Christmas—2005
Salvation in Christ

John 3:14-18
"And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.
For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. 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."
Acts 4:12
"There is salvation in no one else! There is no other name in all of heaven for people to call on to save them."
Romans 5:6-11
"When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners. Now, no one is likely to die for a good person, though someone might be willing to die for a person who is especially good. But God showed His great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.
And since we have been made right in God’s sight by the blood of Christ, He will certainly save us from God’s judgment.
For since we were restored to friendship with God by the death of His Son while we were still His enemies, we will certainly be delivered from eternal punishment by His life. So now we can rejoice in our wonderful new relationship with God—all because of what our Lord Jesus Christ has done for us in making us friends of God."
Hebrews 2:1-4
"So we must listen very carefully to the truth we have heard, or we may drift away from it. The message of God delivered through angels has always proved true, and the people were punished for every violation of the law and every act of disobedience. What makes us think that we can escape if we are indifferent to this great salvation that was announced by the Lord Jesus Himself? It was passed on to us by those who heard Him speak, and God verified the message by signs and wonders and various miracles and by giving gifts of the Holy Spirit whenever He chose to do so."

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The wonderful story of man’s salvation begins with God..."God so loved the world..."
God is the Creator behind all creation. God is the Designer behind all design. God is the supreme fact of history, of life, of time, of death and of eternity.
God is the great need of the human heart.
"The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God." (Psalm 14:1) God is--and whoever exists without the knowledge of God is a wandering star, centerless and orbitless, reserved unto blackness and darkness forever. No wise person argues the existence of God!
God is eternal, He is the great I AM.
"Lord, Thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever Thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, Thou art God." (Psalm 90:1-2)
All measures of time and space, and the powers of numbers are reduced to meaningless words when applied to the lifetime of God. The eternity of God forces us to clothe Him with an excellency of nature, surpassing all other existences.
The eternity of God removes Him infinitely beyond and above all other beings, with Calvary’s cross a goal in His heart from all eternity. God inhabiteth eternity and it is His desire to give to us His life which is life eternal in His presence forever!
God is intelligent. Bible revelation and revelations in nature set Him forth as the author of a universal order of matter, life and mind--such an order as could only come from a mind of infinite intelligence.
"For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts." (Isaiah 55:8-9)
God is holy.
The Psalmist speaks of God as "the high and holy One." The Psalmist says: "The Lord is holy in all His works." (Psalm 145:17)
In the Apocalypse, the living creatures around the throne cry: "...Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come." (Revelation 4:8)
"For thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy: I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the heart of the contrite ones." (Isaiah 57:15)
God is love.
"He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent His

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only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but the He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins." (1 John 4:8-10)
"For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son..."
This glorious text (John 3:16) is the hub of the Bible! It is the vital center of Divine revelation, and the very heart of the Evangel. All the great truths of the Old Testament converge toward it. All the great doctrines of the New Testament emerge from it!
What the sun is to our solar system, John 3:16 is in its relation to the Christian message. All the distinctive truths of redemption--the riches of the Divine grace, the forgiveness of sins, propitiation, reconciliation, justification, eternal salvation and glorification--revolve round this supreme statement of God’s redeeming love.
Please observe with me--there are five significant pairs of words that make up this verse. The first pair--the two words "God" and "Son" show us the supreme Giver and the supreme Gift, God the Father and Christ the Savior, two of the ever-blessed Trinity of the Godhead, co-operating in the effecting of our salvation.
The second pair show us the two expressions of the Divine benevolence--God "loved" and God "gave."
The third pair show us the two-fold direction of God’s loving and giving the "world" and "whosoever."
The fourth pair show us the two things that all human beings are privileged and invited to do, namely--"believe" and "have."
The fifth pair show us the two ultimate extremes of human destiny--in the one case "perish," in the other "life."
Our text states that the eternal God of the universe gave His Son! In these words we clearly see the Divine sonship of Christ. This title, "His only begotten Son," implies the absolute deity of Christ. The epithet ‘only begotten’ means, not merely that God had no other such Son, but that His only begotten Son is, in virtue of this sonship, a partaker of that incommunicable and imperishable Essence, which is sundered from all created life by an impassable chasm.
Jesus Christ, Son of God with power--whom God "hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also He made the worlds" the brightness of God’s glory, the express image of God’s person, upholding all things by the word of His power." (Hebrews 1:2-3)

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Christ--"for Whom are all things, and by Whom are all things, ...the captain of (our) salvation (made) perfect through sufferings (Hebrews 2:10).
Christ--never glorifying Himself (Hebrews 5:5), learning obedience by the things which He suffered, He became the author of eternal salvation. (Hebrews 5:8-9)
Christ--"Who did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth: who, when He was reviled, reviled not again; when He suffered, He threatened not; but committed Himself to Him that judgeth righteously: who His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed." (1 Peter 2:22-24)
Christ--who "hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit." (1 Peter 3:18)
Christ—"Who is gone into heaven, and is on the right hand of God; angels and authorities and powers being made subject unto Him." (1 Peter 3:22)
Jesus Christ--Son of God! He was God’s gift to sinful man! He is the outstanding miracle of the ages. He was and is the Light of the world (John 8:12), yet He hung in darkness on the cross that dread day when midnight took up its reign on noonday’s throne. Jesus Christ--LIFE--yet He tasted death for every man." (Hebrews 2:9)
Taking Jesus from history is like taking matter out of physics, heat out of fire, fragrance out of flowers, numbers out of mathematics, mind out of metaphysics, cause and effect out of philosophy.
Without Jesus the world’s history is a diabolical joke! Without Christ, the past is cruel enigma, the present is tormenting perplexity, and the future is an awful, inevitable catastrophe!
"For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son!" "But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying out, "Abba, Father!" Therefore you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ." (Galatians 4:4-7)
Jesus Christ was God in human flesh!
"Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in

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the likeness of men.
And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him a name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." (Philippians 2:5-11)
Oh! What a Saviour is Jesus! Because He is truly human and at the same time absolutely Divine, He spans the gulf between sinful man and the all-holy God!
Because Jesus Christ is truly human--"bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh"--He is able to represent man to God; and because He is absolutely Divine--"very God of very God"--He is able to represent God to man. Because He is truly man, and because on the cross He took the place of the lowest sinner, He can reach down to the very lowest of sinners, and save them from the penalty and pollution and power of their sin; and because He is also God the Son, He can lift those whom He saves to the highest height of exaltation!
John 3:16 again says: "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him..."
Question! What does it mean to believe? The word "believeth" does not mean merely a mental assent to certain propositions. It refers to an act and an attitude of the heart, which moves the will and affects the whole man. To believe on the Lord Jesus Christ means to put your confidence in Him as what He claims to be. It is to put confidence in him as your Sinbearer; as your Deliverer from the power of sin; as your Divinely infallible Teacher; as your Master who has the right to the entire control of your life; as your Guide, whom you will follow wherever He leads; and as your Divine Lord.
Saving faith is made up of three things--knowledge, belief, and trust. Knowledge must come first. In the words of Paul--"How shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? We may not know the elementary facts which the gospel declares before we can possibly receive. We may not know anything about the Christian believer’s deeper experiences of fellowship with his Lord; but we must know certain great facts about the Lord Jesus before we can place our trust in Him as our Savior.
We must know that as a matter of historical fact He lived on this earth, and that He

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taught and wrought as the Scriptures record. We must know that He declared Himself to be the Son of God: that He declared His death to be a ransom for us sinners; that He rose from the dead, and ascended back to the Father; that His character bears testimony to His claims to be the incarnate Son of God, and man's Saviour; and that the Scriptures unite in testifying to Him, and offering Him to us as our Saviour.
We need not know more than this; but there must be some such knowledge before there can be faith in Him at all. Following this simple knowledge comes belief. Having come to know of certain things, the mind goes on to believe them to be true. So, through this modicum of knowledge, and belief, the soul comes to accept the facts and truths and promises of the Gospel in the sense of relying upon them and thus appropriating the glorious blessings which the Gospel offers--the forgiveness of sins, reconciliation and peace with God, the blotting out of guilt, and the justifying of the pardoned sinner, in God’s sight, through the merit of the Redeemer.
And this act of relying upon the facts and truths and promises of the Gospel, centers in an act of trust in Jesus Himself, as the living embodiment of all the truths and promises of the Gospel, the Son of God and Saviour of all who trust Him!
Paul, in his admonition to Timothy, writes these words: "Therefore I endure all things for the sake of the elect, that they also may obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory." (2 Timothy 2:10)
IN CHRIST JESUS! Oh! What eternal possessions we have when we put our trust in Jesus Christ as our Saviour!"
IN CHRIST, we have acquittal and acceptance. "For He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him." (2 Corinthians 5:21) All our guilt was charged to Christ's account. By His crucifixion, He has discharged all our liabilities. So now, being in Christ, we have no account to discharge. In God’s sight, we are as righteous as He—and in Him we are accepted. "To the praise of the glory of His grace, wherein He hath made us accepted in the beloved." (Ephesians 1:6)
IN CHRIST, we have the bestowal of all bounty. "Blessed by the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ." (Ephesians 1:3)
IN CHRIST, we are chosen and complete.
"According as He hath chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love." (Ephesians 1:4)

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"We are complete in Him." (Colossians 1:10)
The perfection of His completion is the completion of God’s perfection. His comeliness is the cover for our deformity and the answer to God’s glory.
IN CHRIST, we have deliverance.
"There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." (Romans 8:1) Thus we see that we are secure from all condemnation. And that which God would have to judge at the Great White Throne He has judged in Christ at the cross where Jesus became for us all that God must judge, that we, through faith in Him, could become all that God cannot judge.
IN CHRIST, believers have eternal life.
"For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." (Romans 6:23) This eternal life embodies all happiness. This eternal life is more than endlessness of being. It is being united in the vitality of the Eternal One in the holiness of His being. Eternal felicity is known in this eternal friendship.
IN CHRIST, as believers we have fullness.
"And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fullness of God." (Ephesians 3:19)
The ditches and chasms of our need are filled with the grace of His supply. "Enough and to spare," spoke the Prodigal of the Father's house. "My cup runneth over," said David. In Christ, we have an overflowing portion!
IN CHRIST, we have an eternal inheritance.
"In whom we have obtained an inheritance" (Ephesians 1:11). This secures all the future. The "inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you" (1 Peter 1:4) is found in the incorruptible Christ in whom was no sin. The entailed inheritance must come in due course to the heir. Being in the family, the heir is in the inheritance. Believers are sons in the Son--and thus in the family of God. This secures the inheritance which comes to the children.
IN CHRIST, we have victory and triumph.
"God who leads us always to triumph in Christ," (2 Corinthians 2:14). This means victory in all temptations. Keeping in the realm of Christ's protective presence by our obedience, we are sure to be guarded from defeat in hours of conflict.
Salvation is the greatest, the grandest, the most glorious work of the Lord! This salvation is so great that we have the very best of the mind of Almighty God, the wisdom in all its infinity, the power to its utmost extent, the love in all its dimensions.
When God made man, God breathed into him--and he became a living soul.

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But when God made salvation available to men, God bled for man. Creation is the work of God's hands and mouth. Salvation is the operation of God's heart.
"Of this salvation the prophets have inquired and searched carefully who prophesied of the grace that would come to you, searching what, or what manner of time, the Spirit of Christ who was in them was indicating when He testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow. To them it was revealed that, not to themselves, but to us they were ministering the things which now have been reported to you through those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven--things which angels desire to look into." (1 Peter 1:10-12)
This so great salvation is beyond the comprehension of angels!
Back to our text of John 3:16! "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." When used of physical things, the word PERISH always carries the thought of destruction. The drowned sailor, the slain of battle, and the loss of life from hurricanes...the thought of destruction is always present. So is it when the word is used for the soul; though here, of course, since the soul is non-physical, it does not imply destruction in the sense of extinction or cessation of consciousness. It signifies the final condition of the soul. It means the destruction of all those qualities within the soul which constitute its true life and well-being, with the consequent expulsion of the soul, in the beyond, from that environment in which alone it can know joy. It means eternity spent in Hell, forever separated from God! Perish! In contrast, everlasting life! The two words, "perish" and "life" here stand in dramatic contrast! They represent the two ultimate extremes of human destiny. The one word plunges our thought down to the deepest conceivable depth of ruin; the other wings our thought upward to the highest conceivable height of felicity. Eternal life means the very life of God Himself, as revealed in a unique way in Jesus Christ, and actually imparted through Him, to all who by faith become savingly united to Him. Eternal life is the eternal condition of the soul in the presence of almighty God, in all the joys and blessing of heaven! "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him." (1 Corinthians 2:9). Oh! What a wonderful salvation through Christ!