Common Words #2 - Salvation

This may be considered a bit of a run on from "Common Words #1 - Saved".

Common Words – Salvation

Everyone talks about salvation but very few people actually want it. All most people want is forgiveness of sins and a right standing before God, but actual salvation they do not want. Most people seem to desire justification without regeneration, reconciliation without sanctification, and redemption without repentance. People reject transformation and cling to ‘Just as I am’. People want the reward, but do not desire victory. People do not want to be in the darkness, but refuse to be exposed to the light. People want some way to say they are saved, and feel like they are saved without actually embodying salvation. The bottom line is people reject temporal salvation with all there might and desire only that salvation which will come after death, the only problem is that you cannot have one without the other.

The saddest thing is that most churches will rail against anything that appears to be teaching sinless perfection yet will consider living in continuous carnality and sin to be the normal life for a Christian. The reality is you will not be forgiven if you are not born again, and you cannot be born-again and remain the same as you were, and continuous carnality is not a part of the Christian life, period.

Let’s look at Ephesians 2 – with emphasis added.

And you WERE dead in your transgressions and sins in which you FORMERLY walked according to the course of this world according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is NOW working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all FORMERLY lived in the lusts of our flesh indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind.

It is so important that we read these scriptures as they are, and take them at face value before we try to explain them away with some theological system that allows for continuous sin. “Well I believe that in me and my flesh dwells no good thing” you may say. Nobody will disagree with you there, but when the spirit is alive the flesh is dead, D-E-A-D, dead. “If you by the spirit mortify the flesh///” You say “When we sin we have an advocate with the Father.” Where did you read that? 1 John you may say, well lets quote the verse:

1 John 2:1 “My little Children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin and IF anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.”

Can you see it? IF anyone sins, IF IF IF, it is not WHEN someone sins, it is IF. What does this mean? It means that sin is not normal in the Christian life. Do you want that type of salvation, the type that will cut your soul into a million pieces when you find sin in your life? Or would you rather have a false salvation that allows you to live in sin without any contrition?

Salvation is a dangerous thing, it will wreck your former unregenerate life, you will not be able to walk the way you once did, you will become strange to those who once esteemed you, and you will be altered. The question must be asked again, do you want that type of salvation, or do you want trust to a pathetic mental ascension that has produced no power over sin?

Now it must be stated that the author of this post, myself, makes no claim to have achieved some sort of sinless perfection. If you were to examine my life, and follow me around day by day and hour by hour, you would probably be pretty disappointed. I fall at times, and I fall hard, I find sin in myself that is so perverse that I hardly have enough faith to believe myself saved. Nonetheless this sin surprises me, and upon it discovery the desire of my heart is not to indulge it but to crucify it. Upon falling into sin, what is your desire? To explain it away? To justify it? To try to appease God with a few words of contrition, but no real desire for repentance? Come on, listen to your heart, does it have the desire for godliness, or does it still lust after the things of this world?

Some people will read this and find comfort in this last paragraph, and it will comfort them because upon hearing that others are sinful it somehow lets them off the hook. If another man or woman’s sinfulness brings you assurance stop. Never let yourself compare who you are to another person and then base your justification on their failure. Remember “Except your righteousness exceed the scribes and Pharisees ye shall in no case enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” The Pharisees were the most obedient people on the face of the earth, but their piety was born out of selfish desire and not a heart regenerated towards godliness. Is your religion a ploy to avoid hell, and enter an undeserved heaven? Or is it more than that, do you seek salvation from sin in the present tense? Do you seek godliness in this present age? Seek Christ, He will give you life in abundance, and He offers this salvation being spoken of here. He can work mightily in you, do you desire it. Ask Seek and Knock, you will receive.

I must close this here.
I pray the Lord give the redeemed a greater desire for Holiness, and that the lost churchmen may see there is a greater salvation than that which they profess to.