Salvation
Notes
Transcript
BF&M
BF&M
IV. Salvation
IV. Salvation
Salvation involves the redemption of the whole man, and is offered freely to all who accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour, who by His own blood obtained eternal redemption for the believer. In its broadest sense salvation includes regeneration, justification, sanctification, and glorification. There is no salvation apart from personal faith in Jesus Christ as Lord.
A. Regeneration, or the new birth, is a work of God’s grace whereby believers become new creatures in Christ Jesus. It is a change of heart wrought by the Holy Spirit through conviction of sin, to which the sinner responds in repentance toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Repentance and faith are inseparable experiences of grace.
Repentance is a genuine turning from sin toward God. Faith is the acceptance of Jesus Christ and commitment of the entire personality to Him as Lord and Saviour.
B. Justification is God’s gracious and full acquittal upon principles of His righteousness of all sinners who repent and believe in Christ. Justification brings the believer unto a relationship of peace and favor with God.
C. Sanctification is the experience, beginning in regeneration, by which the believer is set apart to God’s purposes, and is enabled to progress toward moral and spiritual maturity through the presence and power of the Holy Spirit dwelling in him. Growth in grace should continue throughout the regenerate person’s life.
D. Glorification is the culmination of salvation and is the final blessed and abiding state of the redeemed.
Genesis 3:15; Exodus 3:14-17; 6:2-8; Matthew 1:21; 4:17; 16:21-26; 27:22-28:6; Luke 1:68-69; 2:28-32; John 1:11-14,29; 3:3-21,36; 5:24; 10:9,28-29; 15:1-16; 17:17; Acts 2:21; 4:12; 15:11; 16:30-31; 17:30-31; 20:32; Romans 1:16-18; 2:4; 3:23-25; 4:3ff.; 5:8-10; 6:1-23; 8:1-18,29-39; 10:9-10,13; 13:11-14; 1 Corinthians 1:18,30; 6:19-20; 15:10; 2 Corinthians 5:17-20; Galatians 2:20; 3:13; 5:22-25; 6:15; Ephesians 1:7; 2:8-22; 4:11-16; Philippians 2:12-13; Colossians 1:9-22; 3:1ff.; 1 Thessalonians 5:23-24; 2 Timothy 1:12; Titus 2:11-14; Hebrews 2:1-3; 5:8-9; 9:24-28; 11:1-12:8,14; James 2:14-26; 1 Peter 1:2-23; 1 John 1:6-2:11; Revelation 3:20; 21:1-22:5.
Memory Verse
Memory Verse
For God loved the world in this way: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.
Salvation defined
Salvation defined
The process by which God redeems His creation through the life, death, and resurrection of His Son Jesus Christ.
Overview
Overview
Salvation is the great theme of the Bible. The central focus of Scripture is that God saves sinners!
This single fact is the greatest news that can ever be told, and is the foundation upon which our faith stands.
Salvation is rooted in the character of God. The Father saves sinners, and judges with righteousness and perfect justice.
God presented him to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time, so that he would be just and justify the one who has faith in Jesus.
Because Sin entered the world through man’s disobedience, God required a sacrifice for that sin; but God also demonstrates His mercy by providing the sacrifice for sin: the only sacrifice that would be sufficient to actually cover the cost of the sin, His son Jesus.
Sin so radically changed the world that we cannot even begin to imagine the perfection that it was before the disobedience. Sin is why we have a need for salvation.
Now remember this: God is NOT sending people to hell; He is rescuing people hell. Picture it like this:
There was a boat, we were all on it. The boat sets off, and the Captain is told by his superior: you got the whole ocean, but avoid the northern route, its dangerous. Captain says ok, and gives the helmsman control of the vessel.
The boat strikes something in the water, and the boat begins to sink. Everyone is going to drown. But then the Coast Guard shows up and begins rescuing people, the only rule is they have to ask a question: do you want to be rescued? Believe it or not, this is exactly how it works for the CG! They have to ASK if you want to be rescued!
Now: who was driving the boat? MAN! So the helmsman was a human. The Captain was a human. The Superior was God. He gave the command, the command was ignored. Catastrophe struck. The Superior then sends the CG, to rescue people from the destruction that they brought on themselves.
The reality is that sin has a cost that we cannot pay ourselves, because our best is filthy!
All of us have become like something unclean,
and all our righteous acts are like a polluted garment;
all of us wither like a leaf,
and our iniquities carry us away like the wind.
Or as Paul says:
And you were dead in your trespasses and sins
The reality is simple: when you are floating in the middle of an open ocean, you are dead unless salvation comes.
Christ’s Atonement
Christ’s Atonement
Thankfully, that salvation has a name: Jesus, the Christ.
The reality is that man needed salvation because of man’s sin; and God provided that salvation in His son. Had God not sent Jesus to pay the price we could not pay, there would be no human story. It would be over.
The atoning work of Jesus IS the Gospel!
That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and he has committed the message of reconciliation to us.
For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
How did the atonement occur?
The CROSS! It stands at the very center of our faith!
See we call this Substitutionary atonement.
but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles.
Why do we preach Christ crucified? Because Jesus died in OUR PLACE!
For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted in every way as we are, yet without sin.
This is the beauty of it: Jesus was fully God, and yet became INCARNATE - fully man. He was tested and tempted, in every way, but remained sinless. AND THIS SINLESSNESS, is what makes Him the perfect sacrifice in our place. Perfect meaning complete.
So Jesus was complete in God, was perfect (complete in obedience), was Complete as a sacrifice, completely fulfilling the law and the requirements of the law, completely in our place: so “it is finished” it is COMPLETELY COMPLETE!
So the atoning work of Christ includes a few things; sinners are:
rescued
ransomed
purchased
liberated
FROM SIN
All of this hangs on the reality of the cross:
But God proves his own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
As baptists we stand on the reality that Jesus Christ obtained eternal redemption for believers “by His own blood”. This affirmation weaves together our understanding of both the OT and the NT.
For the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have appointed it to you to make atonement on the altar for your lives, since it is the lifeblood that makes atonement.
According to the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.
For this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.
The ONLY Way
The ONLY Way
The BF&M states that salvation is ‘offered freely to all who accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior”.
For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.
For God loved the world in this way: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.
The factor here is BELIEF!
Christians are believers in Christ; they believe what the Bible reveals about who he IS, why HE came, what HE accomplished, and what this means for sinners. In other words: saving faith is trusting faith, a belief that involves the entire person, not just intellect.
If you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
Believing in your heart is believing at the CORE OF WHO YOU ARE!
WT Conner
It is assuming the attitude of entire dependence on God. Nothing else is faith. Refusing to assume this attitude is what keeps man out of the kingdom of God.
Jesus is the ONLY WAY
There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to people by which we must be saved.”
Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
Aspects of Salvation
Aspects of Salvation
GRACE
GRACE
unmerited favor
For you are saved by grace through faith, and this is not from yourselves; it is God’s gift—not from works, so that no one can boast.
we do not deserve grace, we do not deserve salvation.
Timothy George
God’s grace is inexhaustible, irrepressible, overflowing. God is not stingy. God’s grace radiates its adequacy to meet the deepest needs of the vilest sinner who ever lived. There is no hell on earth so deep but that God’s grace can go deeper still.
FAITH
FAITH
Faith is always a volitional word. It is dynamic, never passive or lethargic. It moves; it marches; it is commitment. Faith is never intellectual assent or historical acknowledgment.
W.A. Criswell
Faith is a VERB - which is why in English the translation fails. There is no english word that properly translates to Faith. We Faith gets the mentality that it has here in the english world: something you have or something you haven’t. The reality is FAITH is a verb: it is something you do. So the best understanding would be something like: are you “FAITHING”?
Herschel Hobbs
Faith means to believe. But in its truest sense it is more than intellectual. It involved an act of the will whereby one trusts in Christ and commits oneself to him, to his will and way. It means to accept or receive Christ as Lord and Savior. Thus one will be brought to confess him as such.
Adrian Rogers
Here is how salvation works and the new birth comes about. I put my hand of faith in GOd’s hand of grace. It is not the daith that saves, it is the grace that saves. Faith just lays hold of grace. Think of Grace as God’s hand of love reaching down from heaven saying ‘i love you. i want to save you.’ It is a nail pierced hand because He has paid for our sins. Think of faith as your sin stained hand saying ‘God i need you. I want you’ And when you put your sin stained hand of faith in God’s nail pierced hand of Grace: THAT IS SALVATION!
Regeneration
Regeneration
“whereby believers become new creations in Christ”
Jesus replied, “Truly I tell you, unless someone is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, and see, the new has come!
because you have been born again—not of perishable seed but of imperishable—through the living and enduring word of God.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Because of his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead
Repentance
Repentance
godly sorrow for sin - a genuine turning away from what had once ensnared us.
Christ’s saving work in the believer becomes evident when they begin to hate the sin that had once loved.
We do not put enough emphasis on repentance.
Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, each of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
“Therefore, having overlooked the times of ignorance, God now commands all people everywhere to repent,
Instead, I preached to those in Damascus first, and to those in Jerusalem and in all the region of Judea, and to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God, and do works worthy of repentance.
Repentance of sin means that you change your thoughts and feelings about sin, and resolve to forsake sin and live for God.
Justification
Justification
God’s declaration of a believer as righteous through the blood of Christ.
God’s gracious and full acquittal of sinners who believe in Christ.
In justification God declares that, on the basis of the atoning death of Christ to whom we are joined by faith, we have paid the penalty of the law for our sins - death. Jesus, to whom we are joined by faith, died for us so that the penalty has been paid. We are forgiven, justified, declared righteous.
WA Criswell.
But to the one who does not work, but believes on him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited for righteousness.
God justifies the ungodly! That’s you and me!
Let’s continue to reinforce something:
Believers are justified by faith and faith alone! We add nothing to the work of Christ, and ALL of our works amount to nothing. We are justified through faith alone as God’s free and gracious gift, made possible by God’s declaration.
Sanctification
Sanctification
The position and process of holiness by which a believer is set apart by and for God.
You are SET APART - POSITION
You are growing into maturity as a Christian - PROCESS
Although by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the basic principles of God’s revelation again. You need milk, not solid food. Now everyone who lives on milk is inexperienced with the message about righteousness, because he is an infant. But solid food is for the mature—for those whose senses have been trained to distinguish between good and evil.
I am sure of this, that he who started a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.
Glorification
Glorification
The perfection of God’s image and character in believers when they enter God’s presence.
Glorification is the culmination of salvation and is the final blessing and abiding state of the redeemed.
For our momentary light affliction is producing for us an absolutely incomparable eternal weight of glory.
Dear friends, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet been revealed. We know that when he appears, we will be like him because we will see him as he is.
