Our Great Salvation

Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Wednesday, May 1st. Do you know what it means to be saved? Can you clearly explain it to others? Today, you'll hear a clear, concise, biblical explanation of our great salvation. Your whole eternal destiny changed in a moment.

That was the most important event in your life. And I want you to follow in just a few moments with me on a passage of Scripture that describes our salvation in really two simple little words. But it ought to bring back to our remembrance and help us to understand what really is this salvation business all about anyway. So I want you to turn, if you will, to Hebrews chapter 2. Hebrews chapter 2. And in this first chapter, he's been talking about the superiority of Jesus Christ over everything and everybody. And he described him in the third verse of the first chapter by saying he is the radiance of his glory, that is, the glory of God and the exact representation of his nature and upholds all things by the word of his power.

When he had made purification of sins, he sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high, having become as much better than the angels as he has inherited a more excellent name than they. Then having exalted Jesus in this first chapter, he begins a second chapter by saying, but this reason we must pay much closer attention to what we've heard so that we do not drift away from it. Or if the word spoken through angels proved unalterable and every transgression and disobedience received a just penalty, how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation? After it was at the first spoken through the Lord, it was confirmed to us by those who heard.

God also testifying with them both by signs and wonders and by various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit according to his own will. I want you to notice what he says here when he says, how will we escape if we neglect so great a salvation? He didn't say just neglect salvation, so great a salvation. Why did he say so great a salvation?

Because when he put the so in front of it here, that's an emphasis as to its scope, as to its power, as to the reality of what it does in a person's life, as to its importance, its design. So great a salvation. So I have one purpose for this message. I want you to at least get a glimpse of how great our salvation is. Don't take this for granted. So great a salvation.

Well, there are a number of reasons. And the first reason we would say that it's so great is this. It is the only answer to man's sinful, helpless condition. Salvation is the only answer to man's sinful, helpless, hopeless situation.

What makes salvation so great? It's the only answer. It is a divine answer. It's not man's answer. It is the only single answer to be had.

All the philosophies, all the religions, all the ideas, all the concepts of life. There is only one solution and one answer to a man's hopeless, helpless condition. His sinfulness that has separated him from God and condemned him before God. And that only answer is salvation, which comes to the person of Jesus Christ only. That's why he calls it so great a salvation.

A second reason it's so great is the fact that it originated in the heart of a holy God. What makes our salvation so great is the fact that God the Father designed our salvation and He designed it in this manner, that He, in order to save mankind, would condescend to come in the form of human flesh and live among men, which we call in the incarnation God the Father, God the Son, God the Spirit, God the Son incarnating Himself in human flesh, walking among sinful man. And in the process of doing so, He made it possible for sinful man to be able to have a relationship to holy God through His Son Jesus Christ and make it possible for sinful mankind not only to have a personal relationship with God, but also in the mind of this holy God, here's what He said, He predestined you and me to be conformed to the likeness of His Son. He has adopted us into His kingdom. He's adopted us into His family.

Here is holy God. His whole plan of salvation is such that He would choose us in Him before the foundation of the world, so none of us can take any credit for it. He says He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world and He chose us, He says in Ephesians chapter 1 there in the sixth verse, according, listen, to the kind intention of His will.

It has all been His initiative. This is a holy, righteous, sinless, perfect God who condescends to live in the heart of sinful human beings, cleanses of our sinfulness, clothe us in His righteousness and then to indwell us by His Holy Spirit and then to predestine us to become like Himself, that is like His Son, Jesus Christ. He says how shall we escape when we neglect so great a salvation when it is man's only answer to his sinful condition, so great a salvation that a holy God would condescend to live within sinful man and then to make him, transcend him, work in his life to make him like himself.

Nothing to be compared to that. How shall we escape so great a salvation? We shall not. Why is salvation so great? Because it is motivated by one thing and that is not our love for Him but His love for us.

He first loved us. No person loves God unless first of all God transforms their heart. It is a salvation motivated by love. No religion in the world has a salvation motivated by love.

Then I think there's another reason. I think, for example, one of the reasons when I think in terms of it being so great a salvation is this and that is that it is all-inclusive. For example, when I think about how awesome this is, this is an awesome love of God.

How inclusive. He says for God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. Not that He so loved this culture group, that culture group or this one. He doesn't love different people different ways. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. All-inclusive, which says, you may say, well, you know, I just don't think God could save me because. Because of what? Because of your culture?

No, forget it. Well, because you've been so sinful. Let me tell you something. The reach of God's love is such you can't sin so badly, so wickedly, so sinfully and then under conviction of the Holy Spirit come to Him and ask Him to forgive you of your sins and He'd say, sorry, nothing doing. You've sinned too much. No, no, no salvation. He that cometh to me, I will in no wise cast out. What did Paul say? Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. What did he say in that Romans, that first chapter, that 16th verse when he says, listen, he says, I'm not ashamed of the gospel.

Why? He wasn't ashamed of the gospel for lots of reasons, but here's what he said. He says, I know it to be personally by experience to be the power of God and the salvation.

Listen to the Jews and to the Greeks, that is the Jews and Gentiles. To every single person on the face of this globe, the offer of salvation is made to all mankind. What makes salvation so great is that, listen, it can reach you no matter who you are. It can transform your life no matter what you've done. It can take you exactly where you are and make you a child of the living God. Listen, and begin to conform you to the very likeness of the character of Christ. There is no thought, no concept, no philosophy.

There is nothing in existence anywhere in the world that can match God's awesome plan of salvation. So what does he say? He says, therefore, if any man be in Christ, he's a new creature.

Yes. And then what is he asking in this question? How shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation that transforms a person's life? That absolutely radically changes a person's life. What we forget is this, sin is sin. And the issue is not what we've done, it's who we are. And it's when God reaches down and changes our nature. Because man's human nature is corrupt and vile. You just don't see that corruption. You don't see that vileness in a small child.

But it's there. It is the awesome power of God that transforms people's lives. And this is why Paul said, he said, I've been crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, I live, yet not I, it is Christ who lives in me. And the life which I now live, I live with the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.

An awesome experience to think about. You and I can experience so great a salvation. I think probably one of the things that makes salvation so great above everything else is this. And that is the price that God the Father paid. Think about this. And I think this is what makes our idea about salvation as just one of the many events in our life almost sacrilegious.

That we can say, oh yeah, Becky and I were saved and so we put that in the category. But think about this, God the Father said he so loved the world that he gave, surrendered, yielded his only begotten Son, Jesus Christ. That is he sent him into this world. Why did he send him? He sent him not just to preach, not just to teach, not just to heal, not just to be a friend. He sent him for the purpose of dying.

Not just the death of another man, not just the death of a hero. He sent him to die the death, listen, of substitution. The death of sacrifice, the death of atonement, he paid a price.

A death that would make it possible for every single one of us to come into the presence of holy God and be acceptable in his sight because here's what he did. He says in 1 Peter, that second chapter and third chapter, he laid upon him all of our sinfulness. God the Father laid upon his Son Jesus Christ all of our sinfulness. This is the Son of God who came, who bled, who was beaten, who was spat upon, who was sneered at, who was rejected, who was persecuted, who was falsely tried, falsely accused, you name it, finally nailed to a cross.

All of man's sin placed upon him and then the worst thing that happened of all. That is God looked upon him with all of our sin upon him and he allowed all of his wrath to be released against him so that Jesus Christ felt the total awesome wrath of God. Now listen to this, Jesus Christ is the only innocent person God ever punished. The only innocent person God ever punished was his only begotten Son Jesus Christ. He, listen, he was absolutely sinless, absolutely perfect, knew no sin, experienced no sin, no part of sin, above and beyond all sin and yet God the Father released his wrath upon him and made him pay.

Listen, he agreed to pay. He sent his wrath upon him that he might pay the penalty for your sin and my sin. You know what salvation is all about? Salvation is all about Jesus Christ dying on the cross and taking our sin dead upon himself and bearing the awesome penalty which was separation from God. What makes it so great? There's nothing in the world to compare with it. What makes it so great is that one person took the sin of all mankind and made it possible for every single one of us to be saved. There is nothing in existence like it. How should we escape if we neglect so great a salvation as that?

There is no escape. And people who just slough it off and ignore it and laugh at Christians and say, oh, this salvation bit in this Bible and this church, I'm here to tell you, my friend, when God says, how should we escape if we neglect so great a salvation? If you will consider what you've been hearing, what you're about to hear and understand what salvation is all about, do you think you're going to be able to stand before a holy God and Him say, well, come on in, come on in, you've been pretty good. When He sent His only begotten Son to make it possible for you to be saved, you could have been saved any other way. Jesus Christ wouldn't have died. And in fact, if you could have, God made the biggest mistake possible in human history to kill His own innocent Son and if it wasn't necessary.

That's why it's so great. An awesome, loving, holy God reaches down to love you and to express His love to you in such a fashion that whatever it took to save you, God was willing to pay the price and that is exactly what He did and that's exactly what makes it absolutely so great. Another reason that it is so great and that's this, it's the only way to heaven. There is no other way to get to heaven. And the tragedy is, tragedy of tragedies, my friend, if you believe and you may have been taught this, that if you don't kill and divide and you don't steal and you don't lie and cheat and you don't commit adultery and you don't do all these things, you're going to heaven.

None of those nots will get you to heaven. There's only one way to get to heaven. Jesus said, I am the way, the truth and the life.

No man comes to the Father but by Me. Somebody says, well, I believe there's more than one way. Well, let me ask you, what's the other way?

If there's more than one way to get to heaven, what's the other way? Think about this. No matter what you say, no matter what your response, your answer will, must, has to be something you do.

And that won't work because you can't ever be good enough. Remember, we're not dealing with your works. We're dealing with your nature. It is sinful and against God.

Think about this, that whether you live in Asia, South America, North America, Europe, it doesn't make a difference whether you live at the Arctic or the Antarctic. It doesn't make a difference what your color, what your language, what your tribe, none of that makes any difference. God, and I just love this, God in His absolute infinite wisdom made the most important event in your life, the event that will change your eternal destiny, the only event that will get you to heaven. He made it so simple that there is only one plan. It's wrapped up in the life of one man. And listen, it only requires one thing.

It makes no difference who you are, where you came from, how sinful, none of that makes any difference. God has narrowed it down to one man, Jesus. One plan, salvation through the shed blood of His Son, Jesus.

One requirement, trust. And that trust includes repentance of my sin because repentance says, when I place my trust in Him, what happens? I turn. And what happens when I place my trust in the Lord Jesus Christ as my personal Savior, something happens in my life, transformed. Only God, think about this, when it comes to salvation, He has narrowed it down, hallelujah, to one man, Jesus, to one event at the cross, and to one response from the sinner, trusting Him as personal Savior through the shed blood of Jesus Christ. That's an awesome God. How shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?

My friend, there is no escape. Here's what God says. He says He sent His only begotten Son, Jesus, to the cross. He knew you were coming. He knew you were a sinner. He had you in mind. He placed on Him 2,000 years ago the debt of all of your sin. He killed His only begotten Son as a sacrifice and as a substitute in your place.

So He's already paid your debt in full. If you're willing to ask Him to forgive you of your sins and tell Him that you're placing your trust in Him as your personal Savior at this very moment, if you believe that, you're willing to do that, you can be saved just that fast. That means the most important event in your life will happen in just a matter of seconds, and from that moment on, your whole eternal destiny will be changed. And, my friend, if that isn't something to shout about, there is nothing in existence worth shouting about. Listen, it is a salvation so great, it's so great, it's worth singing about, it's worth praising God about, and it's worth living out all the days of our life and sharing it with a world that's so desperately hurting, looking and seeking for hope and blessed assurance. We have the message.

We have the commission. We must share it with everybody. And, Father, how grateful we are for the privilege, how grateful we are for the privilege of knowing Christ as our Savior. What an awesome salvation. We ask that the Holy Spirit would renew, revitalize, rekindle the flame within our heart, that we cannot let days go by without talking about what you've done in our life and what you are doing. We cannot continue to pass by people who do not know you and ignore the fact that they're lost, and that we as a church body have our hearts set on getting this message to the uttermost parts of the earth and to the uttermost person who has never heard it. In Jesus' name, amen.