We are all sinners. We need to be saved from sin and from its consequences. But where can a saviour be found who can effectively save from sin? The Bible tells us that “none . . . can by any means redeem his brother, nor give to God a ransom for him” (Ps 49:7); the price to be paid is too great. No human being – indeed no created being – could bear away the punishment due to sinners because of what they are and what they have done; none of them could endure that punishment.
So it is asked: “Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire? Who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings?” (Is 33:14). The obvious answer is, No one. Yet the next verse gives this answer: “He that walketh righteously, and speaketh uprightly; he that despiseth the gain of oppressions, that shaketh his hands from holding of bribes, that stoppeth his ears from hearing of blood, and shutteth his eyes from seeing evil”. He will not be touched by the devouring fire, the everlasting burnings. Yet he has not earned protection by his own righteousness, his holy way of life, his care to turn away from sin and temptation. He has found a substitute who could take his place and endure the punishment due to his sin.
The Bible tells us that God “the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world” (1 Jn 4:14). This is a provision made in infinite wisdom. If God the Son was to save sinners, He must take their guilt upon Himself, which He did. And if He was to take their guilt and suffer unto death, He must take to Himself a human nature, for a divine person cannot suffer; nor can He die. So, because He took human nature, what is set before sinners in the gospel is a perfect provision for them in their guilt, a provision that provides for the complete removal of guilt and perfect holiness for every sinner that will believe in Jesus. “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (Jn 3:16). Let us notice some aspects of the complete salvation that the Son of God procured for sinners, so that, in particular, they will not be consumed by the devouring fire of a lost eternity.
1. Complete justification.
It includes the forgiveness of all the believer’s sin. None of their sins remains unforgiven, for their Substitute made Himself responsible for bearing away the guilt of all the sins of every individual, down to the end of time, who believes in Jesus – of all, in other words, whom the Father gave to Him in the everlasting covenant. No sin is too great to be forgiven. If any sin was too great, it would imply that the work of the Saviour was not great enough. But “there is nothing too hard” for the Lord (Jer 32:17). The Son of God came into this world to carry out the eternal, divine purpose to save sinners. And no divine purpose can ever fail. He suffered – He was able to suffer – all that divine justice demanded, so that sinners might go free, so that they might escape the punishment due to them because of their sins against God, and every sin is against God.
Christ stated on the cross that His work was finished, completely finished. And so it is certain that no one who will believe in Him can perish but, at the moment when they believe in Christ, all their past sins will be completely forgiven, however great they may be. Indeed none of the sins of their later lives will be imputed to them; Christ bore the sins of their whole life.
Besides forgiveness, there is another aspect to justification. For God to accept a human being as righteous, that person must have kept His law perfectly – and no one since man’s fall into sin has been able to do so. But God’s provision of salvation is complete; Christ as the substitute for sinners has kept the law in their place and has done so perfectly. His perfect obedience is put to the account of those who believe on Him. For the sake of Christ and His perfect obedience, they are fully accepted as if they had always kept the law themselves. They are indeed fully justified.
2. Fully adopted.
Believers are received into God’s family and treated as His children. While the Saviour was in this world, “as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name” (Jn 1:12). This is still so today, and always will be. He has a care for His children and He will never cast them off, for He has loved them with an everlasting love (Jer 31:3); His love for them can never come to an end. That is true, no matter how severe their backsliding might be. Peter denied his Master, but he was not expelled from God’s family. Yet, as he was a child of God, he experienced chastisement, and all of God’s children are subject to His kind, fatherly chastisement. They must learn to hate sin; they must not treat it as something trivial, for sin is directed against God, who is infinitely holy.
Parents in a human family take responsibility for the needs of their children, including any they may adopt. So when the Lord draws sinners to Himself and brings them into His family, He promises to supply all their needs for time and for eternity; He will give them all that He sees will be good for them, especially for their souls. His adoption is irreversible. Believers are “heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ” (Rom 8:17). A complete provision has indeed been made for them in the family of God.
3. Complete sanctification.
If a sinner has believed, we can be sure that he or she has been given a new nature. It can no longer be said of such a person: “From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it” (Is 1:6). There is now the beginning of holiness. As yet that holy principle is not complete, but it will grow, until it is perfect. The guarantee is given to every believer: “He which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil 1:6). The good work of grace in the soul will be carried on until death, when the soul will be made perfect – never more to sin again.
A responsibility is laid on every child of God to turn more and more from sin and to grow in grace and in holiness, and yet they must realise that they are utterly unable by their own power to make the least degree of spiritual progress. They must be altogether dependent on the gracious power of the Holy Spirit for every degree of advance they make in the way of salvation, towards perfect holiness. Christ has purchased a perfect salvation for every one of His children. Accordingly the Spirit will continue to sanctify them until that work is complete and the soul is fit to pass into glory.
4. Perfect blessedness in heaven.
Adam and Eve were created in a paradise, the Garden of Eden, but they sinned, became subject to death and were put out of their paradise. All they could now expect was to experience eternal death in hell, after death would remove them from this life. The sentence, “Thou shalt surely die”, was now no longer just a warning; the Judge had changed it into the sentence of death He passed on them.
But the sentence of death can be reversed. Christ has procured an even better paradise in heaven for all who believe, and it is part of the complete salvation that is guaranteed to them. We have already noted that those who believe in Christ will have everlasting life; they cannot perish, nor relapse into a spiritually-dead condition, nor again come under condemnation and be sent to a lost eternity. These things are impossible as Christ died for His people, rose again and sits at the right hand of God, where He makes continual intercession for them. They will most certainly be brought to heaven, where they will never sin again. To sin there is another impossibility, because the work of salvation in their souls has been completed. Heaven will be perfectly suited to their souls in their fully sanctified condition.
The resurrection will result in the reunion of the body and soul of believers, and they will find heaven to be perfectly suited to them in that perfect condition when both body and soul are completely free from the effects of sin. They will enjoy all the blessedness of a sinless world, where they will be able to glorify God perfectly in all that they do and say and think. Not the slightest sorrow or trouble will cross their pathway ever again.
How earnest everyone should be to find this salvation, which is so freely offered to us in the gospel, and to find it while still in this life! Christ calls, “Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Mt 11:28). Christ is calling everyone, through their reading of the Scriptures and through His ambassadors preaching the gospel to them. What reason they have to seek Him! What reason to ask that the Holy Spirit would make them able and willing to come to Christ – to believe on Him and receive the perfect salvation that He worked out for sinners!
The way of salvation, the way that leads to the everlasting blessedness of heaven, is a way where faith must be exercised continually. Believers may question, when conscious of fresh needs arising from their continued sinfulness, if they are free to beg again for fresh grace after being so often careless in the face of God’s continued goodness to them.
One might think of a group of people trudging across a desert with a very limited supply of water. They might agree that each of them would only take a little sip occasionally, so that the small supply may be eked out for somewhat longer. But this is not the comparison that is appropriate here. Rather we should think of a large body of water supplying a community. For instance, Loch Katrine is eight miles long and provides an ample supply for Glasgow’s population of over 600 000. So no one in Glasgow would think of restricting himself to, say, one glass of water. People there can feel free to take as many glasses as they want.
So in spiritual things we ought to take seriously the fact that the provision Christ has made is infinite. When Joseph was preparing for the famine in Egypt, he “gathered corn as the sand of the sea, very much, until he left numbering; for it was without number” (Gen 41:49). We can take Joseph as a type of Christ and say that His storehouses contain blessings which are beyond the human capacity to measure; they are absolutely beyond measuring. Accordingly we are never to hesitate in going to Christ for saving blessings; we ought never to feel that, because we have gone to Him so often in the past, we dare not go again. Rather believers are to go to Him again and again and beg for blessing after blessing and they are to go on doing so increasingly while they are spared in this world. He says, “Drink, yea, drink abundantly, O beloved” (Song 5:1). And He says to all, believers and unbelievers, “If any man thirst, let him come unto Me, and drink” (Jn 7:37). Let him trust in Christ and receive, from Him who is so ready to give, a full salvation from His infinite provision for sinners.