What is ultimate salvation?

Observe then that the gospel is preached for salvation, not to improve man in the flesh but to save him; not to help the efforts of nature religiously, but to bring him to God; for the obedience of faith not of all nations, but among all nations; it is not therefore preached to better the world, nor to convert the world, but it is the power of God unto salvation to individuals, to everyone that believes. Now the power of God unto salvation is very specific in its meaning, a large expression; for while the freeness of the grace of God is shown in its blessing to every one that believes, fulness is set forth in not stopping short in its blessing of planting the saved one bodily in the presence of God in heavenly glory. We know that we are "called unto his eternal glory by Christ Jesus," and that "he suffered for sins, the Just for the unjust that he might bring us to God." (1 Peter 5:10; 1 Peter 3:18.) Not but that it is quite correct now to speak of believers as "saved," for we have the salvation of our souls now by faith, as scripture says, "Receiving the end of your faith, the salvation of your souls." But we wait for salvation in its full sense, "The redemption of our body," "the salvation ready to be revealed in the last time," when in spiritual bodies, suited to heavenly and eternal glory, and conformed to the image of the Son, we shall be in full possession and enjoyment of this great salvation.

The gospel then is the power of God unto salvation, because in the cross of Christ the foundation was laid in righteousness for its accomplishment, according to the eternal purpose and grace of God, to give life and righteousness in Christ Jesus to every one that believeth. We have therefore, by the power of God in the gospel, deliverance from the wrath to come, remission of sins, present possession of eternal life, justification by the blood of Christ, peace with God, sonship, the gift of the Holy Ghost, hope of glory and much more. As the Father has made us fit for sharing the portion of the saints in light, we must wait for God's Son from heaven, for then we shall know the full power of God to us in this great salvation. Our hope then is glory. We do not hope for righteousness, for, as we have seen, the gospel reveals that Christ is our righteousness; but we hope for that to which righteousness established in the accomplished work of Jesus entitles us, even glory. "We, through the Spirit, wait for the hope of righteousness by faith." (Gal. 5:5.) "We look for the Saviour who shall change this body of humiliation, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working, whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself." (Phil. 3:20-21.) Then "salvation" will be fully consummated; and in this sense we can say, "Now is our salvation nearer [not surer] than when we believed;" because, as time rolls on, it hastens the blissful period of our Lord's return. Well has an apostle called it, "this great salvation." It will not then be only salvation from the guilt and dominion of sin, the salvation of the soul, and deliverance from the wrath to come; but salvation from this old creation and its belongings, from a body of frailty and infirmity, changed in a moment, and bodily translated into the presence of God and the Lamb for ever. Then, in uncreated light, we shall see His face; then we shall realise fully what we now apprehend so feebly, and sound forth so faintly, that "the gospel is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth." H. H. Snell.

Observe then that the gospel is preached for salvation, not to improve man in the flesh, but to save him; not to help the efforts of nature religiously, but to bring him to God; for the obedience of faith, not of all nations, but among all nations. It is not therefore preached to better the world, nor to convert the world, but it is the power of God unto salvation to individuals, "to every one that believeth." Now the power of God unto salvation is very specific in its meaning — a large expression; for while the freeness of the grace of God is shown in its blessing to every one that believes, fulness is set forth in not stopping short, in its blessing, of planting the saved one bodily in the presence of God in heavenly glory. We know that we are "called unto His eternal glory by Christ Jesus," and that He "suffered for sins, the Just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God." (1 Peter 5:10; 1 Peter 3:18.) Not but that it is quite correct now to speak of believers as "saved," for we have the salvation of our souls now by faith, as Scripture says, "Receiving the end of your faith, the salvation of your souls." But we wait for salvation in its full sense, "The redemption of our body," "the salvation ready to be revealed in the last time," when, in spiritual bodies, suited to heavenly and eternal glory, and conformed to the image of the Son, we shall be in full possession and enjoyment of this great salvation.

Salvation will get its full significance then. It is not the salvation of the soul, which we know now; it is not deliverance by His grace from the bondage of sin, which we are privileged to know now; it is not His sustaining us through various circumstances of our pilgrim path; but His full salvation, when He shall have His own way with us at last. Alas, we have not yielded ourselves up to His will as He would have us here; but when at last He shall have His own way with us, when He shall fashion our bodies of humiliation and make them like unto the body of His glory, according to the working whereby He is able even to subdue all things unto Himself, His full desires will be attained.

We are also quite free to say that salvation in its fullest sense looks on to the final deliverance from the very presence of sin — the consummation in heaven. There is also a governmental and external salvation; such, for instance, as is spoken of in our Lord's prophetic discourse: "He that endureth unto the end shall be saved." This, we need hardly say, does not refer to the salvation of the soul, but the deliverance from the Great Tribulation through which the Jewish remnant will be called to pass, with an indirect application to us also.

Still God has His means; and this the apostle proceeds next to tell us. It is "through faith." Nor can any means for a saint on earth compare with faith. For it beyond all others honours God and the word of His grace, needing dependence on the good Shepherd by the Holy Spirit, Who is sent here and dwells in the Christian, to guide into all the truth, and thus glorify Him by receiving of His and announcing or reporting it to us. Thus is it "by God's power," but "through faith" which gives Him His due place, and keeps us in our place of confidence in Him according to His word. For we walk through faith, not through sight (2 Cor. 5:7). It was not so that Israel marched through the wilderness, but guided visibly by the cloud or the pillar of fire. The Christian now, whether a Jew or a Gentile, has to walk through faith, of which the Lord Himself was the blessed pattern and perfection.

But the end is also added: "unto [or, for] salvation." In our Epistle, as often in the Pauline Epistles, salvation does not stop short of the final result. See Rom. 5:9-10; Rom. 8:24; 1 Cor. 5:5; Heb. 1:14; Heb. 7:25; Heb. 9:28. Hence when our apostle speaks of what is now given and enjoyed, he discriminates it as "salvation of souls" (1 Peter 1:9). Otherwise he connects salvation with the full victory of Christ even for the body; which therefore must look on to the future day.

The present salvation, which we need and get as believers, is of course based upon the death of Christ, but it actually reaches us by His priestly activities on our behalf as He lives for us on high. We are being "saved by His life" (Rom. 5:10); and inasmuch as He ever lives we shall be saved to the uttermost. We shall be saved completely, to the extremest point of time; to the moment when the last foe has disappeared, and we are beyond the need of any further salvation forever.

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.

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.

But now the people were no longer in their houses, eating the passover; they were simply called to "stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord." Thus, having witnessed His full deliverance, they could sing, "The Lord is my strength and song, and He is become my salvation." The judgement and passing by of sin does not comprise all the salvation of God; it is only the groundwork. When sin is forgiven, then comes a free space for God to accomplish His full salvation. He is not satisfied with simply meeting the demand of His own holiness; but now He wants to show me how completely He is for me. In the Passover, God manifested Himself as against sin; but there the blood of the lamb stayed the hand of the destroyer, while on the enemies of His people judgement was dealt, but dealt individually, on each first-born alone — the destroying angel entered the houses of the Egyptians to smite. But here it is a different thing: the enemies are now mustered in full force; and this is just the opportunity for God to show that He is for His people. In Romans 5 we have the fuller opening out of this truth in the death and resurrection of the Lord. We are apt to content ourselves with the very smallest measure of the blessing in which God has set us; but it is only and just according to our apprehension of this that we can be on God's side. I cannot be thoroughly for God, unless I see that God is thoroughly for me. So St. Paul reasons, "Much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by His life." (Rom. 5:10). This salvation then, is not in connection with the blood of Christ alone; it takes in all the triumph of resurrection that follows. True, the shedding of His blood was absolutely necessary, for "without shedding of blood is no remission." Christ's blood vindicated God amply and in every way, and was the fullest possible confession that we were guilty sinners, and that He is inflexibly righteous. But that is not all. When I look at Christ suffering, do I see the love of God towards His Son? The death of Christ for ever vindicates God; but in the resurrection God is vindicating His Son, and vindicating me through Him. He puts me in and with Christ, into the place where there can be no further question of sin.

'Receiving the end of your faith, the salvation of your souls' (1 Pet. 1:9; cf. 1 Cor. 15:2). Salvation of our souls is a present reality for those who through faith are linked with Christ risen and glorified,but it is only said of our souls. In this context, the salvation of our souls is a present gift that we have received. Faith already enjoys the relationship with Christ in the glory (1 Pet. 1:8). The salvation of the body comes later (Phil. 3:21).