Ultimate Security: Finding a Refuge in Difficult Times (8 page)

Why not take a moment now to say those words to the Lord in regard to your own calling? Please repeat Paul’s affirmation out loud as your response to God’s call on your life:

Lord, regarding Your call, I echo what Paul said:
“This one thing I do,…I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”
I will not allow myself to be diverted from my calling in God. Amen.

11

FIFTH STAGE: SAVED

As we come to the fifth stage in God’s plan for us—“He saved us”—we need to consider what it means to enter into salvation in response to God’s call. We must first understand the simple requirements for salvation given in the New Testament. Paul stated them in Romans:

If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. (Romans 10:9 nasb)

According to that verse, you need to complete just two actions. First, with your heart, you need to believe the record of the New Testament that God raised Jesus from the dead. However, that, in itself, is not enough. To give your assent to what God says, you must actively submit your life to the lordship of Jesus. That means you must personally confess Jesus as Lord. These two simple requirements together—believing in the heart and confessing with the mouth—bring you into salvation.

The Process of Salvation

Salvation brings to us at least four benefits. There were four negative conditions from which we were saved, all of which are related to sin. We were saved from sin in general, but we were specifically saved from its guilt, its condemnation, its power, and its defilement.

Salvation is a process that takes place within us, as described in the following verse:

[God] saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit. (Titus 3:5 nasb)

The process of salvation embraces three activities:
“washing,” “regeneration,”
and
“renewing.”

1. Washing

First comes
“washing,”
or cleansing, from the defilement of sin. We are inwardly dirty, and we need to be cleansed. There is only one element that can purify the sinner—the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. In 1 John 1:7, the apostle John declared that it is the blood of Jesus, God’s Son, that purifies us from our sin.

John told us how we can receive this cleansing:
“If we confess our sins,
[God]
is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness”
(1 John 1:9 nasb). Please notice that God does not merely forgive our past. That fact, in itself, is wonderful. But He also cleanses us from all the defilement of sin.

2. Regeneration

The second phase of the salvation process is
“regeneration,”
or rebirth. Jesus spoke these very familiar words to Nicodemus:
“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God”
(John 3:3 nasb).

An alternate translation for
“born again”
is “born from above.” Regeneration is a birth that comes from God’s realm above. Jesus also said
, “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit”
(John 3:6 nasb). When you were born of your mother, it was a birth that involved your physical body and your fleshly nature. However, that is not the birth that brings you into salvation. Salvation comes through a birth of the Spirit—the Holy Spirit. By that birth, we receive a totally new life that is born into us by the Spirit of God from above. This is the meaning of regeneration, or rebirth.

3. Renewing

The final phrase of the salvation process is
“renewing.”
In Christ, we become a
“new creation.”
Paul wrote,
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!”
(2 Corinthians 5:17). The word
“creation”
is important because the only One who creates is God. Humans can manufacture, repair, or refine, but we cannot create. Yet a new creation is what we need. Our heart and inner being have been so defiled and distorted by the effects of sin that simply repairing them or patching them up would be ineffective. Only a new creation is adequate for God’s purpose.

After King David had not only fallen into adultery but also committed a murder to cover it up, he was confronted by the prophet Nathan about the awful condition of his own heart. In Psalm 51:10, he cried out to God in agony,
“Create in me a clean heart, O God”
(nasb). He knew that a truly clean heart must come from God, the Creator; no human process could bring that about.

In these three aspects of the salvation process—cleansing, rebirth, and a new creation—God does something that human beings absolutely cannot do. All this is God’s mercy, not His justice. He applies salvation, not according to the deeds of righteousness that we have done, but according to His sovereign mercy.

Only a new creation is adequate for God’s purpose.

Salvation Brings Decisive Transitions

This salvation we are speaking of brings about decisive transitions in a person’s life. The first is a transition
“from death to life”
:

[Jesus said,] “I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life.” (John 5:24)

Salvation is the crossing over from death into eternal life.

Second, salvation is a transition
from darkness to light
. Paul wrote,
“For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord”
(Ephesians 5:8).

Third, salvation is a transition
from being a child of wrath to being a child of God
. Paul said,
“Among them
[
“the sons of disobedience”
]
we too
[including himself]
…were by nature children of wrath”
(Ephesians 2:3 nasb; see also verse 2 nasb). And yet, John spoke the following wonderful truths about those children of wrath who receive Jesus:
“To all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God”
(John 1:12–13). It is the decisive act of receiving Jesus that causes a person to be changed from a child of wrath to a child of God. This transition does not come about by joining a church, “turning over a new leaf,” or making good resolutions. It happens by receiving Jesus.

A Vital Decision

In regard to salvation, then, we are left with two categories of persons. When we speak of material wealth, we often refer to “the have’s” and “the have not’s.” This concept also applies in the spiritual realm. John summed up the situation as follows:

And the testimony is this, that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has the life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have the life. (1 John 5:11–12 nasb)

The question you must answer is, “Do
you
have Jesus?” In Jesus, you have eternal life. If you do not have Jesus—if you have not received Him—you do not have
“the life.”
Are you a “have,” or are you a “have not”? That is a vital decision every person must make—a critical issue you have to resolve for yourself.

As we end this chapter on salvation, my question to you is this: Why wait? If you have any doubt about your standing with God and would like to resolve this issue once and for all, please take care of the matter now. If you would like to take this vital step, or even if you would like to affirm it again to make the matter sure forever, please pray this prayer with me now:

Dear Jesus, I need this process of salvation to be complete in my life. I desperately need to be cleansed from my sinfulness. I need to be reborn by the Holy Spirit, and I need to be renewed as a new creation in You. I want to move from death to life, from darkness to light, from being a child of wrath to being a child of God. Therefore, I now receive You, Lord Jesus Christ, into my life. I believe in my heart that God raised You from the dead, and I confess with my mouth that You are my Lord. Thank You for Your wonderful salvation. Amen.

12

SIXTH STAGE: JUSTIFIED

As we have learned so far in our discussions about salvation, the essence of receiving salvation is to meet two simple requirements: believing in your heart that God raised Jesus from the dead and confessing with your mouth Jesus as Lord. When you meet those conditions, as you did at the end of the last chapter, you can say, on the basis of the Bible, “I am saved.”

Unfortunately, the thinking and the experience of many Christians stops there. However, salvation leads us to the sixth stage: “He justified us.” As with the word
predestination
, some people consider
justification
to be a frightening theological word from which they back away. Yet to do so is a great pity, because justification is one of the most glorious truths of the entire Bible.

What Is “Justification”?

What does it mean to be justified? To answer that question, we will look at a succession of definitions. First, to be justified means “to be acquitted of a crime.” Justification is heaven’s “Not guilty” verdict on your life
.

To be justified also means “to be reckoned righteous.” When you are justified, God imputes, or imparts, His own righteousness to you.

Finally, to be justified means “to be made righteous.” Please do not stop at being “reckoned” righteous—you must be
made
righteous.

Here is my simple explanation of what it means to be justified: “Just-as-if-I’d never sinned.” I have been made righteous with the righteousness of God—a righteousness that has never known sin, that has no shadow of guilt, and that has no past to be forgiven. To be made righteous with God’s righteousness is the full meaning of justification.

To be justified means “Just-as-if-I’d never sinned.”

How Can We Be Righteous?

Justification is the answer to a question Job asked in what is perhaps the oldest book of the Bible. At a time when Job was in tremendous distress, he cried out,
“How can a mortal be righteous before God?”
(Job 9:2). This question is very deep, very profound. Job’s friends, who really were not much help to him, all seemed to agree that no one can be righteous before God. To them, it was ridiculous even to talk that way. Thankfully, Job held on to his question. Even though he did not have the answer, he would not abandon the question.

If you want to find the answer to Job’s question, a good place to turn is Paul’s epistle to the Romans. There, Paul gave the complete answer to the problem expressed by this question:
“How can a mortal be righteous before God?”

But now apart from the Law the righteousness of God has been manifested, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe; for there is no distinction; for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus. (Romans 3:21–24 nasb)

Please notice that we are
“justified”
—reckoned righteous—
“as a gift.”
We cannot earn it, because it is received through God’s grace—not our efforts. This justification occurs through the redemption that has been provided by the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ on our behalf.

A Gift by Faith

Paul wrote,
“Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ”
(Romans 5:1 nasb). We receive justification from God as a gift by faith—never by works, only by believing. If you try to earn it, you will never get it. You must believe. The problem with many religious people is that they are trying to earn God’s righteousness, something that cannot be earned.

We see this truth even more clearly further on in the fifth chapter of Romans, where Paul compared the results of the sin of Adam with the righteousness of Christ:

For if by the transgression of the one, death reigned through the one, much more those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ. (Romans 5:17 nasb)

Paul spoke about receiving
“the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness.”
Again, we see by his words that righteousness is offered to us by God as a gift. When you are saved, God offers you righteousness as a gift. The basis for this is the exchange that took place when Jesus died on the cross. Jesus took the place of the sinner, the unrighteous, and the ungodly. He bore the sinner’s condemnation, and He suffered the sinner’s punishment. But the other side of that act is the exchange God offers to us. In 2 Corinthians, Paul succinctly stated the nature of this exchange. Speaking about Jesus, he wrote,
“God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God”
(2 Corinthians 5:21).

In the exchange on the cross, Jesus was made sin with our sinfulness. He died because
“the wages of sin is death”
(Romans 6:23). But on the other side of that wonderful exchange, we become, in Christ, the righteousness of God.

Please ponder for a moment this phrase from 2 Corinthians 5:21:
“…in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
If you are feeling insecure, troubled, or guilty, grasp this truth by faith: You, through faith in Jesus, have been made the righteousness of God. Now take one more moment to consider carefully what the righteousness of God is—a righteousness that has never sinned, has no guilt, and has no dark shadows from the past. Satan can tear your own righteousness to pieces with his accusations. But there is nothing he can say against the righteousness of God. Through the exchange on the cross, God’s righteousness is now yours.