Many believers, who are born again and leads a quality spiritual life do not know what we are actually saved from. Some thinks that we are saved from ourselves, some others think that we are saved from satan and a few knows that truth that we are saved from the wrath of God against a sinner.
From pre-historic time onwards, humans face a bundle of problems without any solution. In fact all human problems that we face today, are not new but a repetition or continuation of what we have been going through from the beginning. And human problems contain an inner paradox in itself.
The world struggles through famine in the midst
of prosperity; the advanced modern medical science has been defeated again and
again by deadly diseases; humans strive hard to bring peace in this world, but
wars increase; nations are under unrest; our educational system has improved a
lot, but our youths are missing the purpose of life; environment is more and
more polluted and all advance of technology are separating humans from each
other into self-centered cells.
Certainly, there is something wrong with the world; but what is it?
Bible has the real answer to the root cause of human problems. The real problem of man is sin and guilt. All human beings are fundamentally sinners.
It
doesn't matter whether you're among the haves or the have-nots, whether you
have great expectations or none at all, whether you're consumed by your
passions or exhibit a degree of self-control and discipline, whether you are
educated or illiterate - you are still a sinner.
Humanity's
real destroyer is sin and the guilt for sin damns us to eternal hell.
The
crucial but unpleasant truth is that humans have broken the law of God and He's
angry about it.
That
is why people need to be saved, rescued, and delivered. And gospel of the
Kingdom of God offers the only way for salvation from sin and guilt.
The
gospel message is that, God has sent Jesus Christ to rescue us from the slavery
and all the consequences of sin.
Gospel
is primarily not a way to escape from bad habits. Church is not a place to
instruct and train you to live a better man.
Gospel
speaks of Man’s sin, God’s wrath and Salvation from it. Gospel says the story
of, how God has sent His Son into the world to save His people from their sins.
The
angel who appeared the imminent birth of Jesus, told Joseph: " And she
will bring forth a Son, and you shall call His name JESUS, for He will save His
people from their sins." (Matthew 1:21
- NKJV)
John 3:16 is
the key to the salvation message. Many are happy with the verse because it says,
“God so loved the world”. But it also says, “perish”.
The
verse clearly classifies two categories of people, those “whoever believes in
Him” and those who may “perish”.
God
loves us and wishes us not to perish. But there is a possibility to perish. So
God is inviting us to believe in Jesus to escape from perishing.
Verse
18 makes it clearer:
"He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is
condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten
Son of God.” (NKJV)
Our greatest need is to be saved from
perishing. But what does perish
mean?
In the same chapter, verse 14, Jesus refers to the “serpent in the wilderness,”
which Moses lifted up in the desert.
Jesus was referring to a deadly
episode in Israel’s history. During the exodus, the people had complained
against God, so the Lord sent fiery serpents among them, and many people were
bitten and died.
This illustrates the warning in John 3:16 that
without faith we will perish, that is, we will die eternally.
The background story begins in Numbers 20: 14. On the way to Canaan, Israelites had to cross
over the land of Edomites. But they denied the permission. So, Moses turned the
people southeast to make a long, difficult journey around the land of Edom.
At this point, the Israelites grew impatient. So
they grumbled against God and Moses. “And the people spoke against God and
against Moses: "Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the
wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and our soul loathes this
worthless bread." ((Num. 21:5 - NKJV).
They grumbled and despised God’s gracious
provision of manna and His taking care of them in the wilderness all these
years. So the Lord became angry and sent fiery serpents among the people as
judgment. The serpents bit the people; and many of them died.
This time the people acknowledged their sin, came
to Moses and asked him to pray for a remedy. And Moses prayed for them. God
told Moses to make a bronze serpent and put it on a pole. Everyone in Israel
that had been bitten would live if they would look to the serpent.
The people in the wilderness were dying because
of their sin. They did not deserve to live, because they had rebelled terribly
against God and His goodness toward them. And so He sent the snakes among them
as a judgment because of their sin.
This story is conveys the message that God cannot
overlook sin, and, we cannot pay for our own sins. All our good deeds are
filthy rags in God’s sight. Our good deeds cannot erase the penalty for our
sins, which is the second death.
This raises a question: How can a God
who loves the world permit anyone to perish this way?
In our modern
scientific, cultured, multicultural, and multi-religious times, we do not
preach the unpleasant truth about the wrath of God.
But scripture speaks about the holy
wrath of God.
Romans 1:18 “For the wrath of God is
revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who
suppress the truth in unrighteousness…”
What
is God’s wrath?
The word “wrath”
appears ten times in Romans alone; it is a controlling concept in this epistle.
Surprisingly, the Bible speaks more about the wrath of God than the love of
God.
The God of the Bible
is active and personally involved in the affairs of his world.
Because God is holy,
he must punish sinners. Yet because God is love, he also plans to save sinners
from his wrath. He saves all who repent and believe in his Son.
God’s wrath is his
perfection, glory, and very nature. It is his holy hostility toward all evil in
angels and humans.
God’s wrath
expresses the settled and active opposition of his holy nature to everything
that is evil. The God of the Bible is not both good and evil, He is all good.
He is all holy.
We cannot understand
the cross of Christ without first understanding the wrath of God because the
cross not only reveals the love of God but also the wrath of God against sin.
On the cross God’s wrath against his elect sinners was poured on his own Son,
the One who knew no sin.
God’s laws flow eternally from
the nature of God Himself.
God did not invent morality; He revealed Himself
to us, and that revelation of His person is what morality is.
Sin is much more than thoughts or actions that
God “dislikes.”
Sin is any thought or action
that does not measure up to God’s holiness and absolute perfection.
Sin is anything that opposes His
Holy nature. Lying is wrong, not because God has declared it so. God is Truth and
lies are against His nature.
Murder is wrong, not due to an
arbitrary rule made by God. God is Life and murder opposes His eternal
character.
In fact God is not against sins, but sins are against Him and opposes Him.
When God said, “The wages of sin
is death” (Romans 6:23), He was not
concocting a rule or imposing a new punishment on us; rather, He was revealing
to us an unalterable, eternal reality.
God is the only sustainer of
life. In Him there is life and without Him there is no life. So if we depart from
Him, we are logically cutting away ourselves from the source of life. Thus we
lose a continued existence. And if there is no life there is only Death.
This is the proper understanding
of God’s wrath.
We are saved from “wrath,” of God. The wrath of
God is His judgment of sin (Romans 5:9; 1 Thessalonians 5:9).
Salvation is salvation from the wrath of God.
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