Understanding God's Salvation: A Journey of Grace

The trouble with men and women is that they don't understand these things. The world doesn't know God. The Bible keeps on saying so. The God of this world hath blinded the minds of them that believe not. It's not surprising that people think as they do and say the things they do about God. It's nothing but sheer ignorance. They don't know God. If only they knew God and understood these things, why, their whole life would be different, and the whole world would be different. [00:12:38]

The gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ reverses all our human, our natural ideas. He turns them literally upside down. There's nothing else in the world like it. It is absolutely unique and alone. Now, there are many people who obviously don't agree with that because they betray themselves in the things they say. They talk about great religious teachers and great religious Geniuses. They bring out their lists. They talk about Moses and Jeremiah, and they talk about Buddha and Confucius and the Christ and others. [00:16:44]

The gospel surprises us with its simplicity and its demand for nothing but our acknowledgment of need. It is not about our righteousness or efforts but about God's action in Christ. The New Testament tells us that we are born into sin and spiritual poverty, yet God requires nothing from us but repentance. The gospel is a free gift, given to us through the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. It is God's action, not ours, that brings salvation. [00:23:09]

The gospel confronts us by the exact opposite. It says all your righteousness is but as filthy rags. All the things that even a soul of Tarsus could boast of are nothing but dung and loss and refuge. You see, the man who thinks himself the most worthy when he confronts this is proved to be a pauper. He's got nothing at all. Wilderness, barrenness, extreme poverty, and helplessness. [00:27:49]

Now, this is the glorious thing about this salvation, that far from telling us that because we are like that we are hopeless, it tells us in a sense that that is the very condition to receiving the salvation. Did you notice the four pictures and how they brought out this point? These four people, these types of persons depicted by the psalmist, they end by praising God. [00:28:28]

The essence of salvation is this: what God has done in Christ. Christ and him crucified, says Paul, is the wisdom of God, and he is the power of God. Listen to him as he goes on and says, when the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. The world by wisdom knew not God. [00:35:51]

God has committed to me, says Paul, this message, this Gospel of reconciliation. What is it? Well, it's this: to wit, that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing unto them their trespasses. It's God doing it. It's God's action. You see, we start with this opposite idea that we've got to do something, and the answer is no, no, God does it. [00:37:49]

The Son of God has done it all. Salvation is a free gift. It isn't a program which we are set onto in order to earn forgiveness. God forgives us for one reason only, and that is that he has punished our sins in the person of his own son. It isn't our pleading, it isn't our repentance, it isn't our works. Salvation is a free gift. [00:41:18]

The gospel is a free gift, given to us through the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. It is God's action, not ours, that brings salvation. This is the essence of the gospel: God has done it all, and we are called to receive it with open hearts. Our spiritual poverty and helplessness are not hindrances to receiving salvation. [00:38:39]

The gospel replies by saying you're a wilderness, you're a barrenness, you're a dry ground, you're a pauper. But I say the marvelous thing about it is this: that that is the very condition of salvation. A hymn puts it very well: all the fitness he requireth is to feel your need of him, nothing else at all. [00:30:41]

The condition in which God likes to see people coming is this: he likes to see people coming who say, nothing in my hands I bring, simply to thy cross I cling. Naked, look to thee for dress, helpless, look to thee for grace. Foul, I to the fountain fly. Wash me, Savior, or I die. You see, with nothing at all, absolutely nothing. [00:31:59]

The gospel of Jesus Christ is surprising, and if it doesn't come to us as a surprise, we rarely never know, have known it. Indeed, if you've never felt about the gospel that there is something almost incredible about it, you haven't got the real thing. It is something, I say, that is so counter to the natural human ideas that it appears to be utter fancy and fantasy and foolishness. [00:22:59]