what is salvation for christians

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.

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.

The truth is, the salvation of God is a perfect salvation, a work worthy of Himself. It is not a patchwork of the old order; there is no tinkering with the old nature, no attempt to disinfect the evil from the flesh: it is new birth, new life and nature; sins put away, and the nature that the sins sprang from condemned in the unsparing judgment of the cross; it is life, relationship, and being, in the last Adam the heavenly Man, with the Holy Spirit given to dwell in us, as the power by which all our new and eternal relationships with God are enjoyed.

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?

The Lord Jesus is in every way the Saviour, not from divine punishment only but from sins. In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of offences according to the riches of God's grace. But in Him we have life also, life eternal, for He is the Son, and gives nothing less than this life to everyone that believes on Him. And life in Christ is the indispensable basis of the new nature, and of our new relationships and duties, affections and privileges, crowned since redemption with the indwelling Spirit for the Christian and for the church, that both might have an immediate link with God and power from Him.

The personal character of present salvation should therefore be laid hold of by us. It is of the last importance to do so in these days of departure from the truth, and apostasy from the faith. To be saved, is to be saved! To be unsaved, is to be lost! The final issue is fast approaching! The coming of the Lord draweth nigh! The lights of the oil-less lamp-holders are going out! Those who “have not received the love of the truth that might be saved” (2 Thess. 2:10) will soon be carried away by the strong sweeping currents of error, “that they should believe what is false, that all might be judged who have not believed the truth, but have found pleasure in unrighteousness” (v. 12). God has no pleasure in this, but desires rather that “all men should be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim. 2:4). The Son of God came not to judge the world, “but that the world through Him might be saved” (John 3:17 and 12:47). Upon the cross He bore the believer’s sin, and the judgment that those sins deserved; moreover, He was raised again from among the dead for their justification. On the basis of that work the believer is saved, for it is on account of this God righteously forgives sins, and the gospel brings “the knowledge of salvation … by the remission of their sins” (Luke 1:77). The first person outside of Judaism to be reached by the glad tidings was Cornelius. He heard words whereby he and all his house were saved (Acts 11:14). Those words pointed him to Christ, through whose Name everyone that believes on Him receives remission of sins (10:43). Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, for grace alone could meet the need of such; and while It is truly by the grace of God such are justified freely, through the great redemption which is in Christ Jesus, it is likewise true, we are “saved by grace” (Eph. 2:5, 8); not on the principle of works, so that none might boast. Grace is in Christ Jesus, and so is salvation (2 Tim. 2:1, 10). This latter is obtained there through faith, whether in regard to judgment, enemies, state, adverse influences, this present evil world or age. “Neither is there salvation in any other.”

Salvation is presented in the New Testament in a threefold way. (1) It is a PRESENT thing, in the sense of acceptance with God. The Christian is now "in Christ," and is consequently beyond condemnation, justified and reconciled. He stands in the divine favour now and for ever, and is loved as Christ is loved. So we read in Eph. 2:8. "By grace ye are saved through faith." In 2 Tim. 1:9 also: "God who has saved us." The Spirit's use of the present tense in these passages should dissipate every unbelieving doubt and fear. Doubts and fears are an insult to the love of God and a dishonour to the work of the Lord Jesus.

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.

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.