The Gospel (Part 4 of 5)

The Gospel of Salvation

In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory (Ephesians 1:13-14).

One of the great promises in the Gospel is the promise of salvation. To be saved means to be rescued from some danger and brought to a place of safety. A physician is a savior to his patients, saving them from sickness, injury, or possibly death, and restoring them to good health. Witnessing the drama of someone’s life being saved is one of the most powerful events we can experience, even if the drama is a fictional account portrayed by actors. Salvation stirs something in our souls because it is a matter of life and death. And we have the desire to live and not to die. It should not surprise us that God’s message would have such a compelling nature. The Gospel deals with the deepest needs and longings of the human soul. The Gospel is the power of God unto salvation (Rom. 1.16). Believing the Gospel is what will save us, unleashing the very power of God in our lives. This is why the Gospel needs to be preached. Unless the message is declared the power of God will remain hidden like an untapped resource. In certain places there are vast quantities of natural resources, like oil, coal, minerals, or precious metals, lying just beneath the surface of the earth, but are unused. The greatest power in this world – power unto salvation – is in the Gospel, awaiting someone to open it and use it!

Salvation is one of the major themes of the Bible. One of the earliest examples of salvation comes in the story of Joseph. After being sold into slavery by his own, jealous brothers, Joseph was exalted to be the ruler of Egypt where he was able to then save his father’s house from starvation during a famine. When all of this began to unfold, Joseph said, in retrospect, that “God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors” (Genesis 45:7). Joseph was a savior who prefigures the coming of Jesus. But the greatest illustration of salvation in the Old Testament is the account of the exodus of God’s people from bondage in Egypt. The story of Joseph saving his family ends with Jacob and all his household coming to Egypt. And there Jacob and all his sons died. But their families increased and Israel became a nation in Egypt. A new ruler came to power who did not know Joseph and the people were cruelly enslaved. But God sent Moses to deliver His people. And so Moses is also a savior, sent from God, who would become another foreshadowing of Jesus. As the terrible plagues on Egypt reached their climax with the death of the firstborn, the people killed the Passover Lamb and sprinkled the blood on their doorposts so the Angel of Death would pass over them, and their children would be saved from death. These things were done in preparation for an even greater deliverance to come.

Jesus, the Son of God, came into the world to be our savior. When the birth of Jesus was first announced to the virgin Mary, it was said of Him that He would save His people from their sins (Matt. 1.21). The very name chosen for the Son of God was Jesus, which means “the Lord saves.” Jesus was not born into the world to be a political savior. At the time of Jesus’ birth the Roman Caesar Augustus had already been hailed as the savior of the world. It was Caesar who established the famous Pax Romana, or the Peace of Rome, which gave order and stability to the political world. Jesus was not like Caesar. He came to save His people from their sins. God does nothing without a purpose. Sending His Son into the world was absolutely necessary for our salvation. And Jesus could not enter the world in power and glory but had to enter in humility. Salvation actually required God becoming a man. Because it was a man who had sinned and brought death into the world, a man had to be the one to save humanity from sin. Animal sacrifices like those offered under the Law of Moses could not take away humanity’s sin and the penalty of death. So the Son of God came Himself in order to offer Himself as the spotless, sinless sacrifice for sin. Jesus was born to die. He died so that we might be saved.

We must understand why we needed salvation. The Gospel of salvation only becomes good news when we understand the great peril from which we were rescued. The reason many people do not receive the Gospel is because they do not see the need for salvation. One of the great burdens placed on preachers is to make it clear to people why they need salvation. I personally feel that this is one of the great failures of modern preaching – the terrible consequences of sin have not been made clear to the modern man! How pointless it is to preach salvation when people do not generally believe that there is any real danger. If we are not in trouble, then why did Jesus need to come to rescue us? In the past the great evangelists believed that before the Gospel could really be preached effectively there had to first be the preaching of the Law of God, which would then lead to a conviction of sin. When people are convicted of sin they begin to see the danger and then the Gospel of Salvation can be presented with some relevance. Modern preaching has dispensed with preaching about the Law and the reality of sin. So the Gospel of Salvation seems irrelevant. Preaching only about the love of God will not adequately explain why Jesus had to die an agonizing death on a cross. Only when we understand that God is holy and righteous, and that sin brings His wrath, will we understand what Jesus came to do for us on the cross when He took our place and died for our sin. That is the Gospel of Salvation!