After three days in the grave, the Lord Jesus resurrected very early on the first day of the week. He overcame the power of death and came out of the grave. Through such a resurrection He became the life-giving Spirit to enter into us to be our Savior. He was the Redeemer until the time of His death. He made redemption for our sins through His death and accomplished the redemptive work for our redemption. However, after the fall man did not just have a problem in position, a problem in legal procedure, or a problem of having a record of sins before God; man also had a problem within him in that now Satan’s life had entered into him.
Even though a person has been redeemed and saved by believing in the Lord, he has not yet been fully saved. He still needs to be saved daily from his sinful nature. The Lord Jesus’ precious blood is for clearing our record of sins and redeeming us. To be sure, because of His death and the blood shed by Him we have been redeemed, and we will never perish. However, sin still dwells in our flesh. Within us we have a great deal of unclean and unrighteous thoughts, and in our outward actions we constantly have trespasses and defilement. Thus, we still need to be washed by the Lord’s precious blood and, at the same time, we also need to be saved by the Lord as the Spirit of life.
First John 1:2 and 3 says that the eternal life has been reported to us and that we have enjoyed fellowship with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. However, this fellowship can be interrupted because of our sinning. If we say that after we have believed in the Lord that sin is no longer in us and the root of sin has been eradicated, this is a great error. We should know that after we have believed in the Lord, our sinful nature is still in our flesh and has not been eradicated. It will not be until the time of our rapture, at the redemption of our body, that we can say that our whole being has been fully saved. However, today this sinful nature is still within us; if we say that we do not have sin, we are deceiving ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
Before God, man not only has the problem of the record of sins and the problem of position, but man also has the problem of the sinful nature. To illustrate, before a mother leaves the house, she may repeatedly warn her child, saying, “After I leave, do not drink from that bottle because it contains poison; you will be poisoned if you drink it.” Even though the mother repeatedly urges the child in this way, he still may take the bottle and drink from it. In doing this, he sins against his mother, so he may come to the mother to confess his sin. The mother can say, “I forgive you. Don’t do that again.” However, even though the case is dealt with, the poison remains inside the child.
It is not sufficient for a man only to have the outward redemption of sins; he still has the problem of the sinful nature within him; he still has the sinning life and nature. Hence, he needs to be saved in life. This is not a matter of being redeemed by the precious blood but a matter of being saved in life. Thus, man has a twofold need. On the one hand, there is the outward problem related to position, the law, and the record; for this, man needs redemption by the precious blood of Christ. On the other hand, there is the inward problem related to the old life and sinful nature; for this man needs to have another life, a transcendent life, to come into him to save him that he may be delivered from the fallen life which he had from the beginning.
Since man has this dual need, after the Lord Jesus accomplished redemption by His death, He resurrected from the dead to become the life-giving Spirit as the Savior. Romans 5:10 says, “We, being enemies, were reconciled to God through the death of His Son.” This means that when we had a record of sins, we were reconciled to God through the redemptive death of the Lord Jesus on the cross, the death in which He shed His blood for us. Thus, the record of our sins was cleared, and we were redeemed. This is the redemptive aspect. Then Paul went on to say, “Much more we will be saved in His life, having been reconciled.” This is the saving aspect.