Message Five

The Man-Savior and His Dynamic Salvation

Scripture Reading: Luke 2:11, 30; 3:6; 19:9

1. The Lord Jesus Christ is the Savior—Luke 2:11; John 4:42:
   1. The Lord is the Savior of fallen mankind, based upon His person and redemptive work—Rom. 3:24; Eph. 1:6-7.
   2. The Lord Jesus is God becoming a man to be our Savior, and He has accomplished full salvation for us, the sinners, through which He may save us from God’s condemnation and our fallen condition—John 1:1, 14; 4:42.
   3. 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—Heb. 7:25.
   4. The Lord Jesus has been exalted to God’s right hand as Savior—Acts 5:31:
      1. Jesus’ incarnation made Him a man, and His human living on earth qualified Him to be man’s Savior—Luke 1:31-32, 35; 23:14-15.
      2. His crucifixion accomplished full redemption for man, His resurrection vindicated His redemptive work, and His exaltation inaugurated Him to be the ruling Leader that He might be the Savior—Acts 2:22-24, 32, 36; 5:31.
      3. God’s exalting of Him was the ultimate step in His being perfected by God to be the Savior of man—Heb. 2:10; 5:9.
2. As the Savior, Christ Himself is the salvation prepared by God for us and given to us—Luke 2:30; 3:6; 19:9:
   1. Zachariah’s prophecy concerned God’s redemptive move for His people unto their salvation, accomplished by the raising of Christ, in His humanity, as a horn of salvation in the house of David, and, in His divinity, as the rising sun from on high, through God’s rich mercy according to His holy covenant—1:67-79.
   2. Jesus the Savior was the dawning sun to the dark age—v. 78:
      1. His coming ended the night of the Old Testament and began the day of the New Testament.
      2. As the fruit in Elizabeth’s blessing, He is life to us—v. 42; John 14:6.
      3. As the sun in Zachariah’s prophecy, He is light to us—Luke 1:78; John 9:5; Matt. 4:16.
      4. As such a One, He is the Accomplisher and the center of God’s redemption that His people may obtain salvation.
   3. The Savior is the salvation of God; when He comes, the salvation of God comes—Luke 3:6:
      1. Salvation is God Himself; in the New Testament Jah Jehovah, who is salvation (Isa. 12:2), is Jesus, the incarnated God—Matt. 1:21; Luke 2:30.
      2. To see and receive the Man-Savior is to see and receive the salvation of God—19:1-3, 9.
3. The Man-Savior’s highest standard of morality constitutes His qualification and the basic factor for His dynamic salvation—1:31-32, 35:
   1. The Man-Savior was conceived of God with His attributes to be the content and reality of His human virtues—v. 35:
      1. The Lord’s human virtues are filled with the divine attributes—5:12-14.
      2. The Man-Savior’s incarnation strengthened, enriched, and sanctified the human virtues and brought the divine attributes into the human virtues for the expression of God—10:25-37.
      3. When Christ became incarnated, He put on the human virtues, which were created by God for man so that man may express Him—Gen. 1:26.
      4. In the Man-Savior the divine attributes and the human virtues are mingled together as one; the divine attributes are in the human virtues, and the human virtues contain the divine attributes—Luke 1:35; 2:40, 52.
   2. The Man-Savior was born of the human essence with the human virtues in order to rescue these virtues from man’s fall and to restore and recover man’s virtues from the damage of man’s fall—Matt. 1:18, 20; Luke 1:27, 31-32.
   3. The Man-Savior was incarnated in order to uplift the human virtues to the highest standard—to the standard that matches the attributes of God for the expression of God—Matt. 5:20.
   4. The Man-Savior’s incarnation produced the highest standard of morality, and this morality is for the saving power of His dynamic salvation—Luke 1:35:
      1. In order to save us, God came into man, bringing God’s attributes into man’s virtues; He lived the life of a God-man, with the divine attributes filling His human virtues; and then He died on the cross and was resurrected—23:33-34; 24:1-7, 26, 36-40.
      2. In His resurrection He became the life-giving Spirit, and as the Spirit He enters into us to bring God into our being and to fill our virtues with the divine attributes—1 Cor. 15:45b; 6:17; Eph. 3:16-17a.
      3. When He saves us, He comes into us as the One with the human virtues filled with the divine attributes; such a life saves us from within and uplifts our human virtues, restoring and transforming us—Rom. 12:2.
   5. The highest standard of morality constitutes the qualification for the Man-Savior’s dynamic salvation; the best illustration is the parable of the good Samaritan, which shows that this Samaritan lived the highest standard of morality and saved the fallen one by His standard of morality—Luke 10:25-37.
   6. The highest standard of morality also constitutes the basic factor for the Man-Savior’s dynamic salvation; we see this in the case of Zaccheus—19:1-10:
      1. When the Man-Savior came to the house of Zaccheus (v. 5), He came with the Spirit of power and with the indestructible eternal life to impart into him at his believing in Him—4:18; Heb. 7:16; John 3:15.
      2. The Spirit with the eternal life as the divine electricity was within the Lord’s humanity of the highest standard; when He looked at Zaccheus and talked to him, the Spirit with His eternal life entered into him, and Zaccheus responded—Luke 19:6-9.
      3. Our resurrected, ascended, and God-exalted Savior is like an immense magnet drawing people to Himself, and we have been drawn by His dynamic saving power—Heb. 12:2.
   7. The Man-Savior’s dynamic saving power is constituted of His highest standard of morality in which His powerful Spirit and eternal life are; how we need this Man-Savior with His dynamic salvation!