Saved! Saved! Saved!

1219-A

For nearly two years, they were held hostage by fanatic terrorists. They were permitted no contact with their loved ones; no real contact, in fact, with the outside world. Those who held them in bondage poured into their minds day after day bitter propaganda, denying the concern of their own people, pretending that no one even was trying to rescue them. At first, they counted the hours till their release. Then they started counting days. Finally, weeks, then months‑ until they stopped counting altogether.

Then one day, it happened. Through secret negotiations and the payment of an unknown ransom, they were saved. Safely, they were delivered back into the arms of those who had never stopped praying never stopped hoping, never stopped waiting. All five of them were rescued at last.

Three years later, they had a reunion. With their families, they gathered at a luxurious hotel to recall stories of those horrible days when they were hostages and to compare notes on what had happened since they had been set free.

Three of them had returned to develop successful careers and happy families, and they looked back on those years as deep learning years, horribly painful, but nonetheless a part of the process of life. The other two had not fared so well. One had been under the care of a doctor continually. The stress had been too much for him. He still awoke in the night, screaming. He still could not eat well, sleep well, or communicate well with people. The fifth man had drifted from job to job, from relationship to relationship‑ unable to settle down again into any meaningful kind of life. He had tried, but always something inside of him caused him to revolt and flee.

The question is: How many of those five were saved? You, no doubt, will answer, “Well, obviously all five of them.” Then why aren’t all five of them happy? Why aren’t all five of them content? Why aren’t all five of them healthy? and successful?

The answer is that being saved meant they were delivered from a fate worse than death. It was up to them to begin to build a new life. Three of them, in varying degrees, were able to do that. The other two had scars so deep they never quite got it all together‑ at least not visibly. But they were all saved. No longer were they sentenced to endless torture. No longer were they deprived of the things necessary to live a fruitful life. No longer were their captors in control of their ultimate destiny. They had all been saved.

That word “saved” is a most unusual word. In Christian circles, it has all but been outlawed as “out of date” or “archaic” in the context of salvation. “Uptown folks” don’t get “saved” any more; they enter a “new relationship” with God. And while that is true, we have, perhaps, lost something valuable in the translation. Perhaps the converts (there’s another word we don’t like anymore), by not referring to themselves as saved, have missed out on the depth of their understanding of what they have been saved from. We do not simply enter a new relationship with God.

We enter that relationship because He has reached down into the pits of hell itself, where a vicious enemy held us captive. We were doomed. There was no hope, no light, no life, no joy.

Then one day, someone who loved us more than we could even comprehend paid the ransom price in full, and our captor had no choice but to set us free. We were saved! We were delivered! We were set free! We have enjoyed that freedom in varying degrees. Some seem destined for the sheer heights of heaven while living on earth. Others seem to live roller-coaster kinds of lives, never quite getting a consistent existence. Still others show almost no evidence of being saved.

These kinds of mixed testimonies seem to spawn all kinds of doctrines by those who are measuring doctrines by experience. Some react by teaching that if you’re not living in constant victory, you’re not saved. They don’t quite explain Paul’s life. Others espouse a kind of “precipice” salvation, saying that so long as you don’t go off the deep end, maybe you were redeemed, but if you actually fail the Lord or deny the Lord, you were never saved. They don’t quite explain Peter. Still others teach a kind of “works” doctrine; that unless you put together a life of obvious fruits, it’s too late to be born again. They don’t quite explain the thief on the Cross. All of them deny one basic fact: If you cried out to God in faith and asked Him to save you, He did. But, being “saved” was not the end; it was the beginning. And not everyone had handled their new life the way God intended them to. Some refused to obey. Others had scars so deep, they are still struggling to find the victorious life. 

But if God delivered them from an eternity in hell by grace, they are saved. They didn’t do it, and they can’t undo it. Nothing they say will change it. They are no longer sentenced to endless torturing and a hopeless future. One day they will experience what they possess, freedom. Hopefully they will begin to taste it in this life, and it will grow sweeter as the days go by. That’s what God wants for each of us. But beware of theologians who begin to redefine what it means to be saved. The Gnostics and the legalistic Jews in Ephesus were trying to do just that; and Paul did not like it one bit. So in his loving letter of instruction to young Timothy, he penned some words of comfort and some words of exhortation that we in our Twentieth Century quest for the perfect life might do well to re-read these words:

I Timothy 2:3 This is good and pleases God our Savior,

4 who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the Truth.

5 For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus,

6 who gave Himself a ransom for all men‑the testimony given in its proper time.

What is “good”, you recall, is for us to pray always for all men, especially those in authority, so that we might live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. That reflects God’s nature beautifully (it is good) and it warms God’s heart personally (it pleases God).

The reason is that God has a deep desire in His heart; a desire so great that it is overwhelmingly the primary objective of life as He gives it. That desire is that all men be saved and come to a knowledge of the Truth. The church was placed on planet earth to achieve that objective. We were to go into all the world preaching, teaching, baptizing, and observing everything God told us to do. And lo, Christ will be with us, for He will be in us until He comes to take us back to that state of Glory man was so freely given before the fall. That is our hope. That is our joy. That is our reason for living; and any reason other than that is less than that which God intended.

You and I were placed on planet earth to be saved. You and I have been left on planet earth to proclaim the Good News so that, if it were possible, all men might be saved. That’s what God wants. That’s what pleases His heart. The angels in Heaven stop what they are doing (they are praising God continually) long enough to shout and rejoice with an extra anthem of praise every time one sinner repents. Every time one person is saved.

That is why it is imperative that, first of all, we delineate clearly between those who are saved, and those who are lost. Those who have come to God on God’s terms, and asked Christ into their lives by faith, are saved. They may or may not be enjoying the full fruits of their salvation. They may or may not be reproducing their lives in Christ as they were intended. But if they took God at His Word, God did what He said He would do, they are saved. They are bound for an eternity in Heaven, where moth and rust can’t corrupt and where thieves can’t break through and steal.

On the other hand, if they have never acknowledged their need of God, and thus never asked Him to be what He is Savior, they are lost. They may or may not be morally good. They may or may not be cultured or educated or even religious. They, by virtue of refusing to accept God’s free gift of salvation are lost, lost, lost. They may be Sunday school teachers. They may be preachers. They may be seminary professors, but if they have not come to God God’s way, they are lost. Unsaved. Unregenerated. Not born again. (All of those words we no longer seem comfortable with). They are not lost because of what they have done; they are lost because they have not accepted what God has done, They are lost because they have not been saved.

Please get it straight in your mind.

I John 5:12 He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.

John 3:36 He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.

And that man might be more moral than any Christian you know. Moral, but lost. He might be more religious than any Christian you know. Religious, but lost. He might be more compassionate than any Christian you know. Compassionate, but lost. Why is he lost? He has not been saved! Is that God’s wish?

No, God desires that all men be saved and come to a knowledge of truth. In today’s study of I Timothy, we are continuing our look at His amazing grace.

Saved and Safe

Our first assignment will be to look at that word “saved” from a Scriptural perspective. It is not a word coined by evangelical fanatics; it is a word used by God over and over and over in His Word to emphasize both the intensity and the finality of His deliverance from an eternal hell. The Greek word is (sozo), a word that means: “to save from death and judgment; to bring blessing in the place of condemnation; to bestow once for all, everlasting life in place of everlasting death.” In the dictionary we have this definition: save= “to rescue from danger; to preserve for future use”. It is a combination of delivering something or someone from harm, and the setting of something aside, assuring its safekeeping for a future time.

The person who does the delivering or saving is called a “Savior”. He was needed because the one lost could not save himself or herself. Hence, unless a Savior came, there was no hope. But the Savior who did come possesses two infinite powers: the power to deliver from, and the power to preserve for. Hence, you and I, if we have been born again, have been not only saved from the penalty of sin, by that act of being saved, we have been guaranteed to be preserved from the ultimate purpose of sin which is to separate man from God. Saved from hell. Saved for Heaven. All in one act. All by One Savior. All by an irrevocable decision that acknowledges God as the only One who can save.

The word is used more than 100 times in the New Testament alone. It is hardly a modern invention. Jesus used it in John 3:17. He had just told His disciples that

16 For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him shall not perish, but shall have eternal life.

It goes on,

17 For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.

18 He that believeth on Him is not condemned: (he is saved), but He that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.

In John 5:34, Jesus clearly related His purpose in preaching: He said this:

…these things I say, that ye might be saved.

In Acts 2:47 we read:

And the Lord kept adding to their number daily those who were being saved.

And if you think that word to be out-of-date, try looking these verses up in “modern” translations. You will find that the word “saved” is translated “saved”. No better word could be found in today’s language.

There are several key thoughts that evolve from its usage.

1- Only the Savior can save. In Acts 4:12, we read that Peter,

8 Then Peter filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them: …

12 Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.

2- We know from its usage in Scripture that it is a one time act. In Acts 16:30, we read of that Philippian jailer who suddenly realized his lost condition as he saw God deliver Paul and Silas, and the jailer fell on his face before them and asked,

29 …“Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”

31 They replied, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved…”

3- We know from the use of the word that in order to be saved, a man must abandon his own righteousness. In Romans 10, Paul bared his heart with these words:

1 “Brothers, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for the Israelites is that they may be saved.

2 For I can testify about them that they are zealous for God, but their zeal is not based on knowledge.

3 Since they did not know the righteousness that comes from God and sought to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness.”

Fourthly, while being saved is once for all, it involves the act of being kept as well, so it is an ongoing activity. Paul wrote in I Corinthians 1:18,

18 For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

Finally, the word defined in the Word clearly means that the wisest man in the world cannot fathom this magnificent act of God apart from God’s Spirit.

I Corinthians 1 adds,

20 …Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?

21 For since in the wisdom of God, the world through its wisdom did not know Him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe.

So I would like us to consider four basic Scriptural principles by which to relate human experience. We do not judge Scripture by experience;, we must judge experience by Scripture. That was Eve’s problem: she felt good about eating that fruit, so she redefined what God meant in the light of how she felt rather than assessing how she felt in the light of what God said. Had she done that, she would have said “no” to that slimy serpent, and all of history could have been rewritten.

Truth 1- Salvation is free. You didn’t deserve it. I didn’t deserve it. Billy Graham didn’t deserve it. Dwight L. Moody didn’t deserve it. No one who ever lived deserved to be, saved. “There is none righteous. No not one.” So, it was not by works of righteousness which we have done, For by grace were we saved, by faith, it was a gift from God”. It was not related to works or worth. I know that is common knowledge, but it is basic truth that Satan, with his humanistic substitute for the real thing, never stops trying to circumvent.

Truth 2- Everyone in this world is either “saved” or “lost”. No one is almost saved. No one is formerly saved. No one is saved, but. You are either born or not. You are either dead or alive. You are either “in Christ”, or you aren’t. If someone says to you “I’m nearly saved”, they are saying that if they died in their present condition, they would spend an endless eternity in hell, separated from the Living God. If someone says to you “I used to be saved”, either they thought they were, but they weren’t, or they are and they aren’t sure, but no one “was saved” and is “now lost”, because salvation is a once-for-all final act that is based solely on something God did by an act of His will. He has chosen to make it irrevocable. “No one can take you out of the Father’s Hand”. And “He will never leave you or forsake you”. The word “saved” means both “delivered from “ and “kept for”. You, according to Peter, are being “kept by the power of God unto salvation ready to be revealed”.

Truth 3- You can do nothing to earn it, since every man or woman is either “saved” or “lost”. Since salvation is eternal and cannot be taken from you, and since it’s a free gift, it boils down to a simple choice, and that choice has got to be the one single most important choice any man or woman will ever make. If everyone is either “saved” or “lost”, that means that anyone who is not one is the other. You just can’t walk by a cemetery and wonder if there are live bodies in any of those graves. If they are alive, they’re not dead; if they are dead, they’re not alive. That means that anyone you know who has never personally trusted Christ and been “born again”(from above) is lost, without hope, and destined for hell, and your task and mine is to acquaint them with the Good News that they can be, (Here’s our word again) saved!

Truth 4- Not everyone who has been “saved” acts like it. Not everyone who has been “saved” grows at the same pace. Not everyone who has been “saved” makes the right choices. That doesn’t mean they were never saved, and it doesn’t mean they are less “saved” than someone else. It only means that they have been “saved from an eternal hell” and never entered into the fullness of the life God has offered them. In heaven they will miss the joy of the eternal rewards that might have been. On earth they will miss the joy of the Christ-filled life they might have had. But don’t start rewriting your theology to conform to their behavior. Paul writes in I Corinthians 3:14 and 15 of the testing of a man’s works in eternity, to see if they were of God or not. He writes that if any man built on the foundation (which is Christ Himself) using the gold, silver, and precious stones of the Spirit, that work will stand, and he will be rewarded. “If the work which any person has built on this Foundation‑ any product of his efforts whatever‑ survives (this test) he will get his reward. But if any person’s work is burned up (under the test) he will suffer the loss (of it all, losing his reward), though he himself will be saved, but only as (one who has passed) through the fire.”

The foundation can’t burn. Christ is the foundation. But a man can receive Christ, and never lay a single righteous stone upon that precious foundation, thus losing all his reward in heaven, and all his spiritual blessings on earth.

But he, himself, will be saved. He will be saved like a man escaping a blazing inferno with nothing but his life. And there may be men and women who come to Christ and begin to walk with Him, but “the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches and the lust of other things entering in choke the word and it becomes unfruitful”. They will miss the blessing, but they will be saved. Like someone whose home was destroyed by fire, who, rather than rebuild it, just camped out for the rest of their life on that slab of concrete that remained, so they will be safe, but have nothing to show for a lifetime as a child of God.

Grace is a difficult thing to understand, and it is a humiliating doctrine to build your theology upon, because it brings man no glory at all. And so from the Corinthians to the Ephesians to the Philippians to the church of the early centuries to this very age, anything man can do to reason away the “foolishness of grace”, he will do.

And in virtually every generation a “new” theology will emerge that questions whether or not grace could be that easy; and tries to imagine a way to justify questioning the salvation of anyone or everyone who doesn’t do something, or show something or prove something. And usually it progresses until only those who do it their way are really saved.

The Ephesian church was filled with it in the first century, and the church is filled with it today, as well. God’s call to discipleship is real. God’s demand for Lordship is supreme, and God’s enabling power to become is still available to whosoever will. But salvation is still of grace, and grace alone, and some will say “yes” to Christ’s call, and be saved, and never appear to be progressing in their walk. It is sad. It is more than sad, it’s pathetic, because they have been seated at the banquet table of God, and with all that feast of spiritual riches before them are still eating scraps from the trash can of life. You have to pity them, and you have to pray for them. But you don’t have to begin that horrible process of questioning the grace of God because of them. If they really trusted Christ, they are saved, though as by fire. If not, God is their judge. We’re not equipped.

Our goal is two-fold. To see that all men who will are saved, and that those who are saved come to a knowledge of truth. More about that in our next study.

I ask you only three questions in closing.

1- Have you been saved? It’s an old-fashioned word, but no better one exists. Either you are, or you’re not a child of God. No one is in between. And if you are not sure, be sure to find out.

2- If you are saved, are you living like it? Are you building on the foundation with gold, silver, and precious stones, or are you presuming on God’s grace, that because you have been given an indestructible foundation you don’t need to build a life of faith upon it. Fool! You will be saved, alright, but as one delivered from a blazing fire, who never had the sense to do anything but sit on the foundation and wait for it to be over.

3- Are you questioning the grace of God? Is God’s plan too easy to suit you? If you are questioning God’s grace, you are questioning God’s wisdom. Stop it. Simply humble yourself this hour and acknowledge that God made it simple for simple people like us. He made it all of grace, so proud people like us cannot share His glory.

The truth of the matter is this: if you come to God on God’s terms, you are saved… saved… saved. What you do after that will affect your rewards, but not your salvation. Too easy? No. It wasn’t easy for God. It cost Him His Son’s life. It’s only easy for you and for me.

Oh, dear God, I will not question

How your plan so sweet could be

I will only stand and marvel

That your grace should fall on me.