The work of salvation which God accomplished in His divine Trinity is firstly of God the Father (2 Thes. 2:13). God the Father chose us from the beginning; that is, before the foundation of the world and in His sovereign ordination, He foreknew, chose, and predestinated us to receive His salvation. Since He is the origin and source of salvation, it is of God the Father that we are saved.
The work of salvation which God accomplished in His divine Trinity is in God the Son. As the embodiment of the Triune God, the Son was sent by the Father (1 John 4:14) into the world as a man to save sinners (1 Tim. 1:15). He passed through incarnation, human living, death, resurrection, and ascension, thus accomplishing an eternal redemption. On the one hand, He terminated the negative things, such as sin, the flesh, the old man, Satan and the world belonging to him, the old creation, and all separating ordinances of the law; on the other hand, He released the divine life. Thus, He is able to redeem us who have believed into Him. Furthermore, in resurrection He brought us into a life relationship, an organic union, with God, that we might participate in all that God is and has. Hence, we are saved in God the Son.
The work of salvation which God accomplished in His divine Trinity is through God the Spirit (Titus 3:5). God the Spirit is the ultimate consummation of the processed Triune God, the reaching of the Triune God to us to apply that which the Father planned and that which the Son accomplished. First, by enlightening and seeking man He sanctifies the fallen man unto the obedience of faith in Christ’s redemption. This is illustrated by the second parable in Luke 15, which speaks of a woman who lights a lamp, sweeps the house, and seeks carefully until she finds the lost coin. This is also what the Lord Jesus was referring to in John 16:8, where He said that when the Spirit comes, He will convict the world concerning sin, concerning righteousness, and concerning judgment, that men may repent and turn to God, believe into the Lord Jesus, and be regenerated. Furthermore, the Spirit washes and renews us in the divine element to make us a new creation with the divine nature that, having been justified by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, we may become heirs of God in His eternal life (Titus 3:7), inheriting all that the Triune God is to us. Therefore, our salvation is of God the Father, in God the Son, and through God the Spirit. It is the Triune God Himself who accomplished this work of salvation.
The source of our salvation is God’s love, God’s mercy, and God’s grace; the accomplishment of our salvation is by the Triune God; and the means of our salvation is through God’s calling, the Spirit’s sanctification, Christ’s redemption, our union with the Triune God, and the Spirit’s regeneration.
We are saved, first, through God’s calling. God’s calling is the first thing that God accomplishes in His chosen ones in the initial stage of His full salvation. This is God’s new beginning, in which He calls men out of the created Adamic race and transfers them into the called Abrahamic race, and out of the life of the old creation into the life of the new creation, that the believers may come out of darkness and enter into the marvelous light of God, out of the death-realm of Satan’s darkness into the life-realm of God’s marvelous light, and become a people made holy unto God. It is through God’s calling that we receive God’s salvation. Therefore, we are saved through God’s calling.
We are saved through the Spirit’s sanctification. After God calls man, the Holy Spirit comes to separate man, to sanctify man, that man may repent and turn to God unto the obedience of faith in Christ’s redemption. The Holy Spirit sanctifies the fallen men by enlightening and seeking them, convicting them concerning sin, concerning righteousness, and concerning judgment, thus causing them to repent and turn to God and to receive God’s salvation. Therefore, we are saved through the Spirit’s sanctification.
We are saved through Christ’s redemption. Christ died on the cross to accomplish an eternal redemption for man. When we believe into Christ, we are redeemed; that is, we are forgiven of our sins, freed, washed, sanctified, justified, and reconciled to God. As a result, we who once belonged to God but became lost, and who became God’s enemies because of our fall, are recovered and accepted by God. Hence, we are saved through Christ’s redemption.