Why do we need a Savior?

Let us dwell awhile upon this word "great." First, how great the need! The whole human race in revolt against its Creator! Jew and Gentile, high and low, rich and poor — all brought in guilty in the divine sight. No exceptions admitted anywhere; "there is no difference, for all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God" (Rom. 3:22-23). Moreover, no man naturally wishful for a different condition of things, for the carnal mind is enmity against God (Rom. 8:7); and to complete the tale of ruin no man able either to help his brother or save himself. How great, then, the need that God should intervene in mercy with salvation for His rebellious creatures.

When Adam sinned, he not only became guilty of disobedience, but the principle of sin entered into his nature, and he became estranged from God. Every child of Adam inherits his sinful nature with its enmity towards God, and is born in the distance from God. Coming down to Eden, after man's fall, God called to Adam, "Where art thou?" God had not only come to convict the sinner, and to pronounce His righteous judgment, but, in wondrous compassion, to seek the lost ones and rescue them from the consequences of their dreadful sin. Before men can be saved and brought near to God, they must first realise the enormity of sin, and be found in confession and repentance. A just and holy God cannot overlook sin; and the cross shows how God maintains His righteousness and holiness while pardoning the repentant sinner. There, the Lord Jesus Christ became the sin offering, and accomplished the redemption that enables God to offer pardon to every sinner.

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.

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.

Man's condition before God is that of a sinner — "all have sinned." He is a slave of Satan, a servant of sin, a breaker of God's laws, afraid of death; he knows nothing of the holy presence of God, and trembles at the sound of the Lord's return from heaven. Such are we all by nature. In this fallen condition God's pitying eye beheld us, His compassionate heart moved toward us; and knowing that His own Son, sent forth in the likeness of sinful flesh, and making atonement by the death of the cross, was the only way of redeeming man, and bringing him into liberty and blessing, in richest mercy this unspeakable gift was not withheld. God gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. Thus Christ went down into the sorrows and death of the cross to exalt sinful man to the heights of eternal glory.

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.

This is what is wrong with man, and it is clearly a state of things beyond all creature aid. Philanthropists and legislators may alleviate some of the details of man's condition, but the root is beyond them. The need is two fold. First, an absolutely new kind of life and nature. The Saviour said to one of the best of men, "Ye must be born again" (John 3:7). This is imperative for all who would dwell with God, flesh being irremediable. Then, in view of sins committed, there must be an atoning sacrifice. The one perfect offering of the Lord Jesus upon the cross of Calvary has met this deep need for all who believe in His name. "Christ has once suffered for sins, the Just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God" (1 Peter 3:18). Christ is the only resource both for God and the sinner. He who examines the problem of the world's condition, while ignoring the fall, is on the wrong scent altogether; and he who would benefit his fellows, while leaving out of his scheme the new birth and the precious atoning blood, is pursuing a chimera hopelessly.

It is doubtless very humbling to be told that we are naturally, even man in his best estate, poor lost sinners, and that do what we will we can never make ourselves acceptable to God; in fact that our condition is so desperate that nothing short of the death of God's Son could be of any avail as a remedy.

As fallen sinners they became the parents of the human race of whom God had to say, "There is none righteous, no, not one … there is none that does good, no, not one … there is no difference: for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God" (Rom. 3:10, 12, 22, 23). It will do us no harm to face the situation once more, and learn how terrible and complete the fall was. We learn from Romans 5 that we were "without strength, " "ungodly, " "sinners, " "enemies, " and from Ephesians 2, "children of disobedience, " "dead in sins, " "having no hope and without God in the world."

Certainly, there is not a soul who does not need forgiveness, though we do at times fall in with some of the ninety-and-nine just persons who judge that they have no need of repentance. But they are deceiving themselves. The wise man's words are all too true: "There is not a just man upon earth that does good and sins not" (Eccles. 7:20). The summing up of the Apostle is even more conclusive: "There is no difference, for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God" (Rom. 3:23). Such comprehensive language leaves no door of escape for any; the whole human family is brought thereby under the judgement of God. Moreover, from such a condition none can extricate themselves; no amount of human effort, as amendment of life, almsgiving, etc., can possibly purge away a single sin.