Today's post is the first in a series of six in which I will focus on Salvation: creation's need for it, God's provision for it, and the ramifications of it. Enjoy!
“This is a statement that can be trusted and deserves complete
acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners,
and I am the foremost offender.”
I Timothy 1:15 - God’s Word
The Universal Need of Salvation
Salvation is a means to an end. The late Dr. Dean E. Walker was fond of saying, “Everything God has ever done, or ever will do, in human history can be summed up in one word: ‘Reconciliation.’” The apostle Paul implies exactly this in II Corinthians 5:19; "God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committee to us the word of reconciliation.” The apostle John wrote; "what we have seen and heard we are proclaiming to you also, that you also may continue having fellowship with us; and our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ” (I John 1:3 my translation).
What gives salvation its vital role in God’s reconciliation of the world to Himself is the fact that, prior to salvation, everyone is “dead in trespasses and sins” (Ephesians 2:1-3). There are no exceptions, “...for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). Technically, to trespass is to “go too far,” while to sin is to not go “far enough,” to fall short of the mark in the attempt function as an “image” of God and represent Him accurately. Since “the wages of sin is death¼” (Romans 6:23a), and all have sinned, we are all, without the saving work of Jesus Christ, in a “bunch of trouble.”
“Death,” in the Bible, is frequently not “terminal.” In Ephesians 2:1-3, Paul says that (before God saved us in Christ by His grace) we were all dead and that, being dead, we were walking around in trespasses and sin. More often than not, when “death” appears in the Scriptures, especially in the New Testament, it is describing our state of being alienated from God. Because we are at war with God, we are at war with one another and often at odds with ourselves-within-ourselves.
Logically, if the living God is going to reconcile us to Himself and at the same time reconcile us to each other and to ourselves-within-ourselves, the first thing He must do is break the vicious cycle of sin-unto-death. The Old Testament prophet, Ezekiel, wrote; “the person who sins will die” (Ezekiel 18:4: God’s Word). In the New Testament, the apostle, Paul wrote, “There is no difference between people. Because all people have sinned, they have fallen short of God’s glory” (Romans 3:22b: God‘s Word) “The reward for sin is death” (Romans 6:23a: God‘s Word). The process by which He breaks this vicious circle is what the Bible calls “Salvation, (sothria, soteria)” or “to be saved (sosai).” To grasp, and so to benefit from, this process, we will do well to see how it came about that a race of people created by a loving God to be his family have all become so drastically separated from Him as to be called “dead in trespasses and sin.” Reconciliation to God, to His people and to self-within-self begins with salvation.
It all started with Eve! That’s not a chauvinist statement designed to blame all our troubles on a woman. It’s a matter of Biblical history that Eve was the first human being to disobey God. It is also true that “just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all ”(Romans 5:12 Emphasis added).
In the beginning, God created both male and female human beings in His own image (Genesis 1:27-28). Whatever else is involved in being in the image of God, human beings were created with the ability, and thereby the responsibility, to make hard decisions; to choose between alternatives. God put His perfect pair in a perfect environment in a world He had called “very good.” He planned that we would be totally committed (by our own choice) to the doing of His will and that, consequently, we would be morally pure (Ephesians 1:4).
Because no one is positively good until they have had a chance to be bad, God gave Adam and Eve a simple test. In the center of their garden home, geometrically as far as He could get it from every other place they might be in the garden, God placed a tree. God told Adam that he was free to eat from any tree in the garden; but that he must not eat the fruit of this particular tree because when he did he would “surely die” (Genesis 2:7-9, 15-17).
No sooner had Eve joined Adam in the garden than Satan spoke to her through a serpent. There is no point wasting time debating about what the serpent was or how Satan spoke through him. What he said is much more important than what he was. He did for Eve what contemporary philosophy does for us. He denied that God had established moral absolutes! He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden?’”
Eve’s answer wasn’t entirely accurate. God had said, “From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you shall surely die.” (Genesis 2:16-16). Eve added to God’s word when she said to the serpent, “From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat; but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat from it or touch it, lest you die.’” God hadn’t forbidden the touching of the tree or its fruit, only the eating of it. Careless handling of His word always invites trouble!
“You will not surely die!” the serpent said to the woman. “Because God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good an evil.” What Satan said was the most clever and deceptive form of lying; a half truth. It was true that they would know good and evil. It was not true that disobeying God would make them “like God.” Quite the contrary. They were already in the image of God! That’s what Satan was trying to change. So, “When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that it the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate (Genesis 3:6).”
Satan’s deception of Eve was so effective he has been using it on people ever since. In the New Testament letter called First John, the apostle warns us against yielding to the same temptations; “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world” ( I John 2:15-16). In Eve’s temptation, the desires of the flesh were focused on the forbidden fruit as being “good for food.” The desires of her eyes responded to the esthetic beauty of the tree as a “delight to the eyes.” Her “pride of life” was stimulated when Satan brought her to perceive of the fruit as the means of being “like God.”
You and I face these same temptations every day. It is likely that every sin ever committed falls into one or a combination of the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes and the pride of life. When Jesus was “Tempted in all things as we are yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:17) it was when Satan confronted Him with these same human desires (Matthew 4:1-10).
After Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, God called them to account. He began by giving them a chance to confess; asking Adam if he had, indeed, eaten from the tree of which He had commanded him not to eat. Adam did not deny eating but, like most of us, he tried to blame someone else for his indiscretion. Since there was only one “somebody else,” “¼the man said ‘the woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me from the tree and I ate’ (Genesis 3:12).” Adam blamed Eve, and, by implication, God for his sin. Confronted by God, Eve also tried to pass the buck. Her excuse was, “. . . the serpent deceived me, and I ate” (Genesis 3:13b). “The devil made me do it!”
“Through one man,” wrote the apostle Paul, “sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned” (Romans 5:12). Adam opened the gate and we have all walked through it. We are not dead in sin because we have inherited Adam’s guilt, which we have not, but because we have followed his example!
Because this is true, everyone one of us is guilty before God and must answer for it. The Old Testament Prophet, Isaiah, put it like this, “All of us like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way” (Isaiah 53:6). Israel’s King David wrote, “The Lord looked down from heaven upon the sons of men, to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God. They have all turned aside; together they have become corrupt; there is none that does good, not even one” (Psalm 14:2-3).
The consequences are disastrous! Isaiah wrote, “ your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God” (Isaiah 59:2). The apostle Paul said to those saved by grace through faith in Christ, And you were dead in your trespasses and sins¼” ( Ephesians 2:1).
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