Why do I need to be saved?

It is very evident that a man who disbelieves in the Creator is not likely to believe in the Redeemer, and yet it is just because God, the Creator, is holy and must punish sin, and we His creatures are sinful and lost, that we need a Redeemer. We cannot put away our own sins—no amount of reformation or religiousness can atone for our guilt. The king upon his throne, the beggar upon the dunghill, the professor of morality in his chair, and the lewd sinner in the unspeakable slums—all alike need a Redeemer, a Saviour. It has been most solemnly said, “At every swing of the pendulum a soul goes into eternity. Between the rising and setting of every sun 43,000 souls are summoned before their Creator. Death is very busy, night and day, at all seasons, and in all climes.”

Salvation is only needed by those who are in distress or danger. It is not too much to say that the whole human family is in deadly peril through sin. Every member of our race enters the world morally poisoned; for who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? Not only this, but at the earliest possible stage each one enters upon a career of active transgression against God. Yet, though sin is exceedingly hateful in the eyes of God, the condition of the sinner does not excite His aversion, but rather His deep compassion and love. Hence Paul speaks repeatedly of Him as "God our Saviour." In His great mind a plan of salvation was formed even before sin made its appearance in this world.

If man is not lost, then the Lord Jesus needed not to come "to seek and to save that which was lost" (Luke 19:10). If a man could elevate himself by the exercise of his own will, and by good thus performed, back to God, then God needed not to send His beloved Son to suffer and die. But God has faithfully told us that we were not only lost and without any strength to do anything about it, but that we were morally dead - dead toward God - that there is not one movement of our hearts toward Him. (Romans and Ephesians.) Being thus in such a plight, we needed One to rescue us, to save us- and we needed the impartation of life, an entirely new life.

We speak of salvation - the grace of God that brings salvation. Salvation supposes something lost; if people are lost, I speak if the necessity of this salvation. It is not help we want, salvation meets what is lost. "How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation." It is not merely the change in people, though there is a change in all their ways, habits, and spirit. God had come down and met people in the condition they were in; they could not meet Him at all, but He brought them out of that condition. Christ died "the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God." We were away from God then, and God has been dealing with us to bring us to Himself, because we are not with Himself at all. The death of Christ has nothing to do with help; if He had not been the Son of God He would not have done it. The testimony we have of the Lord Jesus Christ is, "He came to seek and to save that which was lost."

What tidings for a man that is a sinner, and knows that he is at a distance from God, with the judgment of God hanging over him, to hear this verse! You see, my reader, we have sinned, and God must take notice of that sin, for "the wages of sin is death." No effort of yours or mine could put away that sin. Distance has come in between the soul and God, and nothing we could do avails to bridge over that distance.

And such, too, is man's real condition before God now. The bitten, dying Israelites present to us a touching picture of tens of thousands, yea, millions, around us now. Man has sinned. He is a sinner in a threefold sense. He is a sinner by birth, as a descendant of fallen parents; a sinner by practice, as having actually transgressed God's holy commands; and a sinner in heart, as having sin dwelling in him, so that he is inwardly desperately wicked. But more than this, for most persons have added to all these the crowning sin of not believing in the only-begotten Son of God — not receiving that Saviour whom God hath sent. The Holy Spirit has come to convict men that they are sinners, to show them that they are dead in trespasses and sins, and exposed to eternal death and condemnation. Surely nothing can be more hopeless than man's condition as under sin and death; nothing can be more helpless, because, with all his inventions to better his circumstances, he has never yet devised a remedy for death. He diligently projects moral schemes for lopping off the wide-spreading branches of outward infamy, but the stump still remains the stock of a corrupt tree. Man cannot devise a cure for death. He tries to smooth the dying pillow with the tear of sympathy, and refreshing cordials; he may embellish the corpse with the costliest ornaments, and the sweetest spices; he can make the most attractive display at the grave; he can garnish the sepulchre with skilful adornments; but he cannot cure the serpent's bite, he cannot triumph over death. He sees death all around him, and feels dying himself, and he is without strength and without hope in the world.

Sin separated man from God - God was no source of enjoyment at all. Responsibility man could not destroy, but he was cut off by the state of his soul from any enjoyment of God, and responsibility brought only fear; he sought enjoyment in what was beneath him and hated the One to whom he was responsible. Now "life" is employed in both these respects and death too, "She that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth"; we are "dead in trespasses and sins," being alive.

Every creature of God has its own nature, and of God’s creatures on earth man has a very distinctive nature that sets him apart from all others. Alas, sin has entered into the nature of man and has brought in all the ruin, decay, disease and death that we see all around. Scripture relates plainly that this was brought about by the sin of Adam and Eve, and that every child of Adam has inherited his sinful nature. Adam’s sin made him a guilty creature, and put him at a distance from God, but it also introduced into his nature an evil principle, sin, that had not been there before. The long centuries of man’s life upon earth have demonstrated the utter ruin of human nature, but the cross of Christ has not only shown that it is incorrigible, but there God condemned the sin that controlled, and formed part of, man’s nature as away from God (Rom. 8:3).

Only when we take a wide view of our fallen estate can we realize in an adequate way the complete havoc that has been wrought by sin, or the fulness of God's answer to it all which reaches us in the Gospel. We have already seen that sin has brought in: guilt, and so forgiveness must reach us; condemnation, so justification is needed; bondage, and we need redemption; alienation from God, so we need reconciliation; peril of many kinds, so we need salvation; profanation and pollution, so we need sanctification; corruption, which has affected the deepest springs of our nature, so we need the new birth.

The salvation of sinners has always been connected with blood-shedding and death. The reason is obvious. Sin's wages is death. The law of holiness and truth is, that the soul that sinneth, it shall die. Death, then, is God's just appointment to man, because he is a sinner. Man dies only because of sin. Death entered into the world by sin. The only way, therefore, of justly putting away sin was by death; and that no sinful man could die for the sin of another is clear, because he must die for himself. The Son of God, on whom death had no claim (because He knew no sin), was able to die for others. Nothing less than His death could save us, because we deserved death. Therefore, in matchless grace, Christ died for us — the just for the unjust. "He died for our sins;" and as the life of the flesh is in the blood, so the shedding of blood is spoken of, in Scripture language, as the laying down of life. Hence we are told that "it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul."