What is gospel salvation?

These two verses are the key verses of the Epistle. The great words of the doctrinal part of the Epistle are found here. Righteousness and Faith are these words; Paul declared that he is not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ. It cannot mean, what it is often said to mean, that Paul was not ashamed to confess Christ. It means that he had the utmost confidence in the Gospel of Christ; he knew it would not make him ashamed; he was not ashamed of it because of its intrinsic character. The world sneered at the Gospel he preached "for the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness" (1 Corinthians 1:18). He knew that in the Gospel was embodied the highest wisdom, that God Himself was its author, that it came from God and leads to God; he knew that through the Gospel the Greek, the Jew, the Barbarian could be saved out of the horrible pit and the miry clay and become a child of God and an heir of God. He was not ashamed of it for "the Gospel of Christ is the power of God unto salvation." What weighty words these are! The power of God is needed to save man. And that power God has, to save the vilest sinner through the Gospel of Christ. God is omnipotent, but in one thing God is powerless, He cannot save sinners apart from the Gospel of Christ, for the Gospel of Christ is the power of God unto salvation. The spurious Gospel of today, which denies the Cross of Christ and the blood, which substitutes character, good works or something else for faith in the Work of Christ as sin-bearer, has no power to save. God cannot save in any other way than the way made known in the Gospel of Christ, who died for our sins. And what is salvation? It includes the whole of Christ's redemption work. It includes Justification, Sanctification, and Glorification. Saved from the guilt of sins; saved from the power of sin; saved from the presence of sin. Salvation from wrath and eternal damnation; salvation from the power of darkness and sin's awful dominion; salvation unto eternal glory. The word includes all the sinner needs. The cross of Christ has supplied every need. If man had to do something with it and could help along in his salvation, it would be an imperfect and insecure salvation. But God being the author, it is His salvation and thus (Acts 28:28) it is a perfect salvation, a salvation which is both deliverance and safety forever. (Philippians 2:12 "Work out your own salvation" is often quoted as meaning that we must work to be saved and to stay saved. It means that we are to work out with results the salvation which is ours by faith in Jesus Christ.) And this salvation is to any one that believeth, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. Faith is the means of obtaining this salvation. Of this we shall hear more in the third and fourth chapters. Furthermore, in the Gospel "the righteousness of God" is revealed. This great word will receive our closest attention in the annotations of the third chapter. Here we briefly state that the Gospel of Christ makes known that the very righteousness of God, which condemns a sinner, is now on the side of the believing sinner. it is revealed from faith to faith, which means that it is not on the principle of works, but on the principle of faith.

However it might be, he was ready, and that because of the value of the gospel — a point which leads him to state both the value and the character of this gospel. For, he says, he was not ashamed of it. It was the power of God to salvation. Observe here the way in which the apostle presents everything as coming from God. It is the gospel of God, the power of God to salvation, the righteousness of God, and even the wrath of God, and that from heaven — a different thing from earthly chastisement. This is the key to everything. The apostle lays stress upon it, putting it forward from the commencement of the epistle; for man ever inclines to have confidence in himself, to boast of himself, to seek for some merit — some righteousness, in himself, to Judaise, to be occupied with himself, as though he could do something. It was the apostle's joy to put his God forward.

Thus, in the gospel, God intervened, accomplishing a salvation which was entirely His own work — a salvation of which He was the source and power, and which He Himself had wrought. Man came into it by faith: it was the believer who shared it, but to have part in it by faith was exactly the way to share it without adding anything whatsoever to it, and to leave it wholly the salvation of God. God be praised that it is so, whether for righteousness or for power, or for the whole result; for thus it is perfect, divine. God has come in, in His almighty power and in His love, to deliver the wretched, according to His own might. The gospel is the expression of this: one believes it and one shares it.

What, then, is the gospel? In presenting it the Apostle Paul wrote, “I delivered to you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ DIED for our sins according to the Scriptures” (1 Cor. 15:3). It is the meaning and the results of the death of Christ that constitute the gospel.

(Vv. 3, 4). Immediately he sums up the glad tidings under three heads. First, “Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures”. This brings before us the great propitiatory work of Christ for all the world, foretold in all the Scriptures, for the law sets it forth in figure, the Psalms present it experimentally, and the prophets announce it prophetically. Secondly, Christ was buried, the complete evidence of His death and the solemn fact that all His links with man after the flesh are severed. Thirdly, “He was raised the third day, according to the Scriptures”, the everlasting witness that the power of death is broken, the devil defeated, and God is glorified.

The Apostle carefully remarks that the gospel he preached, he had “received”, as we know from another epistle, “by the revelation of Jesus Christ” (Galatians 1:12). To reject his gospel is, therefore, to question the revelation of Jesus Christ and the authority of Scripture.

The gospel is still the power of God unto salvation. The same power which raised Christ from the dead brings sinners to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation. It gives spiritual life to the dead, imparts peace to the tormented conscience, delivers from the love of sin and unholy associations, and makes the soul happy and at rest in the presence of God. Thus a vast change is produced. You may, perhaps, have seen a drowning man just taken out of the water in a state of senselessness and inanimation. The anxious bystanders feel for the pulse in vain; they place their ears to the mouth, and watch and listen with breathless silence for that bosom once more to heave a sigh; they move the eyelids, but all sense of light seems extinguished; they call aloud, yet not a single feature moves in response. But powerful remedies are used, and in a little while the apparently lifeless form moves, the features beam with happy intelligence, and fully manifest every faculty of vigour and animation. How great the change! How powerful the remedies! What a vast alteration in the person! Yet this is but a feeble illustration of the power of the gospel of God in those who pass from death unto life.

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!

There are many aspects of salvation. In Matthew 1:21 we read of Jesus coming to save His people from their sins; and in Luke 1:71 Zacharias spoke of Jesus coming “that we might be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all that hate us.” The death of Christ has saved us from the consequences of our guilt, from the power of sin, from the power of Satan, and from the fear of death. Soon, at the coming of the Lord, we shall be saved from the judgment that will overtake a world that knows not, and desires not, God and His Christ, a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time (1 Peter 1:5).

The present salvation of God which reaches man through the gospel, is the power of God in operation to free man from every force which holds his soul in bondage, whether it be Satan (Col. 1:13), the world (Gal. 1:4), or sin (Rom 7:24); that being delivered and supplied with new divine power in the gift of the Holy Spirit, he may be able to serve God acceptably in the midst of a hostile world.

As to the gospel itself, he was by no means ashamed to speak of it, even to those who lived at Rome. What though this proud city was the centre of all earthly power, the gospel was God's power. Rome's power was to bring people into its empire by forced submission: God's power was for the salvation of every believer, by means of the gospel, bringing them into His kingdom and under His sway in grace. In it, God reveals His righteousness for the benefit of all who exercise faith in Him. What a mercy it is that we need not be terrified at the thought of the righteousness of God, seeing that it secures the salvation of everyone who in his heart believes the gospel (vv. 14, 17).

Still, though there is this comprehensiveness of meaning about the word, we must not miss the fact that it always carries the thought of deliverance from peril; and inasmuch as sin lies at the root of every peril that threatens us, the New Testament very appropriately opens with salvation from sins. This salvation is not merely from the penalty of sins, but from the power of sins, and even from the love of them. The Gospel does not offer an exemption from sin's penalty while leaving us free to continue under the power of sin, or in the enjoyment of sin's temporary pleasures. Were it to do so, it would be no true salvation, for it would just encourage us to continue in sin: which God forbid!

Yet again and again we find in Scripture that salvation does mean exemption or deliverance from the wrath of God. The Gospel is "the power of God to salvation, to every one that believes … for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven" (Rom. 1:16-18). A little later in the same epistle we read, "We shall be saved from wrath through Him" (Rom. 5:9). Again we read, "God has not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Thess. 5:9). And yet again in 2 Thessalonians 2:12-13, we find that salvation is put in direct contrast with damnation.