is made through the blood of His cross. What is peace? It is the complete settlement of every question between the soul and God through the death of the Lord Jesus Christ. Not only have I committed sins, but I have a sinful nature. It too has been condemned in the cross of Christ. He has made peace by the blood of His cross.

God's salvation, and the full deliverance which it brings from all the power of Satan, which, being won by the death of Christ, should be the present enjoyed portion of every Christian, is only known to him who has accepted by faith two distinct statements of the word of God concerning it; namely, that as God's salvation surely deals with, and settles the question of my sins, so surely does it also deal with, and settle the question of, myself. "Who was delivered for our offences, and raised again for our justification," indicates the way of the settlement of the one (Rom. 4), that is, our sins; for the Holy Ghost now present (Acts 2) is now testifying to us (as He will testify to Israel, founded on the work of Christ, in the day of the new covenant), "Their sins and iniquities will I remember no more." But while this is true, it is His voice also saying we "are dead to sin," "buried with Him by baptism unto death" (Rom. 6) (and therefore are we exhorted to reckon ourselves to be "dead indeed unto sin"); these and similar passages give us the other part of this "great" salvation; i.e. the end too of ourselves in that death of Christ in God's sight. Both are to be accepted and enjoyed only by faith.

In connection with the above subject the question to consider in the first place is what is involved in salvation, or what it really consists in. What I understand by it is that the soul is delivered from that ruinous and destructive power under which it was held, and also from any evil to which it may be liable. The latter was exemplified in Noah and his house, and the former in the deliverance accorded to the children of Israel at the Red Sea. As to Noah and Israel, their salvation was temporal and did not necessarily involve new and eternal relationships with God as the salvation of our souls does, but to my mind the salvation that was accorded to them illustrates the two-fold character of the salvation which is ours in Christ Jesus. There may be other aspects of salvation, but they do not occur to me at this moment. I desire to look at the salvation under these two aspects.