2-4-07
The Gospel

The need for salvation

The reason every human being needs salvation is because of sin and spiritual deadness (sin is any time you prefer something over God and spiritual deadness is the inability to appreciate God, love God, be in awe of God, desire Him, etc.). God is the greatest, most marvelous, wonderful, delightful, majestic and satisfying treasure there is. And so when you treat something else as though it were a greater treasure, you demean God. God has commanded that we not do that, and any violation of God’s command is evil. The summary of all His commandments is that we delight in Him, prefer Him and love Him above everything else including life itself. And any failure to do that is evil, and deserves punishment.
The punishment for sin is the removal of all of God’s blessing. And since all good comes from God’s blessing, the removal of all of his blessing is the worst imaginable torment. That is what hell is, and it is the just punishment for sin. Anyone who has ever committed even one sin deserves to go there for all eternity and will go there for all eternity with no chance whatsoever of ever getting out, unless he is saved from that. That is why we need salvation.
In our natural condition we are blind to how marvelous and wonderful and delightful and majestic and beautiful and desirable and satisfying God is. And as a result we are dead to Him. We are unresponsive to His glory – just like a blind person is unresponsive to a spectacular sunset. And the only solution is for God to bring us from that dead, blind condition to life and enlightenment. And the only way to avoid the punishment of eternal hell is to be forgiven for all our sin in Jesus Christ. That is the only way to know God.

What Salvation is

When God saves someone it happens in a moment of time, but a whole lot of amazing things take place during that moment. Some are things that happen in heaven and some are things that happen to you. In heaven your status, or standing with God changes, and on earth you are actually transformed into a new person on the inside.

Justification

The thing that takes place in heaven is called Justification. Justification is when God makes three astonishing declarations about you. First, He forgives all your sins, so you no longer have to suffer the just punishment of hell. Then He takes it a step further and actually declares you “not guilty” for all those sins.
Imagine being guilty of a capital crime and standing before a judge after having been sentenced to death and first the judge waives the death penalty, then he takes it a step further and actually declares you to be innocent! Those are the first two things God does when a person becomes a Christian – He forgives ALL your sins and then actually declares you innocent in His books. Then, God takes it another step beyond that and declares you not only innocent, but righteous – perfectly good!
If a human judge did all that we would want him removed from the bench, because he would not be a just judge. And God is perfectly just, so how can He take a guilty person who rightfully deserves hell, and waive the penalty, declare the person “not guilty” and then declare him righteous? The answer is God would be utterly unjust to do that and it would be evil if it were not for what Jesus did.
Jesus is none other than the Almighty, eternal, Creator – God Himself. And He loved the human beings He had created, but He also knew that it would be unjust to simply let them off the hook. Someone’s blood had to be shed. God could not act unjustly because perfect good cannot be evil. So here’s what He decided to do: He became a man. About 2000 years ago, after having existed as God in heaven for all eternity, He took on human flesh and was born into this world. He lived a perfect, sinless life – never sinned in deed, thought, motive, attitude or any other way a single time.
Then He took upon Himself the guilt of all our sin, and suffered all of God’s wrath and punishment on our behalf. That is what He was doing on the cross. So now that our penalty has been paid in full by Him, God can justly waive our punishment. And since He lived a perfect, sinless life, that made it possible for us to be considered righteous because when a person is saved, that person is placed in Christ in God’s eyes.
That means God takes all of your evil and credits it to Jesus’ account (which is why He suffered punishment), and then He takes all Jesus’ perfection and credits it to your account. That is how He can declare you not only innocent, but perfectly righteous in His sight with regard to your legal standing in heaven.
All that is justification – that’s the part that takes place in heaven. On top of that there are a bunch of amazing things that happen to you. He makes you a new person and gives you a new nature with new desires and new affections; He opens your eyes to how marvelous and wonderful and satisfying He is, so that you desire Him and are delighted by Him; He gives you spiritual life so you can know Him and have personal interaction with Him; He adopts you into His family as His son or daughter, and gives you His holy Spirit to live inside you; and His presence inside you changes you – more and more from the time you are saved until the day you die. He transforms you to become more and more like Jesus Christ. He enables you to enjoy His presence, so you love Him more and more; He gives you a spiritual gift (which is a special ability to serve Him in a way that is unique to you); and He gives you a calling – a special task that is yours to do in His service. He also unites you with the Church, making you our brother or sister - so much so that you are more closely related to us one second after you are saved than you are to your closest relative or friend who is not a Christian. 

How to be saved

What do you have to do to have all this take place? One word – faith. If you have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ you will be saved instantly and all those things described above will take place at that moment.

There are three parts to faith:

1) Knowing the truth about God. You have to be aware of who God is and what He is like – all these things described above about Jesus and salvation.

2) Agreeing with the truth. You must not only be aware of it, but you have to be fully convinced that it is true.

3) Trusting Jesus. If all you do is agree that the facts of the gospel are true, you are no different from the devil. He knows they are all true as well. To be saved you have to not only agree that they are true, but you have to personally trust Jesus Christ. That means you entrust yourself to Him. You place yourself in His hands. You place yourself completely at His disposal as your Lord and Master and Owner. You realize that your life belongs to Him and not to you, and so you let go of it and give it over to Him to do with as He wills.
People who don’t have genuine faith will not give up control of their lives to Jesus. They will maybe be pro-Jesus, and speak well of Him, and add Him in to their life, but they maintain control of everything. If Jesus says do this, but they think it would be better to do that, they will go the way they think is best because they do not trust Jesus enough to entrust their lives to Him.

The results

So how do you know if your faith is real? One way is by looking at your attitude about your sin. The Bible teaches that people who have true faith will repent over their sin. That means they will hate their sin, and it will grieve them so much they will turn their back on it and start going the opposite direction that they were going. Instead of going after those things they used to prefer to God, they turn around and pursue God as their highest treasure. If a person does not do that – he is not willing to give up his pursuit of sin - that shows that he does not really believe God is the highest treasure, which means he does not have real faith and is not saved.
This is not to say you will be perfect in your pursuit of God. But it is to say that at the level of resolve, it is your intention and desire to forsake sin and follow after God as your highest treasure and delight. Some people were alarmed at my statement, “If there is anything in your life more important to you than Jesus Christ, you are not a Christian.” That statement is true, but don’t misunderstand it. I do not mean by that that you will live a perfect life so you will never prefer anything above God again. But I do mean that it is your resolve to do so.
You can compare becoming a Christian to getting married. When a man marries a woman he is making a total commitment of himself to her. He is giving himself to her completely for the rest of his life. So he is making a full commitment, but not a perfect commitment. Throughout his married life he will fail again and again in being fully committed to his wife. Becoming a Christian is like that. It doesn’t take a perfect commitment (or else no one could be saved), but it does take a total commitment. If someone comes to God and says, “God I believe the gospel and I want to be saved, but I am not willing to give up this sin or that sin,” that person cannot be saved. That’s like a man who says to his girlfriend, “Yes, I’ll marry you but I have no intention of moving out of my other girlfriend’s house.” God will not accept a person on those terms, because it shows there is no true faith.
Now be careful – don’t let this part confuse you. If you have a desire and willingness to forsake your sin and give it up, that willingness to do that is not what saves you. That does not earn you anything at all. It does not save you. It does not make you deserve anything good. It is only the evidence that you have faith. You can’t do anything to earn or deserve salvation. And if you think you can, you can’t be saved. 
The only thing that can possibly save you is God’s grace. And the only way to get God’s grace is through faith.  And once you have faith, the result of that will be repentance. So repentance does not save you, but if you are unwilling to repent it proves that you are not saved. 

Questions:
1.	Does the experience above describe what has happened in your life?

2.	Is there anything you would not be willing to do even if you knew for sure the Bible said you should do it?