In this message we shall consider the person of Christ in salvation. Some do not know the difference between salvation and redemption. Redemption is what Christ accomplished on the cross. When this redemption is applied to us, it becomes our salvation. Salvation, therefore, is the application of the redemption accomplished by Christ on the cross.
In salvation Christ is the Savior. He is the Savior in order to save us. Concerning Christ as the Savior, Luke 2:11 says, “A Savior was born to you today in David’s city, who is Christ the Lord.” In John 4:42 the Lord Jesus is referred to as the Savior of the world. The Lord is the Savior of fallen mankind based upon His person and His redemptive work. He is the very God becoming a man to be our Savior, and He has accomplished full redemption for us the sinners, through which He may save us from God’s condemnation and from our fallen condition. What He is and what He has accomplished make Him competent to be the able Savior to save us to the uttermost from all our problems.
Isaiah 40:3 prophesied that John the Baptist was coming to prepare the way for Christ so that He may come to be the salvation of God to all flesh (Luke 3:4-6). When Christ came and was presented to God as a child, the old, righteous and devout Simeon blessed God for Him as God’s salvation (Luke 2:30). Christ is not only the Savior. As the Savior He is also the salvation God prepared for us. Apart from Him there is no salvation. If we receive Him, we receive salvation immediately. When Zaccheus received the Lord Jesus, the Lord said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house” (Luke 19:9).
In salvation Christ is not only our objective Savior; He is also our subjective life. In Colossians 3:4 Paul speaks of “Christ our life.” The expression “our life” is a strong indication that we need to experience Christ in our daily living. Christ, not our self, our soul, should be our life.
If Christ is not our life in our practical experience, then all He is and all He has attained and obtained will remain objective. Paul’s use of the expression “our life” indicates that we and Christ, and also God Himself, have one life. God, Christ, and the believers all have one life. The life of God is the life of Christ, and the life of Christ has become our life.
To say that Christ is our life means that Christ has become us. This is subjective to the uttermost. If Christ does not become us, how can He be our life?
Christ must be our life in a practical and experiential way. Day by day we need to experience Christ as our life. We should have one life and one living with Him.
Romans 5:10 says, “If, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved in His life.” This verse covers both the reconciling death of Christ and the saving life of Christ. Reconciliation includes redemption and justification. Christ died on the cross for our redemption. Through redemption we have been justified by God and reconciled to Him. Now there is nothing between us and God. However, we still have a number of subjective problems. For this reason, even after we have been reconciled to God, we still need to be saved in Christ’s life.
Although we have been saved already through Christ’s death, we still need to be saved in His life. On the one hand, we have been saved from hell and the judgment of God. This was accomplished once for all through the death of Christ on the cross. On the other hand, we still need to be saved from many present problems, including temper, disposition, pride, and jealousy. Although we need to be saved from hundreds of items, in the book of Romans Paul deals with seven major things from which we need to be saved.
First, we need to be saved from the law of sin (Rom. 8:2). Within our flesh, our fallen body, the law of sin works spontaneously and automatically. This law of sin is the power of evil that operates spontaneously within us.
The second negative item from which we need to be saved in Christ’s life is worldliness (Rom. 12:2a). We were born into a worldly environment and then raised to be worldly. Worldliness is in our being; hence, it is a subjective matter, a matter of our constitution. The love of the world is an element of our fallen constitution.
The third item is naturalness (Rom. 12:2b). We all have a natural life and a natural disposition. Our constitution is natural. All these natural elements are enemies to God. God has nothing to do with our natural being, our natural life, our natural strength, our natural disposition, or our natural power. These natural elements are deep within our being, much deeper than the law of sin. The law of sin is related mainly to our flesh, but our natural being is our self. For the sake of God’s purpose, we need to be saved in the life of Christ from our naturalness.
We also need to be saved from our individualism, that is, from being individualistic (Rom. 12:5). Because we all have the tendency to be individualistic, none of us naturally likes to be one with others. It is not God’s intention to have a group of individualistic believers. On the contrary, God’s intention is to build up the Body for the fulfillment of His purpose. In order for this purpose to be carried out, we need to be saved from individualism.
The life of Christ also saves us from divisiveness (Rom. 16:17). Our natural man does not like to be one. To be one means to be restricted, bound, and eventually put to death. Throughout the centuries there has been a shortage of oneness among believers. Instead of oneness, there has been division upon division. All divisions come from the element of divisiveness in our fallen nature.
The sixth negative item from which we need to be saved is self-likeness. By self-likeness we mean the appearance and expression of the natural self. We need to be saved from self-likeness by being conformed to the image of the Son of God (Rom. 8:29). In so many respects we do not yet have the likeness of Christ. Instead, we bear the likeness of the self. Therefore, we need to be saved in life from self-likeness, and we need to be conformed to the likeness of the glorious Christ.
Finally, we need to be saved from our natural body (Rom. 8:23). Eventually, in God’s full salvation our body will be redeemed, that is, glorified. The day is coming when our physical body will be transfigured.
All that Christ has accomplished on the cross is an objective fact, but we still need a subjective experience of this fact, an experience in life. Christ died on the cross as our Substitute, but there is still the need for us to be identified with Him in His life. The only way Christ’s accomplishment in substitution can be applied to us in our experience is by our having Christ as our life. In the Gospel of John He said definitely and emphatically, “I am the life” (14:6). To be saved in His life is actually to be saved in the person of Christ Himself. As long as we are in Him, we are in the process of being saved in His life.