Chapter 2
What Has God Done that I Might be Saved?
Fortunately for us, God has taken the initiative to win us back. He loves us and desires to restore us to His friendship. The Lord looks upon each of us and sighs, “Ah, you are beautiful, my beloved, ah, you are beautiful” (Song of Songs 1:15 NAB). Because of His great love for us, individually and as a people, God is willing to go to any length to win us back. Speaking to Israel (and to each one of us) as to an unfaithful wife who has utterly spurned her husband, God declares:
“In that day, says the LORD . . . I will betroth you to me for ever; I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love, and in mercy. I will betroth you to me in faithfulness; and you shall know the LORD” (Hosea 2:16,19-20).
The story of God’s plan to bring us back to Himself and our response to His invitation, the greatest love story of all time, is the story of the Bible.
The Scriptures are full of verses like the following one:
The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? (Psalm 27:1).
Over and over, the Bible reminds us that God Himself is our salvation; there is no other way to freedom. “Turn to me and be safe, all you ends of the earth, for I am God; there is no other!” (Isaiah 45:22 NAB).
And again, “‘I, I am He who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins’” (Isaiah 43:25).
From the moment Adam and Eve broke God’s command, even before the consequences of their sin had fully taken effect, God began to declare His intention to win back mankind. Speaking to the serpent, God said, “‘I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel’” (Genesis 3:15). Over the centuries God announced more and more clearly His intention to save us. About six hundred years before Christ, He spoke the following words through the prophet Jeremiah:
“Behold, the days are coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. . . . I will put my law within them, and I will write it upon their hearts. . . . I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more” (Jeremiah 31:31,33,34).
God did not bring about His promised salvation the way we would expect. In His wisdom, He began by choosing one nation from among all the nations on earth to work with, a people particularly His own. He chose them, not because they were a great nation, for they were the least of the nations, but because He loved them (see Deuteronomy 7:6-7). He bound Himself to them by covenant. The Israelites, God’s chosen people, broke His covenant. Again and again, God reached out to His people, sending His messengers, the prophets. “‘They put to death those who foretold the coming of the Just One’”(Acts 7:52 NAB). But God’s plan could not be frustrated; despite the hardness of heart of His chosen people, God was preparing them to receive their Savior.
“In times past, God spoke in fragmentary and varied ways to our fathers through the prophets; in this, the final age, he has spoken to us through his Son” (Hebrews 1:1-2 NAB). God, with the heart of a Father, believed with hope, “They will respect my son” (Matthew 21:37). But when the Father sent His only beloved Son into the world to save us, we rejected Him and nailed Him to a cross. Out of this crime, the most grievous in human history, God in the wonder of His creative love wrought our salvation.
Who is this Son, this Savior, sent to us by God?
He is the Word made flesh, the Son of God. He is also the son of Mary, the son of David, the son of Abraham, the son of Adam. He is the flower of the human race, the blossom of Israel. “In days to come Jacob shall take root, Israel shall blossom and put forth shoots, and fill the whole world with fruit” (Isaiah 27:6).
His name is Jesus, which means “Yahweh is salvation.” “Yahweh” is the divine name, meaning “I AM WHO I AM” (see Exodus 3:14). So Jesus’ name means “I AM WHO I AM am salvation.” No wonder we say His is the “name above every name” (Philippians 2:9)!
Is Jesus truly divine, God Himself? Yes.
He is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation; for in him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible . . . all things were created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. . . . For in him all the fulness of God was pleased to dwell. . . . In him the whole fulness of deity dwells bodily (Colossians 1:15-16,17,19,2:9).
St. John the Evangelist also makes Jesus’ identity clear: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (1 John 1:1).
Is Jesus truly human? Yes. He is the man-God.
Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same nature, that through death he might destroy him who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong bondage. . . . Therefore he had to be made like his brethren in every respect. . . . For because he himself has suffered and been tempted, he is able to help those who are tempted (Hebrews 2:14-15,17-18).
Jesus, the promised Messiah, is the only way to the Father.
There is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all (1 Timothy 2:5-6).
Jesus said to Thomas, “‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me’” (John 14:6).
He who has the Son has life; he who has not the Son of God has not life (1 John 5:12).
Jesus said, “‘I am the door; if any one enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture’” (John 10:9).
Jesus also said,
“My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me; and I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish, and no one shall snatch them out of my hand” (John 10:27-28).
Was it necessary for Jesus to die so that we could be set free? Are our sins that serious? Scripture says, “Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins” (Hebrews 9:22). Jesus, by giving up His life-blood for His friends, has won for us a most wonderful salvation:
He entered, not with the blood of goats and calves, but with his own blood, and achieved eternal redemption (Hebrews 9:12 NAB).
Since, therefore, we are now justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life (Romans 5:9-10).
Not only has Jesus’ death reconciled us with the Father, but also with our brothers and sisters. St. Paul writes that reconciliation between Jew and Gentile, and therefore between every conceivable enemy, has taken place in Jesus’ flesh at the cost of His shed blood:
But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near in the blood of Christ. For he is our peace, who has made us both one, and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility . . . that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby bringing the hostility to an end (Ephesians 2:13-16).
Further, every other division brought about by our sins has been healed “by means of him” who reconciled “everything in his own person, both on earth and in the heavens, making peace through the blood of his cross” (Colossians 1:20 NAB).
It was out of love for us that Jesus laid down His life for us to reconcile us with His Father. “Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).
At the dawn of the nation of Israel, Abraham prophesied when he told his son Isaac, “‘God will provide himself the lamb for a burnt offering’” (Genesis 22:8). This prophesy was fulfilled some two thousand years later when “the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” (John 1:14 NAB). John the Baptist, sent by God to announce the Messiah, “saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, ‘Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!’” (John 1:29).
Although God began His plan of salvation by choosing a single people, in Jesus His salvation has been extended to us all. “Salvation is from the Jews” (John 4:22), but all nations and all generations have been included. God declared through the prophet Isaiah, speaking of the Messiah:
It is too little, he says, for you to be my servant, to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and restore the survivors of Israel; I will make you a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth (Isaiah 49:6 NAB).
Not only did God intend to rescue the people of every nation, but “my justice shall remain forever and my salvation, for all generations” (Isaiah 51:8 NAB). From the beginning God desired “all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:4).
St. Paul gives us additional light on God’s plan to save all mankind. Beginning with His chosen one, Abraham, God raised up a people, the Israelites, from his descendants. In each generation, only a remnant stayed faithful to God, while most of them fell away from Him. “By their transgression salvation has come to the Gentiles” (Romans 11:11 NAB)! Even those Israelites who fell away are not completely lost, for “if the dough offered as first fruits is holy, so is the whole lump; and if the root is holy, so are the branches” (Romans 11:16). St. Paul, wanting to make his point clearly, says:
I want you to understand this mystery, brethren: a hardening has come upon part of Israel, until the full number of the Gentiles come in, and so all Israel will be saved (Romans 11:25-26).
Have you ever noticed how God repeatedly uses what looks like a tragedy to bring about a greater good? “We know that God makes all things work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his decree” (Romans 8:28 NAB). Our salvation follows this pattern: out of our greatest crime, the murder of the Son of God, God draws our greatest good. This is cause for rejoicing!
The salvation of God far exceeds our loftiest hopes. Not only does He save us from danger, especially of the eternal kind, but He also sets us free for the abundant life (see John 10:10), free to love as He loves. He heals and restores us, desiring that we have life to the full, going so far as to allow us to “become sharers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4 NAB)! The only sane response to such a great salvation is overflowing joy and thanksgiving.
With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation. And you will say in that day: “Give thanks to the LORD. . . . Shout, and sing for joy, O inhabitant of Zion, for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel” (Isaiah 12:3-4,6).
Salvation, as we have said, is not of our own doing, but is a free gift from God. “The grace of God has appeared for the salvation of all men” (Titus 2:12).
The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 6:23).
St. Paul makes it clear that there is no way we can earn salvation; there is no way we can be “good enough” to win God’s approval. Rather, our salvation comes from Him as a gift:
For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God—not because of works, lest any man should boast (Ephesians 2:8-9).
But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works; otherwise grace would no longer be grace (Romans 11:6).
We must respond to this gift, either accepting it or refusing it. Through Jesus, the Father has extended His hand of welcome to us, inviting us back into the deepest love relationship with Himself. Will we accept His invitation? This is the topic of the rest of this book: what must I do to be saved? What must my response to God be?
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