Understanding Salvation: Grace, Action, and God's Love

We come now to a whole new section in the study of systematic theology, and it’s that subdivision of theology that we call soteriology. Now, this word may seem foreign to many people. It’s not your everyday common word that is used in the church, but it is a very important word because it comprises those matters that pertain to our salvation. [00:00:09]

The word ‘soteriology’ comes from the Greek, word ‘sozo’ or ‘sozomai’ is the verb in the New Testament Greek that means ‘to save’ and the noun of the word ‘savior’ is the word ‘soter’. And so we have soteriology coming from that. Just a word in passing that in the Scriptures when the Bible speaks of salvation, it speaks of salvation in more than one way. [00:00:43]

We are accustomed to using the term ‘salvation’ or being saved in the ultimate sense of being redeemed by God and brought into a saving relationship to Him that will last for eternity. But in the Scriptures, for God to save somebody can mean several different things. The word ‘to save’ refers to any act of rescue from a serious and dire circumstance or from a calamitous situation. [00:01:18]

But then there is the ultimate sense of salvation where in that regard the great calamity from which we are saved is from God. That is, we are saved from having to face God in His wrath on the day of judgment and we are rescued from that wrath which is to come, so that God is at the same time the Savior and the One from whom we are saved. [00:02:09]

And he saw the link between those two, that from the beginning to the end salvation is of the Lord and it is not something that we earn or that we deserve, but it is given freely from the mercy and from the love of God. But when we speak of grace, the first thing that we have in view is the distinction between grace and justice. [00:03:08]

Justice is something that is earned or merited or is due to a person by some standard. And, usually when we think of justice we think of the standard of works. And when Paul writes about our salvation he makes it very clear that if we were saved by our works then our salvation would not be of grace. [00:03:36]

But since it is of grace and that indicates that it is not of works. But justice has to do with correspondence to some kind of standard of merit or of earning. I say that by way of contrast that grace is something that is not deserved, that is not merited, that is not earned, it is something that is given freely by God. [00:04:14]

Common grace and special grace. Common grace is called common because it is virtually universal. It refers to that grace that God gives to all people indiscriminately. The mercy and kindness that extends to the human race as distinguished from the special grace of redemption that God gives to the saved. So common grace is the grace of God that we all experience in a broad sense. [00:06:48]

The crops that we grow are dependent upon rain. I will never forget when we had the problem in Florida of the drought that created the wildfires that were life threatening where a whole county was evacuated – every single person in that county had to be evacuated. And I remember living nearby those fires and people had been praying for rain. [00:07:57]

You realize that the orphanage movement in history was stimulated and made in main by the Christian community. That the hospital movement, the educational movement of early centuries was sparked and stimulated by the church and even the development of science in many ways was stimulated by the Christians who were convinced that they had a responsibility to dress and till and keep the earth and to be good stewards of this planet that God has given to us. [00:12:14]

And we see Jesus demonstrating in His ministry (for example, the parable of the Good Samaritan) indicates the priority that Jesus gives to His church to be concerned not only in the special grace realm of evangelism, but also to be concerned about the general welfare of the human race. What does James tell us but the essence of true religion is the care of orphans and widows. [00:14:30]

Because the church is called not only to the ministry of special grace but also to the ministry of common grace. And that means as Christians we have to be concerned about poverty, we have to be concerned about hunger, we have to be concerned about people having the basic necessities of life in terms of housing, in terms of clothing and reaching out to their misery. [00:16:51]