Jesus the Savior

Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Monday, March 13th. People often think they can know God without knowing Christ. Today, you'll hear the crucial nature of a relationship with Jesus the Savior as the series on the character of God continues. If you'll turn to Matthew chapter one and the title of this message, Jesus the Savior.

Now I want you to notice something in this passage. As we end the genealogy, it says in verse 16, And Jacob begat Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ or the Messiah. In verse 21, it says, And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shall call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins.

And then in verse 23, it says, Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel, which being interpreted is God with us. All through the Bible when a name was given to a child, how often you and I see that the name was given for a very specific reason. So it's evident here in the first chapter of Matthew when the angel is announcing the birth of Jesus, and she shall bring forth a son, thou shall call his name Jesus. That is, Mary and Joseph did not have the privilege of naming Jesus. The angel said he's already been named.

His name is Jesus, because he has been sent with the prime responsibility of saving his people from their sins. The people who lived in his day were looking for a deliverer. They were looking for a Messiah. They were looking for somebody who would break the power of Rome among the Jewish people.

They were looking for a deliverer, a Savior, a Messiah, who would free them as a nation. The Bible says that Jesus was announced as Jesus who came to save his people from their sin, which says to us that God's ultimate purpose in sending Jesus Christ into the world was to deal with the sin problem in you and me and all men for all ages. In Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, you'll recall that God made them skins, a prophetic picture of the one who was to come to give his life to deal with the sin problem. And all of mankind has had to deal with the sin problem, and nobody is capable of dealing with it within himself. Every honest man and woman, boy or girl who's alive today will have to admit, yes, I do have a problem with sin. Yes, I have had a problem with sin. Yes, I do have a problem with sin. Yes, I will have a problem with sin in the future. The sin problem is the thing that brought Jesus Christ into this world.

So I want to ask three simple questions. First of all, what is it that Jesus Christ came to save? Did he come to save this flesh?

We say no, he came to save our soul. Well, what in the world is the soul of man? In First Thessalonians chapter five, if you'll turn there for just a moment, I want you to see what Paul said here when he talked about how man is made up. He says in verse 23 of First Thessalonians chapter five, and the very God of peace sanctify you holy, set you apart completely. And I pray he says that God, your whole, listen, your whole spirit, soul, body, be preserved blameless unto the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, which says that a total man or woman is composed of what he says a spirit, a soul and a body, the innermost man is the spirit, the inner man is the soul, the outer man is the body. When he came to save mankind, God did not ignore the body. Because he says one of these days, this old body that has been deformed and made decrepit and paralyzed by sin is going to be made into a new body so that we are going to have a glorified body. The second thing he deals with here is he says, your whole spirit and soul and body.

So we're working from outside inside the body. Secondly, he said, which is the house of this whole thing, the soul, what is the soul of a man, the soul of a man is his mind, his will, his emotion, his conscience, his consciousness. In other words, the real personality, which is the real you in that thing you're walking around in that body of yours, thin, fat, tall, short, whatever condition it may be, young or old, that's the house of the soul of man. The real you is how you think. The real you is how you feel. The real you is the decision maker in you, the mind, the will, the emotion that is your personality.

That is the means by which you express yourself. Through the body, we relate to the outside world to each other. Through the soul we relate to ourselves and through the body.

Then there's another part of us called the spirit. And it was God's intention, the very beginning that man born in the garden of Eden with a spirit by which he could relate to God and God dealing with man through the spirit, effecting and influencing man's mind, will and emotion, his soul, thus expressing his mind, will and emotion out through his body. And God intended for man to live all the days of his life in that form, in that manner. God in us, living his life through us, expressing his life in the physical body, either through our eyes, ears, lips, the whole physical being, expressing the life of God.

That was his original intention. But in the garden of Eden, when man fell, he says, the day that you eat of the fruit of this tree, ye shall surely die. What died? The brain died. The spirit of man dies so that man was no longer born with a spirit alive unto God. The soul of man died.

And I mean by that simply this, that man lost his capacity that he once had in the garden. He had a mind, but uninhibited by sin. He had a will and an emotion that was absolutely and totally free because there was no presence of sin. He had a physical body that could have existed forever, but sin destroyed that. So that man died in his spirit totally, that he began to die in his soul, that is, his mind, will and his emotion is a personality could never be able to be because the presence of death and the presence of the principle of sin, he could never become what God intended him to be. And thirdly, his body would begin to die in this life. And eventually before what God calls him, he would be a dead man physically from the world's point of view.

So man died in the garden. Now Jesus Christ came into this world to do what? To recapture for man, not part of what he lost, but everything he lost. And God, sin is only begotten son, he said, thou shall call his name Jesus because he will save his people from their sin. He came to do what? To save the total man.

Listen, the truth is you cannot separate the three. We may be body, soul and spirit, but when God sees us, he sees us as a composite being. And while we may for a season of time leave this physical body down here, he says eventually when Jesus Christ comes, this body of ours is going to be resurrected and transformed like into the body of Jesus Christ.

That's what he came to say. He came to save the total summation of you, all of you, body, soul and spirit. The second thing I want you to notice here, he says he came to save us from our sins. Now what does he mean when he says he came to save us from our sins?

And let's look at it for just a moment. All of us know we have the presence of sin. All of us know that we have a sin principle working within us that we'd like to be able to wrap that thing up tied in a big knot and drop it to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean with a 50 ton weight on the bottom of it, never to resurrect and bother us again. That would be great.

The only problem is we can't do it. It has to be dealt with from a divine point of view. Thou shall call his name Jesus for he shall save his people from their sin.

Now watch this. Whereas Jesus once and for all at the cross, the moment I received him, he took care of my eternity. On the cross, he likewise dealt with something else. He dealt with the principle that I have to deal with and you have to deal with every single day.

He dealt with the principle in our life in order that you and I may have victory over the practicing of sin, over the habits of sin, over the activities of sin in our life. He says, I'm come that men might have what? Not that they may have their names written in the Lamb's book of life merely, not that men may be saved from hell for heaven. He says, I've come that men might have life.

What? May have life and have life more abundantly, not in the future, but in the here and now. He said, I've not come that men might be condemned, but that they might be saved from their sin.

Here's what I want us to see. Jesus Christ came equally for the purpose of giving us victory over the sin principle in our life for today equally as much as he did for the effective sin on my life for eternity. Now think about this. The sin principle operating in your life and my life has certain things as its objective. Number one, sin always, always attempts to make prisoners out of us. And that is, sin is an enslaving process.

All through the Bible, he says, to whom we yield ourselves or our members as servants to obey, to him we are a servant, whether of sin unto death or of righteousness unto life. He speaks of the law of sin and death. What is the law of sin and death? The law of sin and death is a law in the universe going on constantly all the time for which Jesus Christ came in order to break its power. This old principle within us is strong. It is so strong it has defeated every single man, woman, boy, and girl who has ever lived. Jesus says, I came to do what?

I came to break its power. I came to save my people from their sins, the principle of sin that operates in mankind. The man who's lost has absolutely no power against sin. He may be able to correct some things by determination and persistence, but he can't do anything about his relationship to God apart from Christ. He can't develop any fellowship with him and he can do nothing about his eternal relationship.

Here's what I want us to see. So many of God's people are so satisfied getting their names written in the Lamb's Book of Life, they're forgetting the whole purpose. And you see, he came not to keep us out of hell and get us into heaven. He came to do what?

To live his life in us and through us. And in order to do that, he's got to deal with the sin principle that's operational in all of us. How many folks have said, I'm not going to do it. I promised God I wasn't going to ever do it again, but I did. It says the sin principle is stronger than we are. Paul, that great apostle of God, he said, what I don't want to do, I found myself doing.

What I want to do, I don't find myself strong enough to do it. The sin principle was victorious in Paul's life until he came to Romans eight and he discovered that it was only by Jesus Christ living within him, the life of Christ, that God could save man from his sins and the consequences of it. All of us know when sin gets a hole in our life, it's like pressure. Sin has a penalty that comes along with it. Sin becomes a painful thing. How many times have you disobeyed God and inside of you, you felt the pain? If somebody had taken a knife and just ripped your arm wide open, that would have been easy compared to the inner emotional, spiritual pain that you felt because of guilt over sin. And he says, I've come to save my people from the penalty of this.

I've come to save them from the power, the pain, the suffering, the imprisoning, the paralysis of sin. When sin gets a hole in a man's life, he wants to, but he cannot. It's like he's paralyzed that area of his life. When the temptation comes, he automatically responds. He doesn't want to respond, but he responds.

Why? Because the sin principle is stronger than himself. And here's what he'll do. He may first admit that he's sinning against God and then he begins to rationalize and then he begins to theorize about it until finally, mentally, he rationalizes the whole issue away. And he says, after all, I've been saved when I was nine years of age. My mother took me down the aisle. I got on my knees and trusted Jesus Christ as my savior. No, I'm not going to be a saint. No, I'm not going to be perfect. Probably not going to please God, but I'm going to heaven. After all, that's really all that matters that I get in.

Oh God, help us to see something I want you to see this morning. You must not look at salvation that way. That is a blasphemy against Jesus Christ to say, the only thing that matters is that I get in by the skin of my teeth. He says they called his name Jesus because he came to save his people from their sin. Why do you think Jesus Christ wants to save you from your sin? Look in Colossians, if you will. And when you look at this passage, Colossians chapter one, I want to read it and then I want to explain something to you clearly. Let's begin in verse 19 of Colossians chapter one. He says, for it pleased the father that in him, that is in Jesus Christ, all the fullness should dwell and having made peace through the blood of his cross by him to reconcile all things unto himself. That is to bring us in the right relationship with him by Christ. I say, whether they be things in earth or things in heaven and you that were sometimes alienated, separated enemies and your attitude and your mind by wicked works.

Yet now have he reconciled or brought back into a right relationship to him. Now look at this. In the body of his flesh through death, that is the cross, in order that we might be presented or to present you holy and unblameable and unreproveable in his sight.

Watch this. You know why the Lord Jesus Christ came into this world and died on the cross? To deal with the sin problem in order that you and I may be presented before God the Father one of these days without blame, without spot, holy, blameless he says, unreproveable in his sight. Listen, God Almighty sent his only begotten son to this world that you and I may be delivered from sin's ultimate penalty, which is eternal death.

It's daily practice and power in our life that destroys a man's mind and his emotions and his will. But his ultimate purpose is that you and I may be totally redeemed, spirit, soul and body that we may be presented before him in eternity without spot and without blemish, sinless before Almighty God. It doesn't mean we're going to be sinless down here, but that our lives may reflect the very life of Jesus Christ. God created every single one of us for himself. And he says, knowing that we'd never make it, he sent his only begotten son Jesus Christ in the world to do what? To break the power of sin, to set me free eternally and not only that, to dwell in my heart as long as I'm here in order that day by day he said he predestinated us to be conformed as likeness.

You know what God's up to in your life? God is up to conforming us, shaping us, molding us, making us, remaking us, refining us, pruning us, polishing us, sharpening us up. But it's all Christ Jesus living within us so that one of these days Jesus Christ, God's only begotten son, may be able to present us to the Father as his jewels, as his servants, as his saints, spotless and without blemish before God.

Let me ask you something. If that be true, can you and I be satisfied living a shoddy, sinful, vile, practicing sin deliberately before God, taking the easy way out, allowing sin in our life we know that ought not to be there? Can we look at life in that form when we look, listen, our problem is we need a glimpse of eternity, friend, for all eternity we're going to be reflecting our Lord. He says he made us for himself. All he's asking of you and me is this, that we would be available for Christ, God, Christ, to live his life in and through us so that in that day when he calls us, Jesus Christ could say to the Father, Father, here's John, Charles, James, Mary, Sue, here are the saints that I've saved for you. And my friend, we stand before him with all of our life, and I wonder, will we present him a life half-hearted, shoddy, what we could do, struggling to satisfy ourselves independent of God, or standing before him, Christ indwelling us in the process of making us all that he wants us to be?

Nobody can answer that for you, but you. Let's pray together. Father, we drift in our thinking, the pressures of the world, the power of sin, all the things that would cause us to become everything you don't want us to be, so often we yield, so freely we yield, rationalizing and excusing our sin. Thank you for sending the Lord Jesus Christ, our blessed Savior, our only hope. Father, forgive us for allowing so much of what ought not to be in our lives. Cleanse us, Father, is our prayer, and we know that cannot be a corporate thing, but an individual with each one of us. We praise you for loving us with a love that's beyond our understanding, and forgiving us, Christ, who makes it possible for us to live here and now, successfully, victoriously, joyfully, with a sense of fulfillment and purpose and meaning to life. It is our prayer that everybody, Father, would know Him in the same way, and this we ask in His wonderful name. Amen. Thank you for listening to Jesus the Savior. If you'd like to know more about Charles Stanley or In Touch Ministries, stop by intouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.