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.
