SALVATION; WHAT IS BEING SAVED?
Each of our lives is an inventory of meaningful physical or emotional items that we have collected. Each item that bears a special place either by physical cost or emotional experience represents a part that is invested in it and therefore has a place of meaning in me. So if you see me with something; that I place in the personal category more than likely I have an investment of some type in it.
There is a level of salvation in a Spiritual sense in some, as it’s called that I have many doubts about. I was first introduced in depth to it when a Pastor that I knew and had met made the announcement to the nation that he accepted and believed in Universal salvation. Within months his church of more than 7500 members had dropped to less than a thousand and still he hung onto the confession he had made publicly. He was a graduate of a very celebrated Bible College and was almost a family member of the president of the school. He was part of the crowd with the most well known names in the Charismatic Circles. He had a recording contract with many well known Christian record groups that within a year had been canceled because it was felt his new found faith did not exactly fit in with Christians.
Had he abandoned his belief in Jesus as Savior? NO; that was not part of what this was about; it was the cost to be considered saved despite that idea brought down in the opinion of most where he was. Most people that criticized him truthfully did not take time to consider what this expression of Faith really meant. Was his choice really to be a true Christian in every aspect of the next step he was to make?
Here is the first step in our title this decision to brake with the mainstream of Christians to go this way had a price for him a very severe one. If you were to count the cost of your salvation and relationship with the Lord, what would the cost to your life? What does it mean to maintain a life of salvation or in being a Christian being known as being saved? What holds you there?
Salvation has a meaning and it is to be saved from someplace or something that represented danger to you and the thing that made the event meaningful was that the experience of salvation brings the changes in your life. Maybe at some point before the experience of the danger in your life being removed the danger, you could visualize the results in physical harm or death as this experience of death of a life spirit from the world overtook you.
What would have been the inventory in your life that would have been damaged had this danger overtaken you? There are people that are meaningful to you; maybe a wife or a husband or Children from your marriage. Whatever happens there is a pretty good possibility that this is going to be a life altering point and what ever importance you place on it will determine the rest of your life’s course.
If the time of danger is a physical one to your life an evaluation occurs here both in the physical as well as if it is a spiritual experience. The evaluation is simple; what is the value of what just happened and all the people that might be involved? I have been involved in a few points like this in different people’s lives, at times of extreme risk and was able to help. I know personally the esteem they place on what happened and each of us that were involved.
The point we really need to consider here is the best definition possible for this experience of bringing Jesus into our lives. There is a different extreme in the spiritual sense when a person has a salvation experience, from a moment that might be a time of death from whatever he might be involved in. I mean maybe it was a case of addiction to something that is physically a touch of death for each moment in this place and you must be delivered from it to have the ability to choose another road. A physical death from the hang-ups in the spiritual side is just as much a possibility as any physical situation unless there is a change of heart and environment. The changes that must occur emotionally and mentally must be brought about supernaturally through the Grace of Jesus and his provision for us at the cross or salvation doesn’t occur.
You see within this world there is no way known for salvation to happen without Jesus and committing to his Word. For Salvation to work in the Spiritual sense what Paul said about having the working mind of Christ in you is not to far wrong. A mind that is not changed or renewed from habitual behaviors can’t change on its own. This is the first Chapter of Romans verse 16 from the Amplified version of the Bible
For I am not ashamed of the Gospel (good news) of Christ, for it is God's power working unto salvation [for deliverance from eternal death] to everyone who believes with a personal trust and a confident surrender and firm reliance, to the Jew first and also to the Greek,
There is one phrase to note particularly from this amplified version of that verse and it is “deliverance from eternal death.” The eternal death accent was one that the Father intended for Satan. The phrase eternal death really is defined as in dying you will die. Your life will be one of a constant state of death spiritually to be finalized in a physical death and with your life totally separated from God.
I know for a fact that most Christians never stop to consider all the results from this experience called salvation. Paul told the Ephesians that they had been quickened or brought to life in his Spirit. This in particular is found I believe in the second chapter of Ephesians has the same meaning carried in Genesis when it was written the Father breathed into them the breath of life. In Genesis the initial point of life was when the Father released that breathe that began breathing life, flowing blood and a working system in man. THE WORD SAID IN THE FIRST THOUGHTS OF MAN’S CREATION THAT GOD SAID LET US CREATE HIM IN OUR IMAGE. Everything that man has began that day the lifeless form of clay was transposed from a lump of dirt to life itself from the point that God breathed himself into us. Didn’t the same happen in the New Testament as Jesus breathed on them in John’s chapter 20 the 20th verse. Can you now see the lack of insight we have into what we are? If we received all that Christ accomplished for us when we went by faith to the cross and we were transplanted from death to the life of the kingdom, then we are the overcomer, conqueror that the word calls us throughout the New Testament? The devil stands up to us for sure or at least till we get a picture of who and what we are. There is a constant expression going around now about waking the sleeping giant. Go back into the New Testament and research all the victorious things attributed to the Lord. You will see that all of the destructions designed by Satan for us was defeated when we came to the cross. The life that we have with Jesus alive in us is by faith our substitutional death with Jesus coming down off the cross alive with alive in us.
Is there an area of defeat in your life? Go back to the cross and recount all the victories that became yours in Jesus from the cross. Textual Study—Gal.2; 20
Pastor Jim
