God gives us to Jesus. This devotional reading looks at how we can be sure in our salvation because we can be sure He is our Savior.
Nuggets
- We are convinced that God sent His Son Jesus to be our Savior.
- We are convinced that Jesus is the only way to salvation.
- We are convinced that Jesus loved us so much, He willingly died for us.
We’ve come to the last devotion in the Christ Will not Lose What Is Given to Him series in the Surety of Our Salvation study. We’ve talked about how we’ve been given to Christ by acknowledging our sin and misery, by being made humble, and through His grace.
Now, we are going to talk about how Jesus was sent to be our Savior. Beveridge doesn’t give us verses to look at, but I think we’ve found some.
Let's Put It into Context
To read devotions in the Habitual Holiness of Heart and Life theme, click the button below.
Here is a running list of nuggets for the theme.
Devotions in the The Surity of Our Salvation study
Here is a running list of nuggets for the study.
The foundation of this study is Beveridge’s sermon The Believer’s Safety
Resource
The title is Beveridge’s words.
Seen and Testify
“And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world” (I Jn. 4: 14 ESV)
We are convinced that God sent His Son Jesus to be our Savior.
Even if we don’t acknowledge Jesus as God’s Son and our Savior, He still is. Our rejection of Him does not strip Him of His authority as our Savior.
We just don’t have salvation if we don’t ABCD. We will still be spiritually dead.
Salvation is the gift of life through the deliverance from condemnation and sin to acceptance and holiness and changes us from being spiritually dead to spiritually alive.
- Sin is not believing that Jesus is our Savior to save us from our actions by humans that disobey God and break one of His reasonable, holy, and righteous laws and commandments, goes against a purpose He has for us, or follows Satan’s promptings.
- Holy means to be set apart — because of our devotion to God — to become perfect, and morally pure while possessing all virtues and to serve and worship God.
- Perfection means we reach a state of maturity because the combination of the spiritual graces form, when all are present, spiritual wholeness or completeness — holy, sanctified, and righteous.
- Spiritual graces are worldly morals that have been submitted to God to further His kingdom instead of enhancing this world.
- Sanctified means to be set free from sin.
- Righteous means we are free from sin because we are following God’s moral laws.
- Pure means not being sinful or having the stain of sin.
- Virtues are standards of moral excellence.
- Perfection means we reach a state of maturity because the combination of the spiritual graces form, when all are present, spiritual wholeness or completeness — holy, sanctified, and righteous.
- Holy means to be set apart — because of our devotion to God — to become perfect, and morally pure while possessing all virtues and to serve and worship God.
- Holiness is the transcendent excellence of His nature that includes elements of purity, dedication, and commitment that lead to being set apart.
- Purity means possessing God’s moral character, having eliminated the stain of sin.
- Spiritual death is the spiritual separation from God that occurred as a consequence of Adam and Eve’s original sin.
- The spiritually alive are those who have ABCDed, so they are no longer separated from God.
Glossary
The ABCDs of Salvation
If you have not become a believer in Christ, please read through the
Plan of Salvation and prayerfully consider what God is asking you to do.
A – admit our sins
B – believe His Son Jesus is our Redeemer
C – confess God as Sovereign Lord
D – demonstrate that commitment by making any changes needed in our lives to live the way in which God has called us
The Disciple’s Job Description
We can never find salvation on our own. Broken, impure people can’t put themselves back together to form a pure being.
Adam dropped a plate the other morning and broke it. I guess I could have glued it and kept on using it.
The break line would have still been there. I could never have gotten it back to being perfect.
I don’t know how long it would have lasted. It wouldn’t have been as strong as before it had been broken.
God is adamant that there is only one way to salvation.
- “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved” (Ac. 4: 12 NIV).
- “You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below” (Ex. 20: 3-4 NIV).
- “Jesus answered, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me’” (Jn. 14: 6 NIV).
John was giving us an eye-witness account of Jesus’ life and mission. He had been with Him for three years.
John knew what he saw. He could give testimony because there were ten other guys who could give the same testimony (11 if Judas hadn’t of killed himself).
It wasn’t that they had read it in some journal by some guy saying He was the Messiah. They were right there in the trenches with Him.
We cannot overemphasize the fact that the designer of the Plan of Salvation was God Himself. Jesus didn’t one day say, “You know, Dad has been really down since Adam and Eve disobeyed Him. I am going to work out a way to make it right for mankind to come back into his good graces.”
God wanted us back — even before He made us, and we disobeyed. He wanted us to spend eternity with Him.
This matter was so important to God that He sent His Son to complete the mission. Because of His love for us, He sent His Son to pay the penalty for our sins. “She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins” (Mt. 1: 21 ESV).
Faith in Jesus is the only way we can have our sins forgiven.
Exclusively
“And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Ac. 4: 12 ESV)
We are convinced that Jesus is the only way to salvation.
Everyone is born with a sinful nature. Adam and Eve chose to disobey God — they bit when He told them not to — and doomed mankind to separation from Him.
That means God has the choice as to whether or not to offer us salvation. That means He gets to set what is the acceptable form of salvation.
God did that — only through Jesus.
We don’t have a say in it.
Ooo, baby. Worldview people don’t like that!
Worldview people have problems with recognizing disobedience to God as a sin. This is especially true when called to turn away from their pet sin.
Well, they have problems recognizing sin at all. They don’t think any of it is really sinful. Therefore, it becomes a joke to them.
One day, they won’t be joking.
Once they acknowledge salvation is needed, worldview people want salvation to come any other way but through Jesus. They look for it in a variety of places.
- A self-help program
- Being a good person
- Serving others
Bottom line, though, is they do not want to submit to God. They don’t want to acknowledge He is the only One Who gets to decide how salvation is going to work.
God has other plans. Yes, He only accepts salvation when we do it His way.
But Smith made an interesting comment. He wrote,
“This salvation, as it is needed by all, is adapted to all. Of all so-called faiths the gospel alone is equally suited to all latitudes and Lives. Some religions can only flourish in certain countries, just as some kinds of food are peculiar to certain climates; but this seed of the kingdom is like corn — wherever man lives it will grow.”
Resource
Salvation is needed by all, so it has been designed to be offered to all. All have to opportunity to accept it and grow in grace and knowledge.
The problem with that is that worldview people want to continue to disobey God.
Salvation can only come through obedience to our Sovereign God.
Wardlaw address the topic of our study: the surety of our salvation. He wrote, “
“The last ground on which we rest the exclusiveness of the gospel method of salvation is THE COMPLETENESS OF THE SALVATION ITSELF. It is a salvation worthy in all respects of God, and fully meeting the wants of man. It is a salvation from guilt, sin, suffering, death, hell, to a state of pardon and acceptance and favour, to the exercise of holy principles and holy affections, to life, to happiness, to usefulness, to heaven, and all for eternity.”
Resource
Free from guilt. Isn’t guilt a big producer of our doubts?
If we have a complete salvation, we no longer have guilt.
Yes, God is intolerant of a lot of things. Yes, He will forgive us when we sincerely repent.
Repentance is acknowledging our separation from God and expressing sorrow for breaking God’s laws and commandments by making the commitment to change our sinful ways to ways of righteousness through obedience.
- Obedience means submitting ourselves to the will of God as it is presented to us and living our lives accordingly.
Glossary
We don’t get salvation without the repentance. Repentance fosters obedience.
Gave Himself for Us
“I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2: 20 ESV)
We are convinced that Jesus loved us so much, He willingly died for us.
The repentance fosters obedience because of the change that occurs in us. The change occurs because of the regeneration associated with salvation.
Regeneration is being changed from spiritually dead to spiritually alive and the internal new birth and requickening that God brings about through the work of the Holy Spirit to give us new character.
Glossary
Only God can remake us as He is our Creator. This is the result of our decision to “… live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2: 20 ESV).
No one but Jesus would have done this for us. Look what Liddon had to say. He wrote,
“The Eternal Being gave Himself for the creature which His hands had made. He gave Himself to poverty, to toil, to humiliation, to agony, to the Cross. He gave Himself ‘for me,’ for my benefit; but also ‘for me,’ in my place. This substitution of Christ for the guilty sinner is the ground of the satisfaction which Christ has made upon the cross for human sin.”
Resource
Jesus always knew this would be His job. We would say He was born to it — but He wasn’t born.
The Plan of Salvation was designed before the foundation of the world (Eph. 1: 4). He knew then. What did He know?
- He would shed His divinity to be born a human being.
- He would die a painful death.
- He would rise victoriously.
Jesus did it because of His love for us. That is a pretty powerful love!
Making the Connections #1
Morgan made an interesting comment. He wrote,
“It may be supposed the early disciples had an advantage over us in the sensible evidence which they enjoyed of the truth of the gospel. Yet it is doubtful whether our privileges are not greater than theirs. The benefit of their satisfaction is enjoyed by us in the record of it contained in their writings.”
Resource
We think the apostles had it so much better because they were right there with Jesus. How many others were with Him that didn’t accept Him?
Instead of personal experience, we have the apostles’ writings. Yes, they were probably taking notes (I would need to!).
But the Plan of Salvation wasn’t complete until after Jesus’ resurrection. They didn’t know the rest of the story until the end of the story.
The Twelve were right with Jesus for three years, and they were still struggling with what it all really meant. They had to give up preconceived notions to accept reality. They had to piece things together to get the accurate picture of Who Jesus was.
Then the uneducated apostles had to tell and write about it to large groups (and large can be relative).
All in all, they did a remarkable job.
Making the Connections #2
Smith talked about our thinking “turning over a new leaf” would be enough to take care of our sins. It isn’t.
Resource
Okay, we do this expecting not to sin in the future. The problem with that is it does nothing to change our sinful nature. We can’t evolve from sinful to righteous.
No, that isn’t what we do in sanctification. Sanctification is the transformational process of the mind, body, and soul, which begins with regeneration; gradually changes our nature and morals through the promptings of the Holy Spirit; and ends with perfected state of spiritual wholeness or completeness.
Glossary
We can only be sanctified through God’s power. There is nothing self-help about it.
Additionally, self-help to change our future self does nothing to gain forgiveness for our past sins. That only comes from admitting we are sinners, believing only Jesus can save us, and confessing God as Sovereign Lord.
That is how we gain forgiveness.
Salvation is a total restoration to fellowship with God. It isn’t just forgiveness of sin. It isn’t just “go and sin no more.”
It is the reestablishment of access to our Creator and Heavenly Father with us, as Spurgeon said, in a stronger position than we had in the Garden of Eden.
Resource
That is what we need.
How Do We Apply This?
- Recognize the worth of the gospel.
- Realize godliness only comes through being a child of God.
- Accept Jesus as the way to salvation.
Resource
Father God. We know Jesus is our Savior. He is the only way in which our relationship can be restored with You. We want to be His – and Yours. Amen.
What do you think?
Leave me a comment below (about this or anything else) or head over to my Facebook group for some interactive discussion.
If you don’t understand something and would like further clarification, please contact me.
If you have not signed up for the email providing the link to the devotions and the newsletter, do so below.
If God has used this devotion to speak with you, consider sharing it on social media.