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.

Unharried

The average modern Christian lives chaotically.  She goes from one activity to another, accomplishing countless chores and feeling the weight of ten thousand demands without a shred of the peace and contentment Jesus possessed as He went about His Father's business.  Jesus did not separate what He did from what His Father was doing through Him.  The reason is that He refused to disengage Himself from the Father relationally or psychologically.  It was not theological fluff when Christ said that He and the Father were one.  Our Lord worked at this oneness and developed it so that it was habitual.  His times on the mountain established the oneness but so did His turning inward to the Father as He ate, talked with the disciples and the Pharisees, sat on the well in a Samaritan village and strolled along the edge of the lake.  He kept His mind aligned with the Father wherever He was and refused to let the lusts of the world disrupt that connection.  There are two temptations of Satan that knock us off our block.  We want what isn't ours and we don't want what God bestows.  The struggle in our head is a violent one.  Do we believe that our Lord loves us absolutely and that His will for us is perfect and good?  When we question those two axioms of scripture we lose our bearing with God and strike out on our own.  At that point we begin to operate as the Israelites in the time of the Judges, "everyone did as he saw fit."  If you want the peace that "passes understanding", then you must doggedly remain aligned with the same God who provides that peace.  Stay attached to the Lord at every level and at all costs.  Habitually thank the Lord for what you have and what you encounter at the moment, whether it seems good or bad to you.  The gratitude of the saint is her greatest defense against depression, anxiety and conflict.

Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful.     Colossians 3:15 NIV

Taken Apart

When God begins to work in us, He leaves no stone unturned.  He takes apart our entire personality bit by bit and regenerates it by fire.  From head to toe, where sin has marred us and warped our being, our Savior gets in there and goes to work.  Paul called it "being crucified in Christ".  James labeled it "the testing of your faith".  Peter spoke of it as "judgment" that starts with the "family of God".   John the Baptist described the work of Christ as that of baptizing "you with the Holy Spirit and with fire." Jesus called it a pruning.   God will not let go of us until we are a holy people who love with the same love Christ loved us.  It is a shame that so many speak only of the blessings of God without including within those blessings the purifying work of our Lord to make us free of Sin and righteous not just by decree but in actual day to day living.  There comes a point when we must decide if we really want to be wholly God's or if we are satisfied with the world having a part of us too.  The Lord won't force Himself upon you.  He won't tackle you and make you beg mercy.  He lets you go on your way but if you are born again, you will never be settled with the corrosive effect of sin working through you; you will want it out of you and it is then that a transaction occurs.  It will be your life for His.  You give God your life and He gives you His and God, like a surgeon, begins to go at all the damage your sin has caused you and others.  Meticulously He works on the habits you have developed that make you impure.  He grinds down the thought patterns that corrupt your actions.  The burdens that you grip with terrible force that other sinners have placed on your shoulders, He lifts from you.  God will not be satisfied with you until He has given you a "clean bill of health" and you are holy.  You may not even realize what our Lord has done for you until it suddenly dawns on you what a new person you are; that you are really transformed and have all the earmarks of Christ in you, the hope of Glory.

And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.     2 Corinthians 3:18 NIV

New

A year is full of promise.  Everything is new and fresh about the days coming because "anything can happen" in them and yet we all know that we are full of calcified habits and mummified behavior patterns that we rarely undo.  Extra weight almost always stays on us; trapped in a body of routine.  It is the crisis that awakens us to change.  The crisis comes like a lightning bolt, the new day like a wave of the sea.  Inexplicably we welcome the wave and despise the bolt.   The pink slip and the cancer diagnosis we dread and yet they carry with them a hope we don't have in the new day.  Something must change when the lightning strikes and it does.  We see people from a different angle, think of our habits with critical awareness.  The person we took for granted morphs into a trusted friend; the walk in the park becomes alive with brilliant colors we hadn't noticed.  Not everything turns grey when the lightning strikes, sometimes neon green and strawberry reds explode out from the shadows.  Satan engineers a crisis when he is afraid we have begun to inch our way back to God but he miscalculates.  He thinks he wrecks us with the stormy blast but in fact the drenching rain can awaken us to what we have missed, what we might have if we just turn the boat around.  The old term "backslidden" describes the vast majority of us.  We have fallen back into our old crusty patterns of Godless doing.  We have stopped looking to Him for guidance, given up our electrifying dependence upon God for help and gotten by on mindless habitual religion rather than living faith.  Perhaps today you could cast your habits to the wind and do something wildly new with God.  Scream into the stars your praise.  Throw all the money you have in your wallet into some stranger's hand and invest in love rather than something more reasonable and rational.  Lock yourself in your room and sit with God until you are thoroughly uncomfortable and bored to tears.  Confess your hidden sin and make right your wrong.  Take someone's hand and pray for her.  Finally forgive your father or your coach that despised you.  Read out loud an entire chapter of the Bible and make each sentence pop with the joy of an angelic choir.  This is a fresh new day God has given you!  Make the most of it!

Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail.  They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.  I say to myself, "The Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for him."  Lamentations 3:21-24 NIV

Association of Habits

Hebrews 10:25 NIV

Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another — and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

What Smell Do You Always Associate With God?

When I was in high school I joined the “Ecology Club”.  The care and protection of the earth was just beginning to be popular and although I did not have any deep thoughts about the preservation of the Rain Forrest, there were a few cute girls in the Ecology Club and the Ecology Club used to go on cool hikes and so I became an “Environmentalist”.  Our club sponsor was a shy, unassuming biology teacher who was not the most exciting of lecturers but had great ideas for hiking excursions.  One time we went to Point Reyes and one of my good friends went into the outhouse to take care of his business.  The biology teacher with all of us standing nearby snuck up to the outhouse and opened a little hatch, pointing to everyone to be quiet.  We all gathered about and he took one pebble, then another and dropped them down the hatch.  If you listened carefully, you could hear them make a splash.  Of course, the splash had a particular direction to it…right up the opening where the toilet seat rested.  Before long we heard my friend screaming…”stop it!”  “What are you doing?”  “Whoever is doing that, stop it now!”  We all were laughing so hard tears were streaming down our cheeks!  Another of our trips was to Sunol Regional Park where we, using shovels and picks, helped create part of the haystack trail.  The memory of those trips brought such warm feelings even after high school that when I bought a car while in college I used to drive up to the park with the top of my car down blaring out my latest 8-track, “Running on Empty” by Jackson Brown.  The result is that I cannot hear “Running on Empty” without immediately thinking of Sunol Park and the hikes through the hills with the ecology club.

Our mind is wonderfully designed to link associations together.  The brain connects good and bad memories with certain smells, sounds or tastes and whenever we taste certain tastes or smell certain smells, specific events almost always come to mind.  We all have certain associations etched in our mind.  I cannot hear the song “In-A Godda-Da-Vida” without thinking of typing class my sophomore year in high school and the smell of fresh bread cooking always reminds me of camping trips into the Sierra Nevada Mountains.  Do you have a certain memory associated with the sunset?  What comes to mind when you smell bacon cooking or bite into a ripe peach?  Does the smell of hot coffee brewing wring out of you a certain memory or bring to mind a particular person?  Perhaps the sound of a siren blaring or the screech of tires or the purring of a cat awakens a long lost memory for you.  Have you ever been jarred into the past by certain songs, foods and perfumes that are tied to key moments in your life?

Some associations are intentional, most are unplanned and sometimes even unwanted.  Many of us do not pay particular attention to the associations fixed in our minds but perhaps we should.  Maybe there are some connections that we would love taken out of our memory banks and some that are helpful to us.  What if we could create useful memory associations that could help us build better lives?  What if every time we smelled a certain smell, it led to us acting kindly or when we taste a certain food we became calm and full of joy?  Is it possible to organize the associations we have so that they help us become more godly and patient and full of love?  It seems clear that God’s people in the Bible often understood the value of being in control of associations they developed.  In 2 Kings 4 is the most interesting case study of Elisha and a Shunammite woman who was apparently barren or perhaps her husband was infertile.  The couple kindly built an upstairs bedroom for the prophet Elisha to stay whenever he came through town and it became a regular resting spot for him.  One day, as Elisha was relaxing on the bed in that upper room, he thought about how kind this couple had been to him so he asked his servant to go get the Shunammite woman and bring her upstairs.  While she stood in the doorway, Elisha announced to her that she and her husband would have a son within the next year.  This childless woman could not believe what he told her.  Was this God’s promise to her?  She feared it was too good to be true but it turned out just as the prophet said it would.  God gave the couple a son and he was the joy of her life.  Periodically Elisha would return to the upper room and stay there in that upper room and the bed where Elisha slept became for the Shunammite woman associated with God and his love and power.  When her precious son suddenly died, what did she do?  She placed his dead body on Elisha’s bed in the upper room.  She did not set him down anywhere else but on Elisha’s bed because it was in her mind connected with God and it was God she needed most.  And of course, God further cemented that association between the Lord’s grace and the upper room and Elisha’s bed when after getting the prophet to return with her to her home, God through Elisha raised the dead boy from the dead on that very bed.  Why of all places did the woman leave her son’s dead body on Elisha’s bed?  It is because there was a clear connection in the Shunammite woman’s mind between faith in God and that specific place in her house.

So too it was with the fisherman disciples, and we have evidence of it, that Jesus Christ formed a deeply etched association for them.  One of their earliest encounters with Him and perhaps it was the earliest, was at the shore of the Sea of Galilee where Jesus was teaching a small group of people.  It got to be too many crowding around him though so he picked one of the boats at the edge of the water and stood in it and gave the rest of His sermon.  When Jesus finished speaking, He told Peter, the owner of one of the boats, "Put out into deep water, and let down the nets for a catch."  (Luke 5:4 NIV)  Peter’s reply was much like ours might have been if we already had been trying to catch fish all night without success.  "Master, we've worked hard all night and haven't caught anything. But because you say so, I will let down the nets." (Luke 5:5 NIV)  What happened next forever became etched in the minds of all the fishermen gathered about Jesus.  They all did go out into the deep water, put down their nets and shockingly, the nets quickly filled with fish.  When they had done so, they caught such a large number of fish that their nets began to break. So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them, and they came and filled both boats so full that they began to sink.  When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at Jesus' knees and said, "Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!"  For he and all his companions were astonished at the catch of fish they had taken… (Luke 5:6-9 NIV)

If we fast-forward three years to just after the resurrection, we find many of these same fisherman-disciples gathered once more at the Sea of Galilee and they were in some ways perplexed with Jesus since He had been raised from the dead.  Curiously, He wasn’t always recognizable to them even when in plain sight.  But then something would happen and they could see who He was.  They could never plan ahead when He would come to them and they didn’t know what to make of His several appearances.  Was He going to keep doing this the rest of their lives?  They didn’t know and it must have bothered them…this constant uncertainty about Jesus.  The men had been fishing all night to no avail and they were tired and frustrated and making their way back to shore when somebody at the water’s edge called out to them to throw their nets on the right side of the boat.  They took the recommendation seriously and when they did throw their net on the right side of the boat, there was such a large number of fish in the nets that they could not haul them into the boat.  It was then, when the association of the great number of fish and Jesus clicked in John’s mind that John immediately recognized the man on the shore.  It was Christ Himself.  The association that Jesus placed in him the day he met Christ the first time on the shore of Galilee had its effect.  Nets full of fish and Jesus Christ were connected in John’s mind; perhaps even for all of them there and the association was used by God to make Jesus recognizable.  Never again could the disciples see a net full of fish and not recall how great Jesus Christ was and how wonderful was His love for them.

Jesus used the law of association to remind us of God’s personal care for us by telling how little flowers of the desert rise up in the morning and then are gone the next day.  He said that they are beautifully clothed by God and it is obvious they are.  If God treats little flowers that lovingly, how much more does He care for you and me and give thought to our needs.  So why would we ever begin to worry about things.  God will take care of us regardless how our circumstances look.  "And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin.  Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these.  If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? (Matthew 6: 28-30 NIV) Every time we see little flowers, we can and ought to associate them with the provision of God and remember never to worry. 

The psalmist applied the law of association and habit to prayer by building a practice of praying in the morning.  In the morning, O Lord, you hear my voice; in the morning I lay my requests before you and wait in expectation. (Psalm 5:3 NIV)  By putting into habit praying in the morning he began to associate the presence of God with the first breath of morning.  Every morning for at least that time when the sun was creeping up above the horizon, he thought about God, and trusted God and committed himself to holy living. More than that, the morning light reminded him to pray.

What if we did something like this…what if we forced associations into our habits so that we might become alert to God and what He is saying to us and what He is doing through us?  What if every time we brushed our teeth, we said the Lord’s Prayer?  We would begin to associate our toothbrush with God’s protection and love.  What if we read a bit of scripture before we turned the key to our ignition?  Our car would become a place we associate with God’s presence.  What if on our computer we put a verse that proclaims God’s wisdom about the day?  When we go to our internet sites, there will be an association linking our computer to the Lord’s holy direction.  Could we, whenever we first sit in our office chair whisper a word of praise for all the good God is going to do through us?  Soon we will see that chair as our meeting place with Jesus and it will come to mind that when we sit in that chair, we are on mission for God there.  What if we lit a scented candle in our house that smells of apple pie or strawberries and when we do so we pray for God’s peace to rest in our house?  Every time we smell that smell somewhere else it will bring us to God and His calmness will be restored to our chaotic day.  Perhaps every Thursday we could pour a glass of grape juice and pause a moment and think with a short burst of concentrated effort upon Christ’s blood poured out from His body on the Cross and how great His love is for us. Every time we see grape juice or taste it, we will be comforted to know God is merciful toward us and no matter what others think of us or how badly they criticize us, we are treasured and loved by Christ.  The common parts of our day can become switches that flip on for us in our minds God’s joy and peace and they can encourage us that if Jesus Christ is for us and really for us, what reason is there for us to worry about anything we face.  Our habits can become the most holy of habits that fill us with the joy of Jesus Christ during the common parts of our day.