What is salvation all about?

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.

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.

There is no need of dwelling now on "salvation" as employed in the Old Testament, and in some parts of the New, as the gospels and Revelation particularly, where it is used for deliverance in power or even providence and present things. I confine myself to its doctrinal import, and the full Christian sense of the word; and I maintain that salvation signifies that deliverance for the believer which is the full consequence of the mighty work of Christ, apprehended not, of course, necessarily according to all its depth in God's eyes, but at any rate applied to the soul in the power of the Holy Ghost. It is not the awakening of conscience, however real; neither is it the attraction of heart by the grace of Christ, however blessed this may be. We ought therefore to bear in mind, that if a soul be not brought into conscious deliverance as the fruit of divine teaching, and founded on the work of Christ, we are very far from presenting the gospel as the apostle Paul glories in it, and delights that it should go forth. "I am not ashamed," etc.

We use the term "salvation" in a broad sense as including the whole or any of the parts of the work of grace which meets the fallen condition of man. As we have just seen, this condition has three aspects: of guilt, of defilement, of death or helplessness. The work of grace which meets this will have, therefore, at least three forms. For guilt, there will be forgiveness; for defilement, cleansing; and for helplessness, new birth or life. The principle which we have several times stated will be helpful here. We can distinguish, but must not separate. The condition of man can be distinguished as having this threefold character, but one of these is never present without the other two. Thus, we cannot think of man being guilty, as having transgressed the commandments of God, without also being defiled and helpless. So, too, in the work of divine grace, we cannot think of pardon being extended, in the scriptural way, without its having been accompanied by quickening and cleansing. If this truth were always remembered we would be spared much confusion in endeavoring to divide asunder that which God has joined together.

The salvation, the glad tidings of which we have heard, is the deliverance or transfer of the person out of the old state and place in which we were in Adam into an entirely new place and relationship with God in Christ.

T. Certainly it does. But this is not peculiar to salvation. Other blessings of the gospel are spoken of in the same way. John says that He who believes in the Son has life eternal, but Paul speaks as in the hope of it (Titus 1:2). The righteousness of God is upon the believer (Rom. 3:22), but in Philippians 3 he counts everything in which he could glory in the flesh as rubbish, that he might be found in Him, not having on his own righteousness, but the righteousness of God by faith. Every blessing of the gospel is ours now in the grace of God, and in the power of the Spirit, but for the completeness of all blessings we await the coming of Christ. It is so with salvation. In 2 Timothy 1 we read, “Who has saved us, and called us with an holy calling;” and in Titus 3, “According to His mercy He saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and the renewing of the Holy Ghost.” Present salvation is the deliverance of the soul from the judicial consequences of its sins, from the dominion of sin, from the fear of death, from the power of the devil, and being brought into right relations with God in Christ.

Some may ask, “How can we control self?” The answer is blessedly simple: “I can do all things through Christ that strengthens me” (Phil. 4). Have we not gotten salvation in Christ? Yes, blessed be God, we have. And what does this wondrous word include? Is it mere deliverance from the wrath to come? Is it merely the pardon of our sins and the assurance of exemption from the lake that burns with fire and brimstone? It is far more than these, precious and priceless though they be. In a word, “salvation” implies a full and hearty acceptance of Christ as my “wisdom” to guide me out of folly's dark and devious paths, into paths of heavenly light and peace; as my “righteousness” to justify me in the sight of a holy God; as my “sanctification” to make me practically holy in all my ways; and as my “redemption” to give me final deliverance from all the power of death, and entrance upon the eternal fields of glory.

But salvation is also viewed in Scripture as a present thing, for we are spoken of as being already saved. In 2 Timothy 1:9, we read of “God who has saved us, and called us with an holy calling,” and in Titus 3:5, “according to His mercy He saved us,” and in Ephesians 2:5, “By grace ye are saved.” There is therefore a present aspect of salvation contemplated in Scripture, and this I take to be the emancipation of the soul from the oppression and bondage of every adverse and ruinous power, whether it be death, Satan, sin, the flesh, or the world. We find deliverance from death, and the Devil as the one who has the power of death, by faith in that which answers to the dividing of the Red Sea; and from the working of sin in the flesh, by that which answers to the brazen serpent; and from the world, by that which answers to the passage of the Jordan.

Accordingly then this is the great truth taught in Ex. 14; and it is here that God takes the place properly of Saviour-God. Salvation always means a great deal more than that my sins are judged in the death of Christ. Salvation means that I am brought consciously to know God in the triumph of redemption by Christ for me. Hence it will be found that in the doctrine of the New Testament there is never the allowance of such a thought as that salvation is only the beginning of the blessing. People not imbued with scriptural truth are often apt to talk of salvation in a slighting or at least superficial way. They speak of a person perhaps as "not happy; but at any rate he is saved." Never do we meet with language like this in the New Testament. Salvation means known conscious deliverance. It is not merely a good hope of being delivered, but that the person himself by grace has no doubt about it. Of this people often lose the true force by an unscriptural phraseology. Indeed the denial of salvation as a present status is part of the current coin of Christendom, and the truth is opposed in one way or another by the parties who otherwise oppose each other. Arminianism naturally resists it, as its doctrine causes salvation to turn largely on man's deserts; while Calvinism would consent to salvation in "the purpose of God" or some jargon of the kind, while meanwhile the object of it may have no comfort, nor solid footing whatever for his soul. Far removed from both is the truth and the language of scripture; and to scripture we must hold.

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.