Romans 1:16 says that the gospel of God is powerful to save all men. The word powerful means dynamic. The Greek word comes from the noun dynamo. It refers to a kind of power like that of a nuclear bomb. The gospel of God is a dynamo to save people. The word dynamo implies an endless power.
Thus, the gospel of God is endlessly powerful (dynamic) to save all the sinners who would believe in it. Whoever believes, whether he is a Jew, a Gentile, a gentleman, or a bank robber, will be saved by this dynamic salvation. In John 4 there is a story of the Lord’s encounter with a sinful Samaritan woman who had been married to five husbands and was living with someone who was not her husband. When she asked the Lord to give her the living water, He said, “Go, call your husband and come here” (v. 16). Her husband was the center of her sin. To speak to Christ of her husbands was to confess her sins. But she confessed in a lying way by saying that she did not have a husband. The Lord responded, “You have well said, I do not have a husband, for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband; this you have said truly” (vv. 17-18). Even such a one as this Samaritan woman was saved by the powerful gospel in drinking the living water of Christ (v. 14).
In Luke 19 there is another story of the Lord’s contact with a great sinner, Zaccheus, who was an evil chief tax collector (v. 2). He extorted the people by putting an excessive value on property or income, or increasing the tax of those unable to pay, and would then practice usury. The Lord paid a visit to his city purposely to meet him. Right after he received the Lord, he said to Him, “Behold, the half of my possessions, Lord, I give to the poor, and if I have taken anything from anyone by false accusation, I restore four times as much” (v. 8). This is the fast issue of the Lord’s dynamic salvation. So the Lord said, “Today salvation has come to this house” (v. 9). This salvation was to save one of God’s chosen people who fell into sin to such an extent that he extorted his own people by being a tax collector of the Roman imperialism, showing the powerful, dynamic, salvation, a salvation with an endless power.
The gospel of God is powerful to redeem us. God’s salvation is of two parts. The first part is redemption. The second part is the direct salvation. Redemption can be considered a part of God’s salvation, because it is the initiation of God’s salvation. Thus, redemption as the initiation becomes the foundation of God’s salvation. First, God redeemed the sinners, and this was done judicially. The word judicial means “to make lawful.” God’s redemption is judicial because the very sinners He saved are all sinful. Every one is condemned by God’s righteousness, and every one, in a sense, has been sentenced by God to death, to perish, according to His righteous law. Thus, all the descendants of Adam, according to God’s righteous and holy law, are condemned and sentenced. Now God wants to redeem these condemned and sentenced sinners. If God would just forgive us without a righteous procedure, He would become a lawless God. For Him to remain in His righteous and holy position, He has to do something to redeem the sinners judicially.
All proper Christians admit that they were redeemed by Christ’s paying the price for them. Christ died and shed His blood for us. He died on the cross as our replacement. The Bible tells us that God decided to crucify Christ (Isa. 53:10). If Christ had not died as our replacement, then God would have become unrighteous in crucifying Christ, because Christ is the only person who is absolutely righteous and just. One of Charles Wesley’s hymns says, “Amazing love! how can it be / That Thou, my God, shouldst die for me?” (Hymns, #296). The just God-man died for the unjust sinners (1 Pet. 3:18), so His death is called the vicarious death. One just God-man died for many unjust sinners. Such a vicarious death is judicial. God redeemed us judicially by the blood of Christ. To redeem, in a sense, is to purchase. When you purchase something, you have to pay the price. God’s redemption is a kind of purchase. God purchased us sinners judicially by paying Christ’s blood as the price on the cross.
By reading the Gospels, we can see that Christ was hanging on the cross for six hours, from nine o’clock in the morning until three o’clock in the afternoon (Mark 15:25; Matt. 27:45-46). These six hours are divided into two sections. In the first section, the Jews associated with the Roman soldiers killed Christ. Jesus was persecuted to death on the cross by both the Jews and the Romans for three hours. Then suddenly at noon darkness fell over all the land. That was an indication that God came in to deal with the dying Christ. That was God’s judgment on Christ, because it was at that juncture, as Isaiah 53 says, that God put all man’s sin upon Christ, considering Him as the unique sinner (vv. 4-6). The Lord Jesus told us in the Gospels that the Father God was always with Him (John 8:16, 29), but when Christ was hanging on the cross in the last three hours, He cried out, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Matt. 27:46). At that very juncture on the cross, when God put all man’s sin upon Him, in God’s eyes He was the unique sinner in replacement of all the sinners. Thus, God left Him economically. Then Christ asked, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” We have to answer, “Lord Jesus, because of my sin.” He was dying for us, carrying out a vicarious death for all mankind on the cross.
God redeemed us judicially by the blood of Christ (Rom. 3:24-25) on the cross (1 Pet. 2:24a) from our sins (Rev. 1:5b). These are the outward sins in our conduct. God also redeemed us from His righteous judgment, wrath, and condemnation (Rom. 2:5-6, 16; 3:19b; John 3:18b) and from eternal perdition in the lake of fire (Rev. 21:8; 22:15). To perish in the lake of fire is God’s sentence to us. We have also been redeemed from the accusation of Satan, God’s enemy (cf. Rev. 12:10-11).
We were redeemed through the forgiveness of sins (Eph. 1:7) and the washing of the believing sinners’ sins (Rev. 1:5b; 1 Cor. 6:11). To forgive is one thing, but the stain of sin is still there. So following the forgiving, we need the washing to take away the stain.
We were also redeemed by the blood of Christ through the reconciliation of the believing sinners to God from their enmity toward God (Rom. 5:10a). We sinners were God’s enemies, and there was enmity between God and us. Christ’s death reconciled us to God. This is the reconciliation through which God redeemed us.
We were redeemed through the justification of the believing sinners by God (Rom. 3:20-24) and the making of peace between the believing sinners and God (Rom. 5:1). Through Christ’s redemption, we have been forgiven, washed, reconciled, and justified, so peace has been made between God and us.
Finally, our redemption was through the sanctification of the believing sinners unto God positionally (Heb. 10:10, 14, 29b; 13:12a). In our position we have been sanctified unto God. God has accepted us as saints. This is why 1 Corinthians 1:2 refers to us as the called saints. We are the called saints through so many steps, starting from forgiveness to sanctification positionally. Our redemption is all-inclusive. Such a redemption lays the foundation of God’s dynamic salvation for the consummation of God’s dynamic salvation.