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! I. Introduction
After some of the hurricanes in the southern United States, we have seen images of people, like that above, of people who were stranded and waiting for help.
The man in this picture clearly cannot help himself, is in great trouble and needs someone to rescue him.
That is the bottom line of salvation.
We are in great trouble, need help and God has provided it.
This morning, we will examine what our confession of faith says about salvation.
Please read the confession of faith article with me.
/We believe people are saved by grace through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
The basis of this salvation is Christ’s life, His atoning death and His resurrection.
Justification, the new birth and the transformed life come about through repentance and faith in Christ.
His atonement covers children until they reach the age of accountability (II Samuel 12:22-23; Matthew 18:1-14; Mark 10:13-16; Luke 24:47; John 1:9-13; 3:3-8, 15-18; Acts 4:12; 20:21; Ephesians 2:1-10; James 2:14-24)./
/We believe it is the privilege of all Christians to know that they have passed from death to life and that God can keep them from falling.
Faith and obedience are essential in maintaining this assurance and growth in grace (John 8:31-32; Romans 8:14-17; Galatians 3:11; II Corinthians 5:21; I Peter 1:5-11; I John 3:14; 5:13)./
!
II.
We Need Help!
Greg stated it well last week.
He presented to us the fact that we are desperately in need of help.
The first thing we need help with is that we are sinners.
The Bible says in Romans 3:23, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” We are not what God intended us to be and we miss what God has for us because of our sin.
We are under the power of sin and don’t seem to be able to get out from under it.
At its core, sin is rebellion against God.
When we rebel against the one who made the world and created us, we miss out on the blessing of being in tune with the creation and the creator.
Our pride and self centeredness drag us deeply into sin and its consequences.
The biggest consequence of sin is death.
The Bible says in Romans 6:23, “For the wages of sin is death…” Since we are all sinners, we will all die.
No matter how well we eat or exercise, we will all die.
We can’t escape that and we need help.
It is a desperate situation.
!
III.
God’s Solution
Good news!
God has provided a solution.
Our confession of faith speaks about salvation and that /“The basis of this salvation is Christ’s life, His atoning death and His resurrection.”
/At the centre of the help God has provided is Jesus Christ.
Jesus is the only way by which we can overcome the power of sin and the power of death.
Acts 4:12 tells us that “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.”
What did Jesus do to bring this salvation?
!! A. What Jesus Did
Salvation was accomplished by “/…Christ’s life, His atoning death and His resurrection.”/
What did the life of Jesus accomplish towards salvation?
First of all, the life of Jesus was lived on earth.
That speaks of the incarnation, the coming of God to earth in the person of His Son, Jesus Christ.
The story often told at Christmas time communicates it so well.
A man who was not a believer sat at home one evening as his family went to church for the Christmas program.
During this time, a storm began to blow up and all of a sudden he noticed that a group of sparrows was flying against the window trying to get into the house and out of the storm.
He went out and opened the door of the shed and tried to shoo the birds into it so that they would be protected from the storm.
As soon as he tried to do that, they flew in all directions.
He wished that he could become a bird so that he could communicate his help to them.
At that moment, he suddenly understood the message of Christ coming to earth.
God has come to us in order to help us.
His life also saves us in that he lived it perfectly.
The life of Christ was without sin and as such was a radical departure from anything we see or expect in our world.
The whole world is steeped in sin, it is permeated by it and all aspects of society are influenced by sin so that we cannot conceive of life apart from it.
When Jesus came into the world, he was something entirely different.
He was not at all permeated by sin and did not live according to the assumptions of sin.
Thus in His life we see what God is like, we understand how God wants us to live, He showed us the perfection of holiness.
He did not have a veil of righteousness over a body of sin.
He began with sinlessness at his core and manifested it in all aspects of his being.
He saved us because He lived a pure and holy life and so became a pure and perfect sacrifice for sin.
Above all, Jesus saved us by becoming a sacrifice for sin by His death on the cross.
II Corinthians 5:21 says, “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
That verse picks up on the righteous life of Jesus and shows how that righteous life became a sin offering for us.
Jesus died on the cross in our place.
Because he was perfect and innocent, he did not die for his own sins, but for ours.
He took our place so that we might become what God wanted us to be in the first place.
Jesus also saved us by His resurrection.
I Corinthians 15:20-22 says, “But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.
For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man.
For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.”
God demonstrated acceptance of the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross by raising Him from the dead and because He did he made it possible for us to follow in his way and live.
Eternal life is assured because Christ rose from the dead.
!! B. What Jesus Accomplished
These are the things which Jesus did, but what did Jesus accomplish through what He did?
We most often speak of what He accomplished as salvation or the new birth, but there are numerous ways of speaking about what Jesus accomplished.
The word salvation helps us understand one aspect of what God has done for us.
It reminds us that we were in trouble and that God helped us become free from that trouble.
We weren’t only a little bit in trouble.
Ephesians 2:1 says, “you were dead in your transgressions and sins.”
The passage goes on to say that “God who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ, it is by grace you have been saved.”
What a blessing to know that there is a way out of the desperate situation we are in!
That is salvation.
Another way of speaking of what God has done is to realize that our sins have been atoned for.
Romans 3:25 says, “God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood.”
The imagery of atonement comes from the Old Testament in which we learn that sin must be covered by a sacrifice.
Jesus made that sacrifice once for all so that we would no longer be under sin, but that our sin would be atoned for, or covered.
Justification gives us another way of looking at what God has done.
Justification emphasizes freedom from the guilt that is ours before God.
Because we are guilty, there is no hope, we are under His wrath.
But God has sent Jesus and through His death and resurrection, we are made right with God.
We are not guilty any more.
Romans speaks much about this.
Romans 3:24 says, “and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”
Romans 5:1 goes on to say, “Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ…”
Another wonderful way of looking at what Jesus accomplished is in the word reconciliation.
If the essence of sin is that we have disobeyed and rejected God, becoming His enemies, then it is wonderful to know that God has made us friends again.
Colossians 1:20-22 says, “Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior.
But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation.”
The other common way of speaking about what God has done is with the idea of the new birth.
When Jesus met with Nicodemus and told him “you must be born again” Nicodemus had no idea what he was speaking about.
Today, it is common to speak of being born again, especially in North American evangelicalism, but I wonder if everyone who speaks about the new birth really understands what that means any better than Nicodemus did?
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