Saved from What?

When the Bible uses the word salvation, it means to be saved from calamity. But dearly beloved, there is one calamity, one catastrophe, so utterly grim that rescue from it becomes the zenith of the biblical doctrine of salvation. What is that calamity?

That may be the most important question any one of us can ask, because it's a matter of life and death. Today on Renewing Your Mind, we're bringing you one of the most pivotal sermons Dr. R.C. Sproul ever preached. It was delivered in 1988, and in it he brings into clear focus the biblical doctrine of salvation. It's a sermon titled, Saved from What?

Several years ago, I was walking across a courtyard on the campus of Temple University in Philadelphia. I was alone minding my own business, in fact, on the way to the faculty lounge of the Conwell School of Theology, when suddenly out of nowhere a gentleman stood in front of me blocking my movement and said to me directly, are you saved? And I wasn't quite sure how to respond to this intrusion, and the first words that came into my mouth I uttered in response, saved from what? What I was thinking but had the grace not to say was that I'm certainly not saved from strangers coming up to me and buttonholing me and asking me questions like this. But when I said, saved from what? I think my friend who stopped me that day was as surprised by my question as I had been by his, and he kind of lost it.

He stammered and stuttered and wasn't quite sure how to respond. Saved from what? Well, you know what I mean. Do you know Jesus? And he tried to give me a capsule summary of the gospel.

That brief encounter left an impression on me. On the one hand, of course, I was delighted in my soul that somebody cared enough about me even as I was a stranger to them that he would stop me and ask about my salvation. But what distressed me in my soul, ladies and gentlemen, was that it was clear that though this man had a zeal for salvation, that he had little understanding of what salvation is. But when we're talking about salvation, beloved, we are talking about the concept that is the central theme of all of sacred Scripture. When we examine the Scriptures and search the meaning of the term salvation, the first thing that we notice about it is that the term salvation is used in a wide variety of ways. All sorts of things are discussed in terms of the noun salvation or the verb to say. I've often wondered, for example, when Paul and Silas were freed from the jail in Philippi when God delivered them by the earthquake, and you recall that situation that the jailer in panic came up to Paul and Silas and said, Sir, what must I do to be saved? Paul responded immediately by saying, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you and your household will be saved. Now I think I know what Paul meant by salvation when he responded to the jailer, but I've wondered what was in the jailer's mind.

Here is a man who is responsible to the government for the guarding and keeping of prisoners, and the law in that day in the provinces was simply this, that if prisoners escaped from the jail, whatever penalty they were awaiting to suffer for their crimes, their jailer had to take in the escapee's place. So when the walls of the jail fell down and the prisoners started to run free, this jailer runs to Paul and Silas and asks them about salvation. Now it's certainly possible that what he had in his mind at that moment was a question about his eternal destiny, about his relationship with God, and having heard Paul and Silas singing hymns and knew that they were religious fellows, he then addressed the question to the greatest theologian in history, the Apostle Paul, what must I do to be saved?

Maybe. Or maybe all the Philippian jailer had in his mind was, how am I going to escape from the consequences of this jailbreak? Because the word salvation in the Bible doesn't always refer to the ultimate question of salvation in terms of being reconciled with God. In other words, what I'm saying is that every time the Bible uses the word salvation, or the verb to save, it doesn't refer necessarily to what we mean by the doctrine of salvation. The Bible uses the term salvation in many, many ways, and the common thread that is found in each of them is that salvation means being rescued or delivered from some calamity, some catastrophe. When the Jewish people went into battle against the Philistines and it looked as if they were going to lose that battle, and at the last moment they were able to be victorious, the Jew would say, he was saved. When a person recovered from a life-threatening disease, that person was saved because they were rescued from a calamity.

Even in our own culture, we speak that way. In the arena of boxing, if a boxer is knocked to the canvas and the referee begins to count, and by the time the referee counts to eight and the bell rings, we say that the boxer is saved by the bell. But we don't mean by that, do we, that the boxer has now been ushered by the angels into the kingdom of heaven. We mean that he has been spared from the calamity of defeat, at least temporarily, until the next round begins. And so, the broadest meaning of salvation in Scripture is to be saved from calamity. But dearly beloved, there is one calamity, one catastrophe so utterly grim that rescue from it becomes the zenith of the biblical doctrine of salvation.

And I will describe that catastrophe in just a few moments, but before I do, one other thing I need to say by way of introduction. We have seen that the word salvation is used in many senses. The verb to save is also used in many tenses. That is easy to remember—several senses, several tenses.

Now, the Greek language has more tenses of verbs than we have in English, and we won't get into the technicalities of it. Only to say this, that the verb to save is found in the New Testament in every possible sense and in every possible tense of the Greek verb. The Bible says that we have been saved from the foundation of the world. Here, the ultimate past sense is used for salvation. So, in one narrow sense at least, from all eternity, in the hidden wisdom of God, we were saved.

That's why Jesus says that there will come a moment when the Father will come a moment when the Father will say, Come, my beloved, inherit the kingdom that was prepared for you from the foundation of the world. But the Bible also uses the imperfect tense and says there's a sense in which we were being saved. That salvation from the hands of God for His people is something that He's been working at through all of the pages of history.

You were a part of the exodus in the plan of God's redemption. Our salvation was being prepared for us through the call of Abraham and the life of Isaac and of Jacob. We were being saved. And then the Bible speaks of salvation in the present sense. There's a sense in which we are saved.

The moment you put your trust in Christ and in Christ alone, that moment God pronounces you just in His sight, He imputes the righteousness of Christ to your account, and you are safe in the arms of Jesus. You are saved. The Bible also says that we are being saved, so that salvation is not simply a once-for-all thing in one sense, but my salvation begins when I have belief, and as I grow in grace, and as I grow in my sanctification, that process of sanctification is also described as a process of salvation. And finally, beloved, the Bible speaks of the future when we shall be saved. We are saved. We are being saved. We shall be saved as we look forward to our glorification together with Christ and the final consummation of our salvation. So we can see from this how easy it is to become confused about what the Bible means by salvation—different senses, different tenses. And now, with the time that is left, I want us to focus our thinking on the ultimate sense of salvation.

And I ask the question to you that I asked to my friend in Philadelphia so many years ago. Saved from what? Verse 10 of 1 Thessalonians, to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead. That is Jesus, who delivers us from the wrath which is to come. The ultimate salvation that any human being can ever experience is rescue from the wrath that is to come.

Do you believe that there is a wrath that is to come? I think the greatest point of unbelief in our culture and in our Church at this juncture in the twentieth century, beloved, is an unbelief in the wrath of God and in the certain promise of judgment for the human race. I talk to people all the time about Jesus, and they say to me things like this, R.C., if you find believing in Jesus meaningful, if that turns you on, if it gives you some kind of solace or whatever, then that's fine for you, but I don't feel the need for Jesus.

What are they saying? It's like somebody says, I don't feel the need for a fireman because their house isn't on fire. Who needs a fireman when there's no fire? Who needs a Savior when there's no clear and present threat of judgment? Modern man simply does not believe that there will be a day of judgment.

And, beloved, if we believed it, really believed it, the energy of our evangelism would increase a hundredfold. The difference fundamentally in the Old Testament between the true prophet and the false prophet was that the true prophet proclaimed the day of the Lord as a day of consuming wrath. The people didn't want to hear that, and so the false prophet got rich promising the people that the day of the Lord was a day of brightness and light and joy and that there was nothing to worry about. God loves you. God has a wonderful plan for your life. The plan won't look so good on the day of judgment if you do not repent.

God will speak to you in His fury. That was the message of Isaiah, of Jeremiah, of Ezekiel, of Daniel, of Micah, of Amos, of every prophet of God. Amos came to the people, and he said to the people, you celebrate the day of the Lord. Don't you realize that the day of the Lord is a day of darkness? There is no light in it, for it is the day when God will speak in wrath, and His anger will consume the planet, and His judgment will go forth, and His violence will be seen in the streets. Everybody can't wait for the return of Jesus.

Oh, happy day! Yes, oh, happy day, for the saved, but for the unsaved. The return of Jesus is the worst of all conceivable calamities.

Listen again, not to me, but to the Word of God. Near is the great day of the Lord, near, coming very quickly. A day of wrath is that day, a day of trouble, distress, destruction, desolation, darkness, gloom.

On the day of the Lord's wrath, all of the earth will be devoured, for He will make a terrifying end to the inhabitants of this world. Saved from what? As Paul says to the Thessalonians, as he rejoices in Jesus the Savior, he understood that Jesus is the Savior who saves us from the wrath which is to come.

One final point. Again, at the core of the biblical message of salvation is this, which is also obscured in modern thought. Salvation is of the Lord. Salvation is of the Lord.

No human being has the resources, the power, the money, or the merit to save himself. I remember a few years ago I was in the hospital up north for kidney stones. Have you ever had kidney stones?

You know what catastrophe means. It was about Christmas time, and I was lying in my bed looking up at the television set on the wall and spinning the dial. I came to a worship service that was coming from Hollywood Presbyterian Church in California, and Lloyd Ogilvy was reading the scripture, and he was reading the Christmas story from Luke. How many times have you heard the Christmas story in Luke?

For behold, unto you is born this day in the city of Bethlehem a Savior who is Christ the Lord. And I'd heard that a thousand times, and I'm there with these kidney stones, and I was on that bed, and I said, Oh, that is what I need right now. I need a Savior. My soul is fine, but my kidney needs to be saved fast. It got my attention, and I understood the need to be rescued from calamity. But the only person who can rescue anybody from the wrath that is to come is God and His appointed Savior. And when the scriptures tell us that God saves us so that salvation is of the Lord, we tend to forget that salvation is also, listen carefully, from the Lord. What do you need to be saved from? You need to be saved from God, not from kidney stones, not from hurricanes, not from military defeats. The thing that every human being needs to be saved from is God. The last thing in the world the impenitent sinner ever wants to meet on the other side of the grave is God. But the glory of the gospel is the one from whom we need to be saved is the very one who saves us.

God, in saving us, saves us from Himself. But woe unto those who have no Savior on the day of wrath. The Bible says that on that day, the unbeliever will scream to the mountains to fall upon him, to the hills to hide them.

They will be looking for refuge from nature itself, saying, Cover me! Give me a shield! But there's only one shield that can protect anyone from the wrath that is to come, and it is the covering of the righteousness of Christ. When we put our faith in Jesus, God cloaks us with the garments of Jesus, and the garments of His righteousness are never, ever, ever, ever, ever the target of the wrath of God, so that he who flees to Jesus has peace with God, and there is no condemnation left.

That's Dr. R.C. Sproul answering one of the most critical questions any one of us can ask. If you are saved, from what are you saved? We're glad you've joined us today on Renewing Your Mind. I'm Lee Webb, and I think for many Christians, the word saved is so common that we don't think about it much. We may say we're saved from the dead, but we're saved from the dead, and we're saved from the dead. We may say we're saved from our sins or that Jesus saves our souls.

Until this essential question is answered, we will not be able to make sense of Christ's sacrifice or be able to explain it to others. Dr. Sproul wrote a book by the same title as this sermon, Saved From What? And when you read it, you'll have a better understanding of the severity of our sin and the infinite worth of Christ's atonement. When you give a donation of any amount to Ligetier Ministries, we will be glad to send this book to you. Again, it's titled Saved From What?

You can request it with your gift at renewingyourmind.org, or you can call us at 800-435-4343. Our goal here at Ligetier Ministries is to help you grow in your understanding of God's Word. We hope that from today's lesson you've gained a greater appreciation for your salvation. And to that end, Table Talk magazine is another Ligetier resource we highly recommend.

I've been a subscriber for more than 30 years. Each monthly issue deals with a particular theme. This month, for example, focuses on the Christian ethic.

What is the Christian ethic, and why should we have an unwavering commitment to it? The April issue looks back at the pivotal moment in church history 500 years ago, when Martin Luther declared his allegiance to God's Word and boldly proclaimed, Here I stand, I can do no other. Table Talk also features daily Bible studies and other helpful articles.

You can learn more and subscribe at tabletalkmagazine.com. Well, we're in for a treat tomorrow as we hear Dr. Sproul read one of his children's books. After Davy and Jesus came into Jerusalem, Jesus got down and patted Davy's back. Davy watched as he entered the temple. Davy felt very proud of himself. I carried the king, he thought. I must be a very special donkey. The donkey who carried a king, tomorrow here on Renewing Your Mind.