God’s salvation is not only to redeem us but also to save us. God’s redemption is judicial. God’s salvation is organic. We were redeemed judicially by the blood of Christ, but we are saved organically by the life of Christ (Rom. 5:10b). We should not say that God saved us by His blood. God redeemed us by His blood. Also, we cannot say that God has redeemed us from our temper. Instead, God saves us from our temper, not by His blood but by His life. We sinners need judicial redemption by the blood of Christ and also the organic salvation by the life of Christ. Redemption was accomplished on the cross, but God’s salvation is always carried out in the Spirit of life (Rom. 8:2).
God’s salvation saves us from the indwelling sin (Rom. 7:17; 8:2). When I was initially saved, I was happy, but I found out that something within was still bothering me. That was the indwelling sin. Not only are we sinful in the sins in our conduct, but also we are constituted to be sinners in the sin that is in our nature. Romans 7 says clearly that this was Paul’s experience. Paul was saved, but he still found that there was something he wanted to do but could not do. Rather, something which he hated he did. So he said, “It is no longer I that work it out but sin that dwells in me” (Rom. 7:20). Our redemption from our sins is by the blood of Christ. Our salvation from the sin in our nature, the indwelling sin, is by the life of Christ. Romans 8:2 indicates that the law of the Spirit of life releases us from the indwelling sin.
We are also saved by the life of Christ from the condemnation due to the sinful action of the indwelling sin (Rom. 7:17-20; 8:1). On the one hand, we have been forgiven and there is no more condemnation. In a hymn Charles Wesley said, “No condemnation now I dread; / Jesus, and all in Him, is mine!” (Hymns, #296). Even though this is true, day after day we are still condemned. A young brother may lose his temper at his mother. He hates this, confesses his sin, and asks for the Lord’s and his mother’s forgiveness. Then he determines that from then on he will never lose his temper at his mother again. But within a short time, he loses his temper again, so he has no peace and is full of condemnation. Actually, if you are really redeemed by God, you always have this inner condemnation. You may realize that a Christian should not joke so much, but you are a person who always jokes with people. After you tell a joke, you repent, but later you still joke with someone once again. To be saved from joking you need the constant salvation by the life of Christ. This is why you need to fellowship with Him all the time.
We also need to be saved in life from the old man (Rom. 6:6) and the natural I (Gal. 2:20a). With us it is always I—I first, I second, I third, and I last. One brother quarrels with another brother, saying, “Don’t you know this is my shirt? Why do you put it on?” This is the natural I.
We also need to be saved by the life of Christ from the self (Matt. 16:24). All these negative things are like gophers, mosquitoes, fleas, scorpions, and snakes. We need to be saved from the flesh with its passions and its lusts (Gal. 5:24). Passions and lusts are two categories of things. Negative desires are passions, and lusts are something worse. Worldliness is another thing from which we need to be saved (1 John 2:15-16; Rom. 12:2a). You do not need to be taught to be worldly. When you contact the world, right away you become worldly.
We also need to be saved from tribulations and all kinds of environmental troubles (Rom. 5:3; 8:35-39). Romans 8 tells us that nearly everything in our human life is a tribulation. A young brother may desire to have a wife, and surely to have a wife is a good thing. But when he gets a wife, this wife becomes a source of tribulation to him. The young sisters are anxious to get married. But when they get married, their husbands become a source of their tribulation. In a wedding meeting a pastor may ask the husband to promise before God that he will love his wife for his whole life. Then he may ask the wife to promise to submit herself to her husband for her whole life. Soon after the wedding, when they are going to sleep, the husband opens the window in the bedroom, but the wife cannot take this because she has always slept in a room with the windows closed. But without the window being opened, the husband cannot sleep. As a result, they quarrel. Thus, we can see that the husband and wife can be a source of tribulation to each other.
On the one hand, it is a blessing to have children, but on the other hand, the more children you have, the more troubles you have. All our possessions become troubles to us. We need to have a house and a car, but these are also troubles. We need to have money to exist, but money becomes a trouble to us. Whatever you have is a trouble. John Nelson Darby said, “O the joy of having nothing and being nothing, seeing nothing but a living Christ in glory, and being careful for nothing but His interests down here.” It is wonderful to have nothing, be nothing, see nothing, and care for nothing but Christ’s interest here on earth. Then you are really saved. Trouble comes to us from every direction, so we need God’s salvation.
Surely the young brothers and sisters have to get married at the proper time. They may think that it is better not to be married. Then I would say, “If you have no wife or husband, you will have even more trouble.” It is hard to find out which way is a debit and which way is a credit. Then what shall we do? To have or not to have are both a trouble. The only way out is God’s salvation. We need to live a life of dying to our self all the time to be conformed to His death all the time (Phil. 3:10). This is God’s salvation.
We need to be saved from spiritual death and weakness (Rom. 8:5, 7, 24-26; Rev. 3:1-2). If you never function in the meetings, you are dead spiritually. You need to be saved from this kind of death and weakness. Also, because of Satan’s rebellion and man’s fall, the entire universe has become a vanity under the slavery of corruption (Rom. 8:20-21). Everything is subject to corruption. If you buy some clothing, it will eventually become old and corrupted. Everything in the universe is a vanity, and day by day everything is corrupting. But God’s salvation by Christ as the life-giving Spirit saves us from these two negative things in the universe: the vanity and the slavery of corruption.
The salvation by the life of Christ is through our regeneration, dispositional sanctification, renewing, transformation, conformation, and glorification. Regeneration washes the believers from the oldness of their old man (Titus 3:5a) and makes them the many sons of God (1 Pet. 1:3; John 3:3, 5; 1:12-13; Heb. 2:10). After regeneration the Spirit of Christ continues to remain in us and to work to sanctify us, to make us holy, not just in position but in disposition (Rom. 6:19, 22; 15:16b; 1 Thes. 5:23). The blood of Christ separates us to make us sanctified positionally (Heb. 13:12). That belongs to God’s redemption. But in God’s salvation, we need to be sanctified, not by the blood of Christ, but by the indwelling Spirit of life.
We are also saved in life through renewing (Titus 3:5b; Rom. 12:2b). Every day we should be renewed by the Spirit. Then there is transformation to change the believers’ constitution metabolically with the divine element of the life of Christ into His image, the image of the firstborn Son of God, from glory to glory (Rom. 12:2b; 2 Cor. 3:18). This is a big step and a lifelong process. Transformation is the infusion into us of God’s new element to replace and discharge our old element.
This makes the believers boast in their tribulations (Rom. 5:3) and makes them more than conquerors over the environmental troubles (8:35-39). In all the troubles, we become conquerors. We will never be subdued, because we have the life of Christ and transformation is going on within us. This also makes the believers kings to reign in the eternal life through the abounding grace (5:17, 21) in this age, and also the co-kings with Christ to rule over the nations in the next age, in the thousand-year kingdom (Rev. 20:4, 6).
Our salvation in life continues through our conformation, conforming us to the image of Christ as the firstborn Son of God to be the mass reproduction of Jesus the God-man as the prototype for the building up of His organic Body (8:29). The last step of our salvation in life is glorification, which is the redemption of the believers’ body, to glorify the believers in their entire being with the divine glory for their full enjoyment of their divine sonship (vv. 23, 30). Such a salvation consummates the building up of the church, the organic Body of Christ (fully covered by Romans 12—16, after the parenthetical section of chapters 9—11), which will consummate in the New Jerusalem as the center of the eternal economy of God. The first eight chapters of Romans are on God’s redemption and salvation. The next three chapters are on God’s selection. The last five chapters are on the church life.
You must believe that God has raised up Jesus Christ from the dead. If you believe in this way, you will be saved (Rom. 10:9b).
After believing, you have to call on the name of the Lord every day. This is your confession (Rom. 10:9a, 13).
Finally, we need to be baptized into Christ Jesus, the embodiment of the Triune God (the Father, the Son, and the Spirit), to get into the organic union with the Triune God embodied in Christ (Rom. 6:3; Matt. 28:19). This is the way to partake of the dynamic salvation of God: to believe, to call, and to be baptized. God’s redemption, God’s salvation, and our believing are the three main items in God’s dynamic salvation.