THE COMPLETENESS OF SALVATION IN CHRIST
D. J. Wright
1 Timothy 1: 15; Romans 7: 24, 25; Galatians 1: 3–5; 1 Thessalonians 1: 9, 10
I would like to speak about the completeness of salvation as found in our Lord Jesus Christ.
These scriptures give us four different reasons as to why Christ had to die. In Timothy Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; in Romans 7 He died in order that the whole order of man that was so obnoxious to God should be removed from His sight once and for all; in Galatians He died that we might be delivered from the present evil world; and in Thessalonians that He might deliver us from the wrath to come. Our salvation is such a full one, the gospel message is a full one. The first question to ask is, Do you recognise the fact that you are a sinner? The Lord Jesus had to say in the gospel, “I am not come to call righteous persons, but sinful ones to repentance”, Luke 5: 32. Dear friend, if you put yourself outside the area of being a sinner you put yourself outside the area of blessing. The writer of this verse in 1 Timothy was Saul of Tarsus and you notice that he adds
these words here, “of whom I am the first”. Now what he is saying really is that if he could be saved everyone can be. There is no one too far down in degradation and sin to be out of the reach of the Lord Jesus Christ.
We, in our sins and away from God, are unable to help ourselves. God has moved from His own side in Christ to meet us in the condition where we were; what grace that is. The Lord Jesus came from heights of glory into this very scene in which we are, in order that you and I might be reached in our sinnership; other than that there would have been no hope for any one of us. Not only did He come into lowly manhood, but He wended His way to the cross in order to die. His love was never seen so vividly and so powerfully as when He died on the cross of Calvary. The heart of God was made known to man at that moment and it was revealed in the Lord Jesus Christ. The sin question was one that no one else could meet. It required the Lord Jesus, who is over all, God blessed for ever, to come into manhood, into flesh and blood condition, in order to take on the sin question; He took on the condition in which He could die, speaking reverently, in which His precious blood could be shed. There was no other answer to the question of sin. Every other man would have been exhausted by the judgment of sin, but the Lord Jesus bore it and exhausted God’s judgment of sin. What a Saviour we have; He took on what you and I deserved. Our outstanding debt we could never pay as sinners; He has paid it. What you and I had no hope of paying, He has paid it. What is left for you and me is repentance towards God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. The gospel message is a very simple one but so profound.
One of the steps in soul history, I believe, is to recognise the fact that you are a sinner, and if you recognise that fact, the next step is that you need a Saviour. God has provided that Saviour. I think the feelings of the apostle were stirred every time he wrote in this manner.
He said, “we being still sinners, Christ has died for us”, Romans 5: 8. When man was doing his worst, God did His best. He provided His best, and that best was the One of whom it says, “Him who knew not sin he has made sin for us, that we might become God’s righteousness in him”, 2 Corinthians 5: 21. You think of the holy Person of Jesus becoming what was so obnoxious to Him, sin. In those three hours of darkness on the cross He exhausted God’s judgment of sin. He said, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”, Matthew 27: 46. It was because of your sins and mine.
Do you believe, dear young friend, that the Lord Jesus died for you, that He died in order that your sins might be washed away, that they might be cleared for ever from the sight of God?
The hymn-writer could say,
‘My sins—not in part, but the whole—
Were borne on the cross, and are gone evermore.
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!’ (Hymn 238) Never to be raised again! It says, “their sins and their lawlessnesses, I will never remember any more”, Hebrews 8: 12. That is the God that we have to do with. It will bring certainty to your soul, it will bring stability because you know that nothing can be changed.
The enemy is a defeated foe, because through the finished work of Christ there has been an avenue of blessing opened up, which is able to reach to every man, woman and child that has ever lived in this dispensation in which we are, right down to the present moment.
Christianity has a character that is victorious. Saul of Tarsus never forgot the mercy that had reached him, “of whom I am the first”. It is a thread that runs right through his ministry. If you and I are here today, it is on the basis of sovereign mercy, “vessels of mercy, which he had before prepared for glory”, Romans 9: 23. The gospel does not make anything of us but it makes everything of Christ, the One who has secured everything for God. Saul of Tarsus was on his way to obliterate the name of Christ, dragging off to prison those who were of the way, but he was met in grace. God would have been justified
in striking him down in judgment, but it brings out the glory of the dispensation in which we are, that the Lord Jesus appeared to him as saying, “I am Jesus”, Acts 9: 5. He used that name Jesus, the personal and attractive name, the name that the youngest can come to know. It was that One who appeared to him from the glory and struck him down, overpowered him with the power of grace. Nothing else could have broken that hard-hearted religious man down other than grace. “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the first”.
Let us consider the greatness of what we have been forgiven, carry it forward in your soul, never leave it behind; the apostle never left it behind. Carry it forward for you owe everything to the Lord Jesus Christ, if you do not yet know Him as your Saviour, I urge you to put your faith and trust in Him today because the day of grace is running long and it is about to close. We cannot guarantee that there will be a gospel preaching here next week, but the gospel is being preached today. Let the Lord Jesus into your heart, giving Him the place that He is worthy of. He is One who wants to show His love to you. He has shown His love to you by dying for you, and He wants to be with you in your pathway here, so that He can share with you in every circumstance which may come along in the Christian pathway. You can tell Him about everything. What a friend the Lord Jesus is, and you will find the compassions of a Man. Satan has instilled into the hearts of men that God is a hard God, that He is against them, but God is for us. That is another thing that Paul says in Romans, “If God be for us, who against us?”, Romans 8: 31. God wants to have to do with you for your blessing.
Now I go on to Romans 7. Not only was the matter of sins dealt with at the cross but the whole order of man that was incapable of pleasing God was removed and that is a far deeper thing. This is Paul speaking and again he is speaking about his experience. The experience in this chapter is a Christian experience. You
might say, it does not sound much like it, “O wretched man that I am!”. But it is a Christian experience because, as receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit, you find the workings of the flesh and the workings of the Spirit within you is a struggle. Half of you wants to do one thing and the other half of you wants to do something else; it is a struggle. You need not be perturbed by that struggle because if you did not have the gift of the Holy Spirit you would not have it.
There would be no conscience, but if there is this struggle the Holy Spirit would help you. He would join His help to your weakness in order that what is of God, what is of the Spirit, might emerge. You cannot rightly enter into the things of God in the assembly in showing the features of the flesh. The Holy Spirit in His service prepares you for your part in the assembly. Paul had reached the point of extremity, “who shall deliver me out of this body of death?” I want to do what is right but I end up doing something I do not want to do. The thing is to call on the power of the Spirit, and He will point you to a Man outside of yourself. You will not find the answer to these things in yourself; God never expects anything from the flesh, although I thought for a long time that God would expect something from the flesh, but I found that “in my flesh, good does not dwell” (Romans 7: 18). God does not expect anything from the flesh, but He has given us of His Spirit whereby we can look out to Him and He can deliver us from the whole order of things which cannot please God.
You remember the time when Samuel came to crown another king in Israel after the failure of Saul, the seven sons of Jesse passed before Samuel and the verdict was that God has not chosen these, He has rejected them. Seven sons, whatever feature of the flesh, however refined, God has not chosen it. It came under judgment at the cross. Samuel says, “Are these all the young men?” “There is yet the youngest remaining, and behold, he is feeding the sheep”, 1 Samuel 16: 11. A different kind of man, “he was ruddy, and, besides of a lovely countenance”, he was a shepherd and the word was, “Arise, anoint him; for this is he”.
This was the man of God’s choice. It says, “who shall deliver me out of this body of death? I thank God, through Jesus Christ our Lord”. Look out of yourself to Christ, and from the whole order of man that would ever keep you in bondage, and experience the freedom and liberty of the Holy Spirit which would bring you into the enjoyment of the great things of God. “So then I myself with the mind serve God’s law”. It is spiritual personality developing, a personality that is like Christ. You remember Jacob in his history and he had that wrestling match and God weakened him in that wrestling match; He touched the joint of his thigh, and the result of that was that he had his name changed from Jacob to Israel, which means prince, personality, I myself. It was that kind of thing and then what you see, although Jacob was ruined for this world through that limp, from that point on the Jacob side in him gradually receded and what came to the fore was Israel. So Jacob had a life experimentally with God and he goes out as a true worshipper and a blesser. That is the result, dear friends, of the Holy Spirit’s operations in us, that there is that which is spiritual which emerges which is like Christ.
Well now in Galatians it says about our Lord Jesus Christ “who gave himself for our sins, so that he should deliver us out of the present evil world”. I would like to convey some impression of the fulness of salvation, that it not only has to do with your sins and your eternal destiny, but it is far wider than that. I do not understand the conception of the gospel message that leaves you in the world. I think it is clear from scripture that the gospel is a call, that it will call you out of this world. Why would you want to have a part in this world that crucified Christ? The cross is the line of demarcation for us, it is the line for us to take in allegiance to Christ in the scene of His absence and rejection. Think of the violence and the corruption that marks this world and it is very soon coming under judgment. Why would you
want to have anything to do with a scene that is coming under judgment? It is very serious that Christ has died that we might be delivered from the present evil world. Over the weekend we have been trying to focus on a circle where Christ is the centre, where salvation is enjoyed; that is what God has to offer in the gospel. There is a fulness in the gospel; it does not stop at meeting our need.
You think of the feelings of men at the present time, they are in trepidation as to what may happen over the problems there are with the nations, even coming to the brink of warfare.
Dear friends, we have been saved from the present evil world; we can rest in that. In Thessalonians we have been saved from the wrath to come. I wonder whether you think much about the future. When you are young you do not tend to think too much about these things; but when the Lord Jesus comes, which will be very soon, all those who love Him will be taken to be for ever with Him, caught up in the clouds to be for ever with the Lord. When that happens the Holy Spirit will go too, so what will be left is a scene where there is no restraint of evil and lawlessness, and that will be a terrible time, the wrath to come. The gospel is that if you put your faith and trust in Christ you are delivered from the wrath to come. What rest, what stability in the soul that gives. Isaiah speaks about Christ as being the stability of our times; everything is in that glorious Man. The full salvation is found in Him; what a great Saviour He is!
The other night I was looking at a book about the hymns that we often sing, and in that book it gives you a little bit about the authors and the circumstances in which the hymns were written. One was in relation to John Newton who was the author of Amazing Grace.
Apparently John Newton lived a life of debauchery, but one day he was on this ship and it got into a terrible storm and they kept throwing things overboard in order to try and save the ship.
Things just got worse and worse and it looked as if the ship was going to go down. So John Newton said, Well the thing to do is to cry to God for mercy, but then he said, How futile it is of me to call upon God for mercy after my life of debauchery. The fact was that soon after that the storm abated, and the ship was saved, and that was the means of his conversion. At the end of his life his memory was going and he said there are two things that I will never forget. One is that I am a great sinner, and the other is that Christ is a great Saviour. I think that might be a good note to end on, dear friends, for you to recognise and put your faith and trust in that great Saviour and know the fulness of salvation in Him. For His name’s sake.
Preaching at Grangemouth
9 March 2003