What Does It Really Mean to Be “Saved”? (A Study of Galatians 1:3-5) Part 5

This is our last post on the topic “What does it really mean to be saved?” We are looking at the first few verses of Galatians 1 where Paul writes: “3 Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, 4 who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, 5 to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.”

We’ve seen four of the five truths which jump out at me that speak to this issue of being saved. The first truth is we are at peace with God! (v. 3). The second truth in this text about being saved is we have been paid for (v. 4)! Jesus paid that debt for us. The third truth in this text about being saved is — we have been rescued! Jesus gave Himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age.  The fourth truth about being saved which I see in this text is that we are wanted by God! Verse 4 says that Jesus’ giving of Himself was “according to the will of our God and Father.” It was the Father’s will to save us, to redeem us, to rescue us! This is what HE wants! We have been wanted!

The fifth and final truth I see in this text about being saved is:  We have an eternal purpose! (v. 5).   There we read, “to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.”  Let’s not gloss over those words.  We have been invited into a relationship with the God of the universe and our highest goal is to praise Him!

“But, wait a minute!”, some might say!  “Isn’t it awfully conceited and self-serving for God to want us to worship Him — eternally?   That sounds like the pagan gods who demanded the kind of worship that sometimes included the sacrificing of their own children on the worship altar!”

Here I believe J.I. Packer helps us when he writes:  “If it is right for man to have the glory of God as his goal, can it be wrong for God to aim at the same goal? If man can have no higher end and motive than God’s glory, how can God? And if it is wrong for man to seek a lesser end than this, then it would be wrong for God too. The reason why it cannot be right for man to live for himself, as if he were God, is simply the fact that he is not God; and the reason why it cannot be wrong for God to seek His own glory is simply the fact that He is God. Those who would not have God seek His glory in all things are really asking that He should cease to be God. And there is no greater blasphemy than to will God out of existence.” (The Plan of God)

To give us that eternal purpose required the Father to sacrifice HIS Son!  May I boldly suggest that you read over that profound quote from Packer again?  Slowly.  And then thank the true God of the universe that you have been made exactly for this!

 

 

 

What Does It Really Mean to Be “Saved”? (A Study of Galatians 1:3-5) Part 4

What does it really mean to be saved? We are looking at the first few verses of Galatians 1 where Paul writes: “3 Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, 4 who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, 5 to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.”

There are five truths which jump out at me that speak to this issue of being saved. The first truth is we are at peace with God! (v. 3). The second truth in this text about being saved is we have been paid for (v. 4)! Jesus paid that debt for us. The third truth in this text about being saved is — we have been rescued! Jesus gave Himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age.

The fourth truth about being saved which I see in this text is that we are wanted by God!  Verse 4 says that Jesus’ giving of Himself was “according to the will of our God and Father.”  It was the Father’s will to save us, to redeem us, to rescue us!  This is what HE wants!  We have been wanted!

But in Jesus we are not criminals whose picture is on a wanted poster in the post office!  Our sins have been taken care of by the substitutionary sacrifice of the Son of God for our sins!  Friend, you are wanted by God because He loves you!  And that’s part of what it means to be saved!

Whatever God wants, God gets, right?   Theologians have battled for centuries over God’s sovereignty and man’s free will.  While I’m fairly familiar with that discussion, the impression I get from Scripture is that we choose not to want God back!  How awful.

This is a picture of our grandson Jeremiah.  Jay is the sweetest boy — but when his mommie is around (our daughter Amy), he wants to cling to her.  If Grammie (my wife) tries to pick him up, he says, “NOT CHU!” (= “not YOU!”).  Hmmm.  How often do we say to the Lord without using worbs, “NOT CHU!”?

 

 

 

 

What Does It Really Mean to Be “Saved”? (A Study of Galatians 1:3-5) Part 3b

We’re asking the question, what does it mean to be saved?  And we are looking at the first few verses of Galatians 1 where Paul writes: “3 Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, 4 who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, 5 to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.”

Five truths jump out at me which I think help explain salvation from this passage. The first truth is we are at peace with God! (v. 3). The second truth in this text about being saved is we have been paid for (v. 4)! Jesus “gave himself for our sins”! Our sins separated us from a holy God. Jesus paid that debt for us.  The third truth in this text about being saved is — we have been rescued! Jesus gave Himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age.  We want to focus a bit more this morning on that truth that Jesus “rescues us from the present evil age.”

We live in an evil age, right?  I get news updates on my phone about this broken world.   Here’s one i got the other day.

Great way to start your day, huh?

We would love to be rescued from this present evil age.  But how does the Lord do that?  He does that by saving us out of this lost and broken world.  As much as look forward to the Lord’s return, the Bible doesn’t encourage us to embrace a kind of evacuation theology.  In fact, our longing to leave this present evil age is, in some sense, in opposition to the plan He has for us while we are here on planet earth!

A homework assignment:  You’re aware that the word “cosmos” can be

Zachariah, 6 lbs, 13 oz, 18 inches, born 6/30 @ 2:17am to Amy & Thom.

translated planet, the people of the planet, or the pagan system opposing God and the things of God, right?  Read through John 17 (Jesus’ high priestly prayer for His followers), where the world “world” (cosmos) is used seventeen times and ask the following question of each occurrence of that world:  What meaning does “world” have here?  Is Jesus referring to the physical planet, the people of the planet (compare John 3:16 and I John 2:15!), or the pagan system opposing God?  It will be an eye-opening study, I promise you!

We’ve been rescued from this present evil age, not by evacuation but by redemption.  And we are to be here to join Jesus’ rescue team to find others!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What Does It Really Mean to Be “Saved”? (A Study of Galatians 1:3-5) Part 3a

“If you’re saved, and you know it, clap your hands!”  We used to sing that song at camp when I was a child (and after most of the dinosaurs on planet earth had become extinct).  What in the world does it mean to be saved?

We’ve been looking at the first few verses of Galatians 1 where Paul writes: “3 Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, 4 who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, 5 to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.”

There are five truths that help explain salvation from this text. We’ve seen the first truth which is we are at peace with God! (v. 3). The second truth in this text about being saved is we have been paid for (v. 4)! Jesus “gave himself for our sins”! Our sins separated us from a holy God. Jesus paid that debt for us.

The third truth in this text about being saved is — we have been rescued!  Jesus gave Himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age.  Do you feel “rescued”?

On this issue of being rescued, allow me a brief story. When I was in college, I took a life-saving course with about 25 other students. The Bible college I attended had a swimming pool in the basement and the young man who taught the course was not a student at the Bible college, was mean as a snake, and apparently didn’t want to teach us how to rescue drowning swimmers.

I remember his telling us one night to come wearing a pair of pants over our swim suit because he was going to teach us how to use our pants as a flotation device. He had us jump into the deep end of the pool, pull our pants off, blow them up, and then use them as a kind of buoy. My only problem was that that night I wore a pair of tight, bell-bottom jeans, and I couldn’t get mine past my ankles. I began to drown — in lifesaving class! No one noticed my predicament. I saved my own life by doggie-paddling to the side of the pool.

The instructor taught us how to rescue someone drowning when we had nothing to reach out to him with, or no rescue buoy to throw to him, but had to swim out to the drowning person and physically rescue them. He explained that a drowning person will climb on our heads and drown both of us. So he taught us to dive down when we got within 8 feet of the victim, grab them by their hips, spin them around, and come up holding them in a head lock. If they struggled or panicked and tried to climb on top of us, we should take them to the very place they did not want to go — under water — so they would give up and let us rescue them.

After the month’s worth of grouchy classes, our instructor said, “Your final exam will be next week and it will be simple. I will jump in the deep end, pretend to be a drowning victim, and your job will be to rescue me. One after another.  AND I WILL TRY TO KILL YOU!”

Each of us, one after another, rescued the instructor. Each of us took the instructor to the bottom of the pool — whether he struggled or not. It was a glorious ending to a grueling course. (from my book Saved: Rescued from God, by God, and for God).

We’ve been rescued by the Lord Jesus giving Himself for us.  Do you feel rescued?  (to be continued)

 

 

 

 

 

 

What Does It Really Mean to Be “Saved”? (A Study of Galatians 1:3-5) Part 2

What does it really mean to be saved? The Apostle Paul writes the following to the Galatian believers: “3 Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, 4 who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, 5 to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.”

There are five truths that jump out at me from this text. We’ve seen the first truth which is we are at peace with God! (v. 3).  The second truth in this text about being saved is we have been paid for (v. 4)! Jesus “gave himself for our sins”!  Our sins separated us from a holy God.  Jesus paid that debt for us.

The eleventh century scholar Anselm wrote a tract entitled Cur Deus Homo.  My Latin is lousy, but the translation is “Why the God-Man?” Anselm argues that we owed a debt to God that we could never pay.  Only God Himself could pay that debt.  But God didn’t owe Himself that debt.  However, out of love the Second Person of the Trinity became man specifically to pay that debt for us!  In presenting his argument Anselm dialogues with his friend named Boso (really).  At one point, Anselm says, “You have not realized how great a burden sin is.”  A discussion of Anselm’s brilliant argument is found here.

One last point from Anselm.  He says, “So, if, as I showed earlier, the heavenly kingdom must be filled with men, and if this cannot happen unless the satisfaction is made for sin — satisfaction which no one can make but God, and no one ought to make but man — then it is necessary for the God-man to make it.”  That’s precisely what Jesus did for us.  He made satisfaction for sin.  He paid the debt we could never pay.  He “gave himself for our sins.”

I heard about a motorist who took a certain toll road to work everyday.  One day he decided to pay the toll for the person behind him.  Just to be nice.  As he drove away, he noticed that the following driver was having to pay the toll collector a second time!  Infuriated, the first driver decided to confront the toll collector the next morning about charging the second driver.  The next morning, he asked, “Why did you collect a toll from that driver?  I paid his toll!”  The toll collector said, “I didn’t charge him for his car.  He volunteered and paid for the driver behind him.  And this went on for eight more cars!”

Glad that Jesus paid your toll?  Me too!

 

 

 

 

 

 

What Does It Really Mean to Be “Saved”? (A Study of Galatians 1:3-5) Part 1

Friends:  For the next few posts I want to look at a topic which is often misunderstood.  The topic of being saved.  The Apostle Paul writes the following to the Galatian believers:  “3 Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, 4 who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, 5 to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.” (Gal. 1)

There are five truths that jump out at me from this text.  Let’s look at the first one this morning.  We are at peace with God! (v. 3).  Peace with God!?  One of Satan’s greatest lies is to help people to think that if there is a God, He must like us and be happy with us.  Or not be all that interested in us.  Seldom do people think, “I’ll bet that if there is a holy God like the Bible says, I’m in a lot of trouble!”

Scripture is clear that God is angry with the wicked every day (Ps. 7:11), that we come into the world under the wrath of God (Jn. 3:36), and that it is a “dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Heb. 10:31).  Someone has said that we prefer to believe what we prefer to be true.  We prefer to believe that all is right with us and God — and the biblical picture is just the opposite.  An enemy of God?!  Yes!  That’s what the Bible says.  “For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!” (Rom. 5:10).

In Jesus we have “grace and peace.”  And they are not of our making.  Self-salvation is a myth.  We needed a Savior outside ourselves who could extend us grace (unmerited favor) and peace (an end of the enmity between us and God).  And that’s what Jesus did.

I understand that when a wealthy man was on his deathbed, one of his servants mustered up the courage to whisper to the man, “Sir, do you not think that you need to make peace with God?”  The rich man snorted, “What?  I never knew we argued!”  We are not naturally at peace with God. And that’s why we needed to be saved.

 

 

What Does It Mean to Be “Saved”? A Sermon Preached in Korea!

Just preached this past Sunday in Korea while teaching at Word of Life Bible Institute.  Please watch this less-than-20-minute sermon!