Jul 17
25
A Sure Salvation
Tommy Robbins
“And the LORD their God shall save them in that day as the flock of His people: for they shall be as the stones of a crown, lifted up as an ensign upon His land.” Zechariah 9:16
The heart and design of all false religion is the promotion of man’s self-righteousness and imagined free-will in opposition to the glorious righteousness of Christ and God’s sovereign free-will. The righteousness and free-will of man is non-existent in the justification of sinners before God. The works and will of man is certain damnation for those who trust therein. The Lord Jesus Christ and His redemptive work is the only ground for justifying righteousness before the Holy God.
The Bible only knows and reveals a full, free and sure salvation wrought by the One “Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood, to declare His righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God” – Romans 3:25, and “He is the propitiation for our sins” – 1 John 2:2. The salvation of God in Christ is certain, sure and everlasting because it is His salvation, wrought by Him and dispensed by Him. I fall and fail ten thousand times a day but He never has and never will fail, yea, CANNOT fail! – “He shall not fail nor be discouraged” Isaiah 42:4. The salvation of God’s elect children is as sure as the majestic Throne of His Glory, eternal in the heavens.
The earth shall burn and crumble, the sun will refuse to shine, the stars will fall like rain, and death and hell shall be cast into the lake of fire, but the Great Shepherd and His sheep shall dwell safely together on the Mountain of the Lord in the Land of Promise and “they shall be as the stones of a crown, lifted up as an ensign upon His land.”
When our Lord said, “It is finished,” IT WAS FINISHED! Period! Our Surety sealed all covenant promises with His everlasting, efficacious blood. Away with all fancies and notions contrived in the hearts of fallen, unregenerate mankind concerning salvation. May we ever raise the banner of God’s free, sovereign, and everlasting grace in Christ Jesus our Lord!
Salvation is a process, having its roots in the timeless eternity of God’s existence and bearing fruit throughout history and into the unending eternity of the heavenly existence of God’s saints. At various points in time, God has brought to pass various aspects of His grand work of the salvation of His people.
Some of the aspects of God’s salvation have double and multiple fulfillments. For example, regeneration may be a singular event, but conversion is a life-long process of transforming and renewing the mind (way of thinking). Even redemption is a multifaceted event. The payment of the redemption price was made once for all by the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus. But redemption involves more than merely paying a price; it also involves taking possession of the redeemed property. Therefore, it would be entirely appropriate to consider the Spirit’s call by the gospel to be an act of redemption, for in such a call God takes possession of the redeemed property. Such a call is also part and parcel of our redemption in as much as it is the actual loosing of the bonds of slavery to the law, sin and death. But there is even more to redemption than this, for in Romans 8 Paul speaks of our being delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the sons of God, which he calls our adoption and the redemption of our bodies.
And what of justification? It might suit our desire for a neat and orderly theology to assume that justification is a singular event, but such a thought does not square with the Scriptures, for they speak of justification as happening on many occasions. To justify means to declare righteous. Since justification is by God, it is as eternal as He is. Justification is also the experience of each of the elect of God when he first believes the gospel, and it is also his experience on every occasion when his sin is brought to his attention, and he pleads the blood of Christ upon it. Furthermore, every one of the Lord’s elect shall be justified in that great day when God’s appointed day of judgment by Jesus Christ arrives and all his elect are declared righteous in His sight.
Many needless heresies, quarrels and controversies can be avoided by remembering that God’s grace has many facets, and each glorious facet appears in its own time. It is much more enjoyable to sit and gaze on the “manifold wisdom of God” in the various workings of grace than to sit in judgment on such works as to whether they fit well into our apprehension of the form they should take or schedule by which they should arrive.