Salvation [B]

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Transcript:

If you have your Bibles with you, we’re going to be in Ephesians chapter 2 tonight. That’s where we’re going to start out anyway. And if you still have your copy of the Baptist Faith and Message, we’re going to be on page 11 of that.

A couple of weeks ago, we started talking about section 4 of the Baptist Faith and Message and talking about what we understand the Bible to teach about salvation. We did not have time to get through all of that tonight, or last time, So I wanted to come back tonight and finish that up. And again, just like with nearly every other subject we’re going to talk about, the Baptist faith and message takes a collection of what we think the Bible teaches broadly on a given topic.

Pulling thoughts from scriptures all throughout the Bible. So it’s hard to find one passage, and it’s hard to distill all this down any further and bring it down to points. But we’re going to do the best we can to try to understand what it is that we believe about salvation overall.

And I think one of the most important verses for us to understand salvation is found in Ephesians chapter 2, verses 8 and 9. It says, For by grace are ye saved through faith, and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. And despite how some other passages may be misinterpreted, when it talks about works, when it talks about righteousness, this verse and some others like it are just about as clear as I think they could be in telling us that our salvation has nothing to do with anything that we can earn, anything we can deserve, anything we can work for, that we are saved simply because God is gracious enough to offer us salvation through Jesus Christ and that Jesus has paid for our salvation through his blood, his shed blood on the cross.

The only thing we contribute to our salvation is the sin that made it necessary. And so you and I don’t deserve God’s salvation. We don’t deserve God’s forgiveness.

and yet because of who he is, he is loving enough and he’s gracious enough to offer it anyway. And not only that, he was gracious enough to do all the work that was necessary for it to be offered to us. It was all done by Jesus Christ and there’s nothing you and I can work for.

We just simply have to trust him and put our faith in him and trust him enough to carry through with his promises. And we’re going to look at section four of the Baptist faith and message. It starts on page 11.

And we read through this a couple weeks ago, but I’m going to assume you’ve slept since then. I’m not sure I have. Charlie tossing and turning with the baby making her uncomfortable, and I don’t think I sleep well either.

But y’all might have slept since then, so we’re going to read over it again. And it says, Salvation involves the redemption of the whole man and is offered freely to all who accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior by His own blood obtained eternal redemption for the believer. Now that means He doesn’t just save part of us.

He doesn’t just save us partially. But He saves us entirely from our sins. And He’s willing to do that.

He makes that offer freely, not just to a certain group of people, but to anybody who will call on Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. And that he’s able to do that because Jesus Christ paid for our eternal redemption, not just our partial redemption, not just our temporary redemption, but our eternal redemption through his blood. It says, In its broadest sense, salvation includes regeneration, justification, sanctification, and glorification.

Those are some of the things we’re going to talk about tonight, and I’ve already talked about some in the last few weeks. It says there’s no salvation apart from personal faith in Jesus Christ as Lord. You cannot be saved apart from you yourself putting your faith, putting your trust in Jesus Christ. It’s not enough, and you all know this, but it’s not enough that your daddy believed, that your mama believed, that your grandpa was a deacon, somebody was a pastor.

It’s not enough that somebody else had a relationship with Jesus Christ. There’s no salvation apart from our own personal encounter with Jesus Christ by faith. There’s no salvation apart from personal faith in Jesus Christ. I believe the Bible teaches that pretty clearly. Section A here it says, Regeneration or the new birth is a work of God’s grace whereby believers become new creatures in Christ Jesus.

We’re going to talk about that a little bit tonight. He gives us new life in Christ. If we don’t have new life, if we have not been born again, that right there is evidence that our salvation is not what we think it is. That’s evidence that what we think is our salvation has not been real saving faith in Jesus Christ. It’s a change of heart wrought by the Holy Spirit through conviction of sin to which the sinner responds in repentance toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s important, repentance toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. That is a quote from the book of Acts.

And for some reason, I never can remember where that passage is found, where that verse is found. So if you see in the book of Acts tonight where it says God commands, I’m sorry, that’s a different verse on repentance. But where they taught repentance toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Our repentance is always toward God.

Now this will say in here in just a moment, repentance of sin or repentance from sin, turning from sin. But the bottom line about repentance, the turning from sin is a result. What repentance actually is is a change of mind toward God.

Repentance and faith are inseparable experiences of grace, it says there. Underneath it says repentance is a genuine turning from sin toward God. And faith is the acceptance of Jesus Christ and commitment of the entire personality to Him as Lord and Savior.

So this goes hand in hand with what I’ve been telling you over the last month in our series on the false gospels, where I’ve tried to be very careful to explain repentance, tried to be very careful to explain faith and some other things. Repentance, yes, turning from sin is tied up in the concept of repentance. It’s all part of the package.

But turning from sin is an effect of repentance. The repentance itself is changing our minds toward God. And faith, they’re simply putting our entire trust in Jesus Christ. It’s the idea that you and I, if we believe in Jesus Christ to be our Savior, we’re not looking around.

We don’t have one eye on Jesus and one eye out here somewhere else looking for another Savior, looking for a plan B for a backup in case that doesn’t pan out. Our faith, our entire trust is in Jesus Christ. It says here, Justification is God’s gracious and full acquittal upon principles of his righteousness of all sinners who repent and believe in Christ. Now that acquittal, that word acquittal means to be found not guilty. Seems like every week I turn on the news and there’s impeachment talk.

Sometimes it’s Trump. Now they’re talking about impeaching Brett Kavanaugh. Now, I mean, there’s, you know, in the 90s they were constantly wanting to impeach Bill Clinton.

And somebody’s always getting impeached in America because that’s what we do now. The impeachment, though, is the formal laying of charges. Then the Senate has to come and hold a hearing, and they either convict and remove the person, or they acquit them, find them not guilty, and let them stay in office.

That word acquittal means not guilty. So even if somebody’s impeached, they’re not removed unless they’re convicted. If they’re acquitted, they get to stay.

You and I are acquitted by God. In this concept of justification, God looks at us, and God votes not guilty on all the charges that have been laid against us. Now, you and I are guilty of what we’ve been charged with.

You and I are guilty of sin, but God acquits us because the sin has already been paid for in Jesus Christ. He’s already taken the punishment. He’s already paid the price. That sin’s already done and dealt with.

So God’s gracious and full acquittal upon the principles of his righteousness of all sinners who repent and believe in Jesus Christ. That salvation, that forgiveness, that acquittal is available to those who trust in Christ. Justification brings the believer into a relationship of peace and favor with God. Sometime within the last week, Charla and I were talking about this, and I don’t even remember how it came out. But I told her that when I was a child, the idea of salvation, as I understood it, meant going to heaven.

And that’s part of it. That is definitely part of it. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that there’s something that’s more important about salvation than going to heaven.

Salvation, I know that’s shocking, right? Something more important than going to heaven is the fact that you and I are at peace with God now. We’re not waiting for a someday relationship with God.

You and I can have a relationship with God now. And I think that ability to have a relationship with God is even better than just being in heaven. Because, honestly, I would rather have, if I was forced to choose, which we’re not, but if I was forced to choose, I’d rather have the relationship with God as opposed to someday be in paradise without Him.

But you and I are able to have, fortunately, we’re able to have both. We have the home in heaven, but we also have a relationship with God not only then but now, and we can be at peace with him. I think that’s the most incredible aspect of salvation, is that we acted through our sin as though we were the enemies of God, and yet God has taken all the steps that we now can have peace with him.

I think that’s pretty incredible. All right, brings the believer into a relationship of peace and favor with God. Sanctification is the experience beginning in regeneration by which the believer is set apart to God’s purposes and is enabled to progress towards moral and spiritual maturity through the presence and power of the Holy Spirit dwelling in him.

Growth and grace should continue throughout the regenerate person’s life. All right, we’re going to talk about that a little bit more tonight. And glorification is the culmination of salvation and is the final blessed and abiding state of the redeemed.

If you’re in Jesus Christ tonight, you have salvation. You have full salvation. You’re not any more saved than you’ve ever been at any time in your walk with Christ. You’re not any less saved than you’re going to be.

You are totally and completely saved in Jesus Christ, but at the same point, we have not seen the final fulfillment of all of God’s promises to us. We are saved. We are in this state of salvation with Jesus Christ, but there are some of the promises that we have not yet experienced.

I mean he’s promised us heaven hasn’t he he said if I go to prepare a place for you I will come back again and that where I excuse me I just lost the end of the verse that where I am there you may be also hate that when bad things happen to good sentences hey he’s promised us heaven but we haven’t experienced that yet we’re still we’re saved but we haven’t yet experienced all the fulfillment of all the promises we haven’t experienced all the benefits and that’s where glorification comes in One day there’s a day that we will experience that heaven and where we will reign with him as joint heirs. Now I want to talk to you a little bit about these things tonight, a little bit more in depth than what the book talks about.

And I told you when I started this topic a couple of weeks ago that I took everything that that says and I took the verses and took the concepts and I divided them all into three categories. And the categories that I put them in are, number one, what salvation requires, which we talked about two weeks ago. It requires God’s grace, first of all.

We could do all the repentance and all the believing that we wanted to, but if it weren’t for God’s grace, if God wasn’t gracious enough to offer us salvation, it wouldn’t matter. If God looked at us and was just straight justice all the time and said, oh, you don’t deserve any of this, there would be no forgiveness. And we see that, that it’s by grace you’re saved through faith and that not of yourselves.

There in Ephesians chapter 2, God’s grace is required for salvation. Then there’s repentance. We talked about repentance a little bit.

Acts 17. 30 says, The times of ignorance God winked at, God allowed this to go on for a little bit, but now commands all men everywhere to repent. It’s that change of mind that brings us into agreement with God about our sin, and it compels us to seek his forgiveness.

And I always want to be very clear on this, because you may think, well, wait a minute, you said you preach by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. Where do you mention repentance in there? It’s sort of there in between the lines.

But let’s not get it twisted and think there’s another work we’re supposed to perform. For us to come to that point of putting our faith in him, we have to realize that we need his grace, and we have to realize that we need that forgiveness. And the point where we agree with God that our sin is wrong, that our sin rightly separates us from him, and that we need his forgiveness, that moment where that mind changes, where that switch flips, that moment is repentance.

And so repentance is what enables us to believe. And you really can’t separate those two. So we’re not adding anything to the by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone formula.

It’s just repentance is what brings us to the point of realizing that we need any of this. So repentance is required and faith is required. God extends his grace, but he extends his grace to those who will believe.

Jesus said this several times, talked about believing. He said that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. And it says it here in the passage we’ve already read tonight.

For by grace alone are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is a gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. Okay, so those are the three things that are required. Now, as I said, I broke this up into three categories, what salvation requires, what salvation is, and what salvation brings. Two weeks ago, we got partway into the subject of what salvation is.

And I just want to pick up where we left off. I had talked about regeneration. Regeneration is one of those words that we read about tonight.

And it’s a fancy word that just means being born again. It’s the idea of the new life that we are given by God, overcoming our previous state that we were in of spiritual death, where we’re dead in our trespasses and sins. You and I have no spiritual life.

We have no ability to connect with God apart from this new life that he gives us. And he takes people and makes us into something else. When Jesus says we’re born again, that’s not hyperbole.

That’s not exaggeration. We are, in a spiritual sense, we are born again. He takes something that’s old and dead and he breathes new life into it, which is us.

He breathes new life into us. Jesus is pretty clear in John chapter 3 about the need to be born again when he’s discussing with Nicodemus. He says, except a man be born again, he will not see the kingdom of God.

Okay? We have to be born again. And that’s where I’ve come from in the last few weeks preaching on this subject when I’ve told you that if we see no evidence of being born again, it’s not just my opinion, it’s not something the Baptist made up, it’s not what I was taught somewhere, It’s what Jesus says, you must be born again.

And the Bible tells us that we will see evidence of the change that he made in us. And if we don’t see any evidence of that, it is a good indication, it’s good evidence that we’ve never really been saved in the first place. So regeneration we covered a couple weeks ago.

Salvation is regeneration. Part of salvation is that God gives you new life. You’ll be born again.

But another part of salvation is this concept of justification that we hit on a little bit in what we just read. Now Romans 4, 4 through 5 says, Now to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt. But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness.

This is one of the verses that turned around my view of salvation, or better said, maybe straightened out my view of salvation. I got saved as a very young child, and I believe I was saved at that time. But I think it’s normal that from time to time we have doubts.

My doubts were never about, can God save me? My doubts were, did I go through this process the right way? And I knew.

I knew from early on. It’s by God’s grace alone. It’s through faith alone.

It’s not something I earn. It’s not something I deserve. It’s not something I work for.

It’s by faith. But then I’m overly analytical sometimes, and I would come back to the question, well, did I believe hard enough? Some of you just kind of drop your heads.

It’s a ridiculous question, but did I believe hard enough? Did I believe exactly the right things? Did I do this right?

And struggling with that as a teenager, coming to that question, I ran across this passage in Romans chapter 4 one day, And he says, now to him that worketh, reward is not reckoned of grace but of debt. So if there was anything on your part that you were doing, if it was about you and what you could do, then God wouldn’t be giving it to you out of grace, but he’d be giving it to you because he owed it to you. It says, but to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.

And I sort of read that and I stopped and realized I was trying to make faith into a work. that faith even was a box I had to check and I had to do it just right and have the right formula. And it doesn’t work that way.

It’s very simple here. God looks at the ungodly, which is what we are apart from Christ. And it didn’t matter whether I was a horrible person with a long criminal history or whether I was a kid who grew up in church and was scared of my parents and didn’t get in a whole lot of trouble, that I still was ungodly down in my core. And I realized, wait a minute, All this stuff that I’m worrying about, that’s just the devil messing with my brain.

Because it says here, he justifies us. He wipes the slate clean. He says, you’re not guilty, as I said a moment ago, acquitted.

You are not guilty. And he says this, not to those who work for it, not to those who strive for it, not to those who worry about it like I was doing, but to those who believe. And so I ask myself the very simple question, Do you believe that Jesus paid for your sins?

And of course my answer was yes. My answer had always been yes. And it’s almost as though, I won’t say I heard it audibly, but it’s almost as though I heard the voice of God audibly say, there you go.

And I haven’t been worried about it since. This verse is very clear to me, that he wipes our slate clean as part of salvation. Again, not because we work for it, but because that’s what he does, because Jesus paid for it.

And it’s a reminder that when you trust Christ as your Savior, you really do have a clean slate. Now, that means that God no longer holds your sins and your failures against you. That means all the times that you feel like you don’t measure up, all the times you might feel like you’re inadequate, I’m a really bad Christian, I’m not.

God doesn’t hold those things against you. Now, that doesn’t give us license to go out and say, well, you know, God’s not going to hold it against me. I can do whatever I want.

No, there again, if we don’t have that change of heart, that’s evidence that we weren’t truly saved. So if our attitude is constantly, well, good, he forgives me. I can go out and do whatever I want.

No, no, go back and check. Go back and check your salvation. But as a believer, as somebody that you know you’ve repented, you know you’ve trusted Christ, you know that he’s working in you, you know that he’s changing you, but you still feel like you let him down.

I think we all feel that way from time to time. If not, if you don’t feel that way, you’re probably not paying attention. I know I feel that way all the time.

I’m just letting him down. God, I’m just a huge disappointment. But my Bible says I’m justified in Christ, that those things are not held against me.

And then I think about my children, because God does say that he relates to us as a father. I think about how my children acted this morning in church. It wasn’t just the talking back during the announcements, which I called on him at one point.

He raised his hand, and against my better judgment, I called on him. That wasn’t an issue. And it kept going, but there were other things all morning, all morning.

I was ready to squeeze them until their eyes popped out when we got home. And talked about, I had a talk with Benjamin about how I was disappointed in his behavior. I told him, I said, never disappointed in you, but I’m disappointed in your behavior.

And I think about times like that. Because, see, I feel like I’ve let God down, and he’s going to be disappointed in me. And then I think, how do I as a parent feel when my child completely ignores everything he knows that’s the right way to behave in church, like today?

Do I look at him and think, you’re just a mess of disappointment? No, I don’t think that way. What I think is, I love you, and we need to get this under control.

But see, I’ve never looked at my children the way I feel like God looks at me. And so you’re an utter disappointment. You’re just a mess.

And that’s not really how God looks at us. You need to know that tonight. That’s not how God looks at you.

Because if you’re saved, if you belong to Jesus Christ, if you’ve trusted in him, your sins are forgiven, they’re under the blood of Jesus Christ, and you’re going to let him down from time to time. But by the grace of God and through the blood of Christ, He doesn’t hold those things against you. I think He looks at us like a father and says, I love you, and we need to get that under control.

He tells us in Psalm 103, 12, As far as the east is from the west, so far hath He removed our transgressions from us. He’s put your sins as far from you as the east is from the west. Now, you can go to the northern limits of the globe and go as far north as you can, and then suddenly that’s as far north as you’re going to get at the North Pole. And any direction you go is south.

You can go the South Pole and get there in any direction. You can’t go any further south than that. Any direction you go from there is going to be north.

There’s a finite distance. It’s a long distance, but there’s a finite distance between east and west. You get a globe. We’ll get you a globe.

If you’ve got one at home, try this tonight. Turn it all the way east. You won’t ever be able to stop. Maybe you’ll get tired and say, okay, I’ll never be able to turn it all the way east. Now turn it back all the way west. You can’t do it.

There’s no limit to the east or the west on the globe. It’s very telling to me that God didn’t say, I’m going to separate you from your sins as far as north is from the south. He says as far as east is from the west. He put them, as far as God is concerned, I’m over here as far as I can go, and my sin is over here as far as I can go, as far as it can go.

And he’s looked at me and says, there’s no connection. You’re not guilty. And in Hebrews 8.

12, he says, For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness. Well, what about the really big sins? He says he’s going to be merciful to our unrighteousness.

Believer, do you have any unrighteousness? Don’t answer that. We know the answer.

He says, I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more. God is not forgetful. God is not, God’s memory hasn’t lapsed.

God chooses not to remember your sins. When your sins are under the blood of Jesus, when you’ve been justified, He chooses not to remember your sins anymore. I think that’s incredible.

I mean, we could talk about salvation meaning I’m going to heaven. I think this is so much more incredible right now. That we’re given new life, we’re justified.

He says your sins are forgiven. They’re not even, I don’t hold those against you anymore. Salvation also is reconciliation to God.

Romans chapter 5 says, For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. We were the enemies of God. Apart from Jesus Christ, we’re the enemies of God because we’ve looked at our King and we’ve rebelled against him.

We’ve said, I don’t care what you want. I don’t care what you think. It’s essentially treason, rebellion against the king of the universe.

And we’re not the enemies of God because he looks at us and hates us and says, yeah, I want nothing to do with you. We’ve made ourselves the enemies of God. And in those days, I think the consequence of treason was pretty severe.

There wasn’t a whole lot of forgiveness available when the rightful king had you where he wanted you. See, our king is different. He could have said, enjoy the consequences of your treason.

Enjoy hell. Enjoy separation from me. But instead, he looked at us, at us, we had made ourselves enemies of God, and he chose to do everything that was necessary to reconcile us to him.

See, it would be incredible enough if God just gave us the opportunity to reconcile ourselves to him. If God said, fine, I’ll give you another shot. You do this, this, this, this, and this, and we’ll call it even.

I mean, that would be incredible and merciful enough, but God didn’t stop there. God took the initiative and did everything that was necessary for us to be reconciled to him. We owed the price for our treason, and he paid it so that we could be reconciled to him.

You get that reconciliation. You get that relationship with him where you used to be an enemy, and yet God, through his love and his mercy, took you as an enemy and brought you into his household as his child. You get that relationship with God.

as a part of salvation. That’s part of the package. So those are some of the things that salvation is.

That’s what salvation means. I want to talk to you just briefly about a couple of the things that salvation brings. These things are not salvation in and of themselves, but they’re part of the package.

They’re part of the result. Because I think salvation, again, refers to that state of having our slate wiped clean, our sins forgiven, being reconciled to God, being given new life, Now here’s what comes next. First of all, sanctification.

Sanctification is a word I’ve talked about a lot over the last year, and it just means the simple definition to be made holy. The way I define it with a little more detail is the work of God where he sets us apart from the world as his children and then continually shapes us to be more and more like Jesus. Now 1 Thessalonians chapter 4 says this in verses 4 through 7, for this is the will of God, even your sanctification.

Have you ever wondered what’s God’s will for my life? Anybody else ever wonder that? Okay, I’m not alone here.

There are some things that I could look at you tonight and say, I can’t tell you what God’s will is. That’s something you’re going to have to deal with the Holy Spirit about. You may be talking about job things, living things.

We all have those choices we have to make, and we wonder what does God want me to do? What’s God’s will for me at this point? And I may have to tell you, I can’t tell you specifically.

You have to ask the Holy Spirit to show that to you. But did you know that there are some things that the Bible says very clearly, this is God’s will for you? One of the things that the Bible says very clearly, this is God’s will for you, and for any believer at any time, sanctification is one of those things.

He says, for this is the will of God, even your sanctification. God’s will for your life. Hey, let’s start with this.

Before we get into all the specific details about God, do you want me to take this job? Do you want me to buy this house? Do you want me to marry this person?

Before we get into all those specifics, here’s a really good general one. God wants you to be more like Jesus. And that’s not something you can do on your own.

That’s something He’s going to do in you and through you. This is the will of God, even your sanctification, that you should abstain from fornication, that every one of you should know how to possess His vessel in sanctification and honor, not in the lust of concupiscence, even as the Gentiles who know not God, that no man go beyond and defraud his brother in any matter, because that the Lord is the avenger of all such, as we also have forewarned you and testified, for God hath not called us to uncleanness, but unto holiness. How do I know God’s will for my life?

Start there. God wants you to be more like Jesus Christ. God wants your sanctification. And that sanctification is a complex word because it’s something that takes place instantaneously.

I’ve talked to you about the seal of the Holy Spirit where God stamps you by his Holy Spirit and says, they’re mine. So at the moment of your conversion, at the moment you trusted Christ, God declared you holy in a legal sense. He said, they’re mine, they belong to me, they’re set apart, and they’re not guilty.

Legally, they’re holy. but our behavior doesn’t always match the legal declaration. So there’s that instant moment of sanctification where God sets us apart and declares us to be His and declares us to be holy, and then there’s the process, the ongoing process, that is never finished on this side of eternity, where every day God, like a potter working his clay, is continually molding us and shaping us and working away the rough areas and the imperfections, and He’s smoothing those things out, and He’s building things up over here, And God is constantly at work molding and shaping us to be more like Jesus Christ. Sanctification.

God’s will for you. What’s God’s will for you? To be more like Jesus today than you were yesterday.

And to be more like Jesus tomorrow than you’ve been today. He says in Romans chapter 8, For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. That means God’s plan all throughout eternity has been