What Is Salvation?

 Romans 3:23 NIV

…for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…

Why Does Salvation Matter?

One of the more fascinating developments in my lifetime has been the intellectual elimination of sin in our culture. It seems that very few want to acknowledge the category of sin as a real and definable set of behaviors and it rarely is discussed as a topic either in university classes, on daytime TV or in movies.  Yet the behaviors of sin are universally disliked.  If someone steps outside on a chilly Thursday morning and discovers the car he planned to take to work is stolen, he is upset.  If a mom brings her daughter to the emergency room and the child’s surgery is botched because the physician on duty was drunk, she is furious.  A drug dealer who has almost no scruples and seems to be devoid of a conscience will not tolerate for a minute a break-in to his apartment and the theft of his stash of money.  We may find few in our world who believe in sin but nearly everyone has some idea of what is wrong and what behaviors should not be tolerated.  There may not be consensus on what sins are sins but there is near universal acknowledgement that wrong is wrong and really wrong and that our world has lots of wrong in it.  The biggest question facing our world is, “How do you fix the wrong in our world?”

Salvation is equally disregarded and misunderstood in our culture.  Part of the problem is the way the term salvation is used.  Is salvation a winning touchdown or entrance into a prestigious college?  Would you be talking about the affection of a girl you like or getting the winning lotto ticket if you spoke of your “salvation”?  There is nothing like consensus of what salvation is!  You might not even see any reason for being saved if your life is going pretty well.  Salvation is one of the most important terms in Christianity however and even the name “Jesus” has built in it the idea of salvation.  What really is salvation though and why does it matter?

A widely held belief about salvation is that it is all about getting into heaven.  Heaven is popularly viewed as the “big ticket item” when God offers salvation to us.  Yet when the angel spoke with Joseph about Mary becoming pregnant with God’s Son, he was told that the child was to be called “Jesus” because he will save his people from their sins." (Matthew 1:21 NIV)  No mention is made of heaven; salvation is all about rescue from sins.  In explaining why they could not stop talking publicly about Jesus, the disciples proclaimed Christ’s mission.  The God of our fathers raised Jesus from the dead — whom you had killed by hanging him on a tree. God exalted him to his own right hand as Prince and Savior that he might give repentance and forgiveness of sins to Israel. (Acts 5:30-31 NIV)  The Old Testament makes the same connection between salvation and sins.  Help us, O God our Savior, for the glory of your name; deliver us and forgive our sins for your name's sake. (Psalm 79:9 NIV)  The Savior, or to put it another way, the one who brings salvation, came to deliver humanity from the wreckage of sin because that is the great crisis of every human life.  It was not that we needed heaven that drove God to save us, it was that we needed deliverance from Sin.  Whenever salvation and heaven are linked in Scripture, heaven is not the object of salvation but rather the source of salvation.  But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body. (Philippians 3:20-21 NIV)  Salvation comes from the God of Heaven.  Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved." (Acts 4:12 NIV)

The great truth that no one ever discusses is that the most unifying factor within humanity, that which is more important than any other common link between us is the sin we all possess.  The Apostle Paul expresses this plainly.…for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…(Romans 3:23 NIV)  Every one of us sins and every one of us is completely corrupted by Sin.  Psalm 38 presents the most complete picture found anywhere in literature of the impact Sin has upon each person.  O Lord, do not rebuke me in your anger or discipline me in your wrath.  For your arrows have pierced me, and your hand has come down upon me.  Because of your wrath there is no health in my body; my bones have no soundness because of my sin.  My guilt has overwhelmed me like a burden too heavy to bear.  My wounds fester and are loathsome because of my sinful folly.  I am bowed down and brought very low; all day long I go about mourning.  My back is filled with searing pain; there is no health in my body.  I am feeble and utterly crushed; I groan in anguish of heart.  All my longings lie open before you, O Lord; my sighing is not hidden from you.  My heart pounds, my strength fails me; even the light has gone from my eyes.  My friends and companions avoid me because of my wounds; my neighbors stay far away. (Psalm 38: 1-11 NIV)

Paul states emphatically that the worst result of Sin is that it brings us death.  For the wages of sin is death… (Romans 6: 23 NIV)  Sin in any shape and look, whether it is a “small sin” or a perverse “big sin”, results in death.  When the Bible speaks of death in the sense Paul uses it in Romans, it is ruin of life in every sense imaginable.  The culmination of death is the destruction of the physical body and the absolute absence of God’s presence.  Before that though, death through sin is exactly what Psalm 38 describes.  It is oppression of the heart…depression, anger, bitterness and animosity.  Death by Sin is the oppression of the body…illnesses, injuries, genetic diseases, congenital birth defects.  Death by Sin is the inability to be content, the loss of peace with what one has, the worry and stress over what may come to pass.  Death by Sin is the fractured relationships and loss of love.  Sin brings death and death is more than a corpse in a coffin, it is the debasing of life.   We see death by sin in hospitals, prisons, foster care systems, divorce courts and mental institutions.  Death by Sin is what we all face each and every day.

Humanity has searched in a million different places to mask the effect of death by Sin.  Alcohol and drugs have been used for centuries to cover the mess.  Entertainment can only hide what is there for a limited amount of time.  The rush for success and exchanging of one friendship or partner for another when death by Sin has run its course through relationships have worked for a while but every effort at shaking off death by Sin fails eventually.

It must remembered, and this point cannot be stressed enough if we are to take seriously enough death by Sin, that we are not just talking about the impact of our own sins upon ourselves but also the effect of the sins of others on us too.  The psychological component to death by Sin is illustrated perfectly in the ugly jealousy of Moses’ brother Aaron and sister Miriam.  They were enjoying tremendous prosperity.  Having come from a humble household, they were elevated to leaders in the Hebrew community when God made Moses the director and prophet of the entire nation.  They had escaped Egypt and now were making their way to the land God promised his people.  Moses trusted them and their counsel.  Miriam was the leader of the women of Israel and Aaron the high priest.  Yet something happened to them that made them crave more power.  Sin wrecked the personality of each of them so much that they initiated a rebellion against Moses.

Miriam and Aaron began to talk against Moses because of his Cushite wife, for he had married a Cushite.  "Has the Lord spoken only through Moses?" they asked. "Hasn't he also spoken through us?" And the Lord heard this. (Numbers 12:1-2 NIV)  Aaron and Miriam were probably nice people who you would have liked having as friends.  It was Miriam who helped save her brother Moses when he was a new-born from being murdered by Pharaoh’s soldiers.  Perhaps they both thought they were protecting their country from Moses’ bad policies but God did not consider their rebellion justified.  In fact, He was so angry with their actions that Miriam was immediately struck with leprosy and Aaron could have been next.  What wreckage within could lead to such a colossal act of spite on Aaron’s and Miriam’s part?  We cannot say how their upbringing impacted them or what sorts of pain they suffered as adults but we do know that somewhere they accumulated a tremendous amount of damage to their personalities that they could with such ease turn on their brother who had done so much for them.  I have had people treat me pretty terribly who I have helped and encouraged and you probably have too.  Yet I too have been horrible and hurt those I have loved and I cannot blithely wave off the consequences of my actions.  I don’t look at myself as a troubled or demonic person but I have acted like one at times.  My personality is wrecked by sin too just as yours is and we cannot fix what is wrong with us.

Jesus Christ did not die on the Cross in order to move us from a bad location to a wonderful one.  He died to remake us in every single way.  Our personality is completely ruined by Sin and no amount of effort will make us right.  Being in Heaven cannot fix us and Earth certainly won’t.  We need a Savior to take our Sin from us and make us new; a Savior who was without Sin who could be punished for our Sin and not His own.  There are thousands upon thousands of ways Sin has to be removed from us.  Sin has to be taken out of our habits.  It has to be taken out of our emotions.  It has to be taken out of our memories and out of what makes us happy.  Sin has to be removed from the way we think about things and how we react to what we face.  Sin has to be taken out of our relationships and out of what motivates us.  As long as Sin is part of us, we are condemned to death by Sin.  But with a Savior, all of our Sin gets worked out of us and we are brought into perfection…perfection of how we act and how we think.  There is nothing we need more than our Sin taken out of us and no gift of God is greater than the removal of our Sin and His recreation of us into Sinless people who live forever in complete peace and untainted joy with God within a sin-free creation.