salvation – Everything is About God

Along the Way to Bethlehem

Part One

As the new year begins, and thinking back on the Christmas season, I noticed a couple of things. One, the New Testament began with a connection to the Old, a continuation of God’s story. Secondly, I noticed that the very first chapter of the New Testament revealed the greatest reason of all for the Christmas season, the primary reason why Jesus came!

First, the continuation from Old to New. Notice the very first verse of the New Testament, “The record of the genealogy of Jesus, the Messiah (Christ), the Son of David, the son of Abraham.” Abraham shows up the first time in Genesis 11:26, “Terah lived seventy years, and became the father of Abram, Nahor, and Haran.” A few verses later, in Genesis 12:1-3, God speaks to him. “Now the LORD said to Abram, ‘Go forth … To the land which I will show you; And I will make you a great nation, And I will bless you … And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.”

The rest of the Old Testament, in one way or another, tells the story of God’s interaction with Abraham (his name was changed from Abram to Abraham) and his descendants. David was a distant descendant of Abraham, and Jesus was an even further descendant. In fact, it was well over 2000 years from Abraham to Jesus. God is apparently in charge of history on a long-term scale, Old Testament, New Testament, and continuing!

Now, the second thing I noticed was in the dream of Joseph, a small-town carpenter whose fiancé was pregnant, and not by him! He was most certainly in emotional turmoil, yet we are told that, “… Joseph … being a righteous man and not wanting to disgrace her, planned to send her away secretly.” But God interrupted his plans; “… behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, ‘Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife; for the Child who has been conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. She will bear a Son; and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.” (Matthew 1:18-21)

Wait! Don’t miss the reason here stated, “He will save His people from their sins.” That’s it! The point of it all, the reason for the season! From Genesis 3 onward, it’s been obvious that the problem above all problems is sin! Everything God has done since that point (and even before then) has been to save us from the sins that cause all our problems! In fact, the New Testament tells us how Jesus accomplished this goal; in the gospels, and then throughout the entire New Testament, to the very end of the last book, Revelation!

No room here to tell the “how” this was accomplished, but I have to ask myself how well this goal is being accomplished in my life, daily? And in your life? Have you been saved “from” sin? Are you being daily saved “from” sin? Or, do you just go along sinning daily and expecting that the Scripture meant only to save us from the ultimate, final, eternal, result of our sins? If you’ve been saved from slavery, you are not still a slave. If you’ve been saved from drowning, you are not still in the water! If you’ve been saved from sin, you are not continuing to live a life dominated by sin!

Listen, Jesus came to save us FROM our sins!

A Friend of Sinners

John the Baptist, in prison, sent some of his followers to ask Jesus an important question (Mt 11:3), “Are You the Expected One, or shall we look for someone else?” Jesus answered them and they departed. Then Jesus spoke to the crowds about John and ended with these words: “For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon!’ The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Behold, a gluttonous man and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds” (Mt 11:18-19 NASB). Jesus was quoting His critics; they were the ones who accused Him of being a friend of sinners. From them, it was not a compliment.

Accusations were being made of Jesus and John the Baptist. John was separate and strict in his behavior and diet while Jesus mingled with the people and ate at their feasts. Not long before this, Jesus had called Matthew, a tax collector, to follow Him and Matthew gave a big reception for Jesus at his house (Lk 5:29). A crowd of tax collectors and others whom the Pharisees referred to as “sinners” were also there, dining with Jesus and Matthew (Mt 9:10). The Pharisees questioned His actions and we see the motives of Jesus in His reply. “It is not those who are well who need a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance” (Lk 5:31-32).

Consider another incident involving this same criticism. In Luke 15:1-2, we are told that “… all the tax collectors and the sinners were coming near Him to listen to Him.” Again, the Pharisees and the scribes began to grumble, saying, “This man receives sinners and eats with them.” Jesus never avoided people who needed to hear His message; He always accepted those who came to Him. In the course of His travels and during the times of His teaching and preaching about the Kingdom of God, Jesus often encountered people who were considered as the untouchables of society or the outcasts, the sinners, the unrighteous. He always was kind and good in His reception of them, so He was accurately considered as a friend to them. However, Jesus always was in the process of trying to save them from their sins, to be their spiritual “physician”.

The rest of Luke 15 is devoted to three stories Jesus told in response to the accusation that He, “… receives sinners and eats with them.” The first parable was of a shepherd who left ninety-nine sheep to search for and find the one sheep which had gotten lost. After finding the sheep the man calls together his friends and neighbors to rejoice with him. Jesus then declared (v 7), “I tell you that in the same way, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.”

The second parable was the story of a woman who had lost one coin, but swept her house and used a lamp to search for the lost coin. When she finds the coin, she called her friends and neighbors to rejoice with her. Jesus again declares, “In the same way, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”

The third parable is perhaps more well known; it is the story of a lost son. We call it the parable of the “Prodigal Son.” This parable is a little different than the first two. In those parables, we see a picture of God searching for those who are lost. That is a picture of why Jesus came to earth and explains the actions of Jesus as He went about preaching the kingdom, healing the sick, bringing the “Good News” of salvation! But in this parable of the lost son, we see the father allowing the son to go his own way and try to live his own life, but eventually finding himself in terrible circumstances and finally seeing himself as lost. He came to his senses and returned to his father with true repentance. And as a beautiful picture of God, our heavenly Father, this earthly father joyfully receives his son back home, declaring (Lk 15:23-24), “… let us eat and celebrate; for this son of mine was dead and has come to life again; he was lost and has been found.”

In all this we find that Jesus was truly a “friend of sinners” but not simply for the enjoyment of their company or “hanging out” as people today seem to think. Let’s go back to Matthew 11:19 where Jesus listed the criticisms against Himself. He obviously was not a “gluttonous man” nor was He a “drunkard” and neither was He in the way the critics intended a “friend of tax collectors and sinners.” His final words there are, “Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds.” Watching all that Jesus did, wisdom will reveal His intentions as well as His actions; Jesus was the Savior searching for those who were lost!

The question for us today, then, concerns our own intentions as we live in a world filled with sin. Are we simply enjoying friendships with sinners or are we praying constantly for the Lord to give us opportunities to share His truth, His good news, with those with whom we are friends, those who need to be saved?

work out your own salvation

The words were right there; I stared at them and read them again. Seemed like they were in bold print, “… work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.” I felt like God was talking to me!

I was young, maybe ten or eleven years old, when that phrase from the Bible grabbed my attention. I didn’t get the real meaning for a while; I didn’t even see the rest of Philippians chapter two, just that part of verse twelve. I read the words “work out” as a challenge, like a math problem, and thought I needed to figure it out, to work out the real meaning of salvation, to understand it! So, not even realizing the importance of that decision, I started on my own personal life-time journey to figure it out! At that young age, I know now that my attempt was shallow, and my understanding was immature, and I know that I’ve stumbled many times along the way, but that really was the first “big” decision of my spiritual journey. No matter how young you are or how old you are, God will come to you and speak to you on your own level; He will meet you right where you are!

That verse became a rule to guide me as I tried to learn and understand everything I could about God and what it means to be a Christian. Instead of just doing what I was told or believing what someone else told me to believe, I decided that God wanted me to figure things out for myself. I wanted to know for myself what I believed and why I believed it! I wanted to learn for myself what the Bible said and what it really means. I wanted God’s Word to work its way into every part of my life so that I could actually live as a Christian in every part of my life to the very best of my ability. I was very serious when I asked God to help me “work out my own salvation”! And nearly sixty years later, I am still trying, still learning, still attempting to actually work out in real life the things I learn!