What the Bible Says About Salvation

Good morning, everyone. Recently, my wife and I watched a movie. We're signed up on Netflix, so we don't go to the stores anymore and rent a movie. It all comes to our mailbox. One of the movies that was in our queue that showed up in our mailbox was a movie called The Guardian. It was a Kevin Costner movie, and it dealt with the story of lifeguards, Coast Guard lifeguards.

The Coast Guard rescue swimmers who go out when mariners and ships and recreational people are in danger on the lakes or on the seas around the United States, coastal waters, and they rescue them. Kevin Costner played this Coast Guard rescue swimmer who jumps in the water, goes to the ship, goes to the rock, goes to the person in the water to rescue them.

It was rather interesting. It was kind of a top gun on water in terms of that type of situation. What was interesting was just to learn about how they go through the training to become a Coast Guard rescue swimmer and to look at that. It sparks some thoughts. But when they jump into the water and they swim to the person who is in distress, they approach them in a cautious way, but they identify themselves.

They approach them and they stop a short distance away and they say, I am a Coast Guard rescue swimmer. I am here to rescue you. In every scene on the movie, that's what they showed as they approached the person in distress. I am a Coast Guard rescue swimmer. I am here to save you. Then they proceed to get the person in a position.

Usually, if you've had any training in this, you approach the person from the backside and you bring that arm back around them across their chest and get them in a lock and bring them back up against your body. Then you swim and start swimming to either shore or, in this case, the helicopter that's got a line down into the water with a rope and a buoy there to bring them back up.

But you've got to get them in this hold, this big strong arm of the rescue swimmer, and lock them in a position so that you can then get them back. Sometimes the swimmers panic and they try to basically grab hold of the rescuer and drown them. I mean, they will both drown together if the rescue swimmer doesn't get the situation well in hand.

They've got to be trained to do that. In some cases, the only answer is just to smack them real hard and knock them out to get their attention because panic sets in and they will try to do that. That's why, if you're not trained in that, you really don't want to, 99.9% of the cases probably try to do that because it takes certain training to deal with an emergency out there and you could be drowned trying to rescue somebody else.

A little bit of a disclaimer here is so that you don't go out and try to be a rescuer without adequate training. It is very important. But it was an interesting move and it got me to thinking about saving people and about this concept of salvation. And the analogy of the salvation that God offers to mankind is interesting. It can be drawn to the idea of a rescue swimmer and the strong arm that they employ to rescue people who are in distress and to save their physical life.

And it got me thinking about the basic teaching from the Bible of salvation. Something that we are all actively concerned about, interested in, and really active participants in, but probably don't think too much about it. Once we've been baptized in umpteen years ago or we make that decision or we even those of you that are not baptized, maybe you've been a part of the church for any number of years and you don't understand the distinction that is there in this teaching from the Bible of salvation and being saved.

Saved from what? Saved for what? Or to what? What does the Bible say about that? It's a very important teaching obviously to get it right so that we understand what the Bible teaches and we are approaching it and handling it in our lives continually on a right basis.

It's an important teaching to understand because there's a great deal of misunderstanding among religionists in today's society as to exactly what salvation is and how it works and what are the steps to salvation and what the Bible really does teach. Salvation is essentially God's rescue of man from eternal death. That's essentially what it is.

The eternal death that all human beings have earned by sin. The wages of death. And all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. And the safety of eternal life is offered at Jesus Christ's return through the resurrection at that point and future resurrections. But through the idea of the resurrection and the body being changed from mortal to immortality, given eternal life, salvation in essence is laid out in the Scriptures as God's offer to rescue man from death. Just as a drowning swimmer is in danger of drowning physically because of an accident, because of weather, because of any number of circumstances, they get themselves in that situation and they have to be rescued, hopefully.

Well, man is in a situation from which we have to be rescued. The doctrine, the teaching of salvation, is that story of how God is saving us from death to life more than physical, obviously eternal life. The ideas and the common teachings that people have are varied on this. Some people teach and believe that the object of being saved is in order to go to heaven upon death.

We know from the Bible teaching what the Bible says about that, that salvation does not mean from the Bible that a person upon death goes to heaven, nor does it mean that they go to an ever-burning hellfire. Again, the teaching is you've got to be saved now from hellfire to go to heaven, and that today is the only day of salvation, a common bedrock teaching of most Protestant Christianity, especially evangelical Christianity, which powers the soul-saving crusades that are there as a result of people's sincere desire to get people saved.

We've all been through these things. From time to time, you get people knocking on your door, asking you that question. I've had those even in recent days. They've been coming out, it seems like recent weeks at least, coming through my neighborhood trying to either get us to their church or to their particular brand of religion, and again to get us saved now. Other people believe that salvation is something that is completely guaranteed at baptism, that once you are baptized or once you give your heart to the Lord and an emotional experience, at that moment you are saved.

And you are guaranteed salvation, regardless of what you do for the rest of your life. It's an ironclad guarantee, the best guarantee of Walmart, Target, nobody else can do any better. The gutter salesman wants to sell you $3,000 worth of guttering on your new home, can't give you a better guarantee than what some people teach is the guarantee once you commit and give your heart to God, that you are saved at that point, regardless of what you do for the rest of your life.

Again, we know that the Bible doesn't really teach that, and we will look at that as we go through this. It takes more than just having an experience to give our heart to the Lord in some type of experiential type of emotion. It takes more than that to be saved, to be born again, to enter the kingdom of God, and to have eternal life, in answer to the question that was put to God or to Jesus.

What is the teaching of the Scriptures? And what is it that we are being saved from? Let's go through these basic Scriptures and this basic teaching once again and understand this. There is no more important teaching in one sense to understand from the Bible to get this right and to understand in our minds not just for an exercise, an intellectual exercise, but for what it teaches us about how we are to live and what we are to do with our lives.

We are in this period right after Pentecost. We have kept the days of Unleavened Bread and Pentecost. We focused on putting sin out. We have focused on the giving of the Holy Spirit. I have given sermons to you on the need for the life of Christ to be lived within us and the heart to be changed and the law of God to be written on our heart. At the heart of that whole understanding is getting this particular point right because it shows us that once we are baptized, once God has called us, then we have something to do. We have to cooperate with God. If you will, to use that analogy of the rescue swimmer, the one who is being rescued has got to cooperate with his rescuer ultimately to be saved because once that rescuer gets there in the water and makes the first contact, the person is not saved, there is still a great deal of a lot of danger.

They have got to get him back to the point of the shore, to a boat, to a lifeline, up to a helicopter. The whole process isn't finished once that big strong hand of the rescuer clamps down upon the one who is in need of being rescued.

A lot of things could go wrong. It's not a perfect analogy, but it does at least help us to visualize something as we move through this subject and understand the importance of what it is that we are being rescued from and why. There are scriptures in the Bible that describe the death that is a part of life.

Ecclesiastes 9, verse 5 says that the living know that they will die. The dead know nothing, they have no more reward for the memory than is forgotten. I personally try to read that scripture at every funeral that I conduct to explain to those gathered in a funeral that the dead know nothing. But in this case, the scripture is also telling us that death is a part of life.

It is man's greatest enemy. In 1 Corinthians 15, verse 26, it says that the last enemy that will be destroyed is death. Death is an enemy. That's another scripture that read at funerals as well. But death is an enemy of man. It is an enemy of life. And it is, in a sense, the greatest enemy there. Why do we die? Well, as I've already quoted, Romans 6 and verse 23, let's just turn back to Romans 6 and verse 23. It tells us that this is why we die.

This is why the penalty of death is here. And this subject of salvation, we are concerned obviously with the spiritual death that the Bible calls the second death, more so than we are the first death. All of us are going to experience the first death. We're going to die physically at one point in our life.

It is the second death that salvation as a teaching is most concerned with from the scriptures. But here in verse 23 of Romans 6, it says, the wages of sin is death. Very simply put, the second death here is what's being spoken of. Now, sin can cause physical death as well, the first death. I mean, we don't have to go through all of that. I think we all can understand that there are certain mistakes we can make and will make that can lead to premature death and accidental death and death in some ways. But really what is being spoken of here is the spiritual death. We all came into this, into the world, the Bible states that death came into the world through sin and that all have sinned.

It has spread in a sense to all of mankind here in Romans 5 and verse 12. It says, therefore, just as through one man's sin entered the world and death through sin and thus death spread to all men because all sinned. All have sinned. Back in Romans 3, in verse 23, we can note a number of these scriptures in Romans. We're going to spend a little bit of time here this morning, but they're all close together. Romans 3 and verse 23 says that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. For human beings, we've all sinned.

It has come into the world through man and death is the result of sin. So it is a part of life.

And we are told that we need to be saved from death because of sin. The wages of sin is death. That's what we earn. A wage is something that we earn because of our works, because of our labor.

And our labor as human beings in this natural world, in this world that is not fully connected to God, is full of sin that all of us have been a part of in one way or the other. And it is very important for us to understand and to make sure that we get properly and understand in terms of salvation and what God is working out and what God is bringing to pass in this life. Understanding the matter of sin and salvation. As we go back here to Romans 6, it also shows us what is the gift of God. In verse 23 again, it says, the wages of sin is death. And I always want to read the full context of a verse to understand a subject. But it says, the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. The wages of sin is death, but God's gift is eternal life.

It is something that God gives to us. Right here at the very beginning, we understand certain aspects in regard to eternal life. First of all, eternal life is something that God gives as a gift. Generally, a gift is something we receive freely. There are usually no strings attached in the ideal sense. We make mistakes if we give gifts to other people, children, good friends with certain strings attached. The longer you go before you learn that, the more heartache you have as a human being. But the idea of a gift is something given freely, without any strings attached. There's nothing one's sense has earned it. And it is given out of a purity of concern and generally love for a person and the relationship that is there.

God says here that it is a gift from Him, eternal life, in Christ Jesus our Lord. From this, we also learn that only God has eternal life. Eternal life is something that only God has. It's not something we have. What we have is revealed in the first part of this verse, and that is death, because this is what we have earned. This is what's being held over us, and in a sense, we're like that drowning person needing to be rescued. We're in the role of that person who needs to be rescued. Salvation is all about God's gift of eternal life through and in Jesus Christ. We don't have it within us. We don't have it as a part of something that is called a soul or a more immortal soul that is within us. Understanding the true nature of what man is, is another key part to this whole picture. We're not going to, obviously, in the scope of the sermon, go through all of that. But man is not immortal. He does not have the spark of eternity within him. It is not something that we have. We do have a spirit in us that makes us far different from the animal realm. The Bible refers to this as a human spirit or a spirit in man.

That's one of the most profound understandings that we have taken over the years in the church to really understand about the nature of human life, what man really is, and that we don't have immortality within us. Again, this verse and many others that we could turn to show us that. But this is what's important in regard to salvation. The common teachings of today's world are based on variants, variations of the idea that you were born with something within you inherently that is spiritual that either existed in some pre-existing form or manner of life and is released upon death and goes to heaven or to hell or goes, in some cases, into another human body. You are reincarnated. That's an eastern idea, at least in its prevalence today. But from time to time, I've found that people who have strayed from the truth even latch onto such an idea as that of reincarnation in terms of understanding life and what it is all about. But the idea that you have something in you that is inherently spiritual that can exist apart from the body is a very tightly woven part of the fabric of human thought. I teach this class on early church history every to the young people at the Ambassador Bible Center. One section that I spend a whole hour on is the idea of Gnosticism and the thoughts that coalesced within the church and among those that professed Christianity in the late first and end of the second century, these ideas that man somehow has a spirit within him. It's just another variation of the idea of the immortality of the soul, but Gnosticism in some of its purest form taught then and still teach to its adherents today the idea that you have a spirit within you that needs to just be turned on. That you were born with eternity already within you. And whenever you read that particular thought or idea, whether it's in religion, philosophy, poetry, literature, self-help, psychology, wherever it it weaves its way. As I say, it's a tightly woven part of the fabric of our modern world. The idea that there is a spark of life within you that is just waiting to be ignited, to be turned on. And it can come out in so many different ways. The Gnostics taught that you had that there were certain ones had this kind of this light within them. And when that light came on, then they understood the whole meaning of life. And anyone who didn't, they were just left out. And the whole purpose of life was in a sense to be reconnected to some form or spiritual existence. And you had to be connected to that. I call it the E.T. called Holm idea. That you know, you've got to get back to where you came from. It's another variant of the immortality of the soul. And inherent in all of these is some idea that you already have eternity, some form of spirit life already within you. And whenever you see that, whenever you read it, whenever you hear it, whether you're watching Oprah, whether you're reading some favorite romantic poet or some eastern guru or hear it, you know, on a popular television show, it's important that we understand the long historic development of those ideas. But it basically is getting to the heart, the idea that you already have eternal life within you and you don't need God. You don't need God to save you because you already have it within you. And it's just a matter of getting it oriented to the right frequency, turned on, recalibrated, the switch turned on, whatever it might be, and you then already have it. And the Bible teaches otherwise. The Bible teaches that only God is immortal. Only God has eternal life, and we don't. 1 Corinthians chapter 15. You all know that.

What is it? It's a whole chapter about the resurrection. That this mortal must put off mortality and be put on immortality at the resurrection. The mortal must die, and God gives us eternal life. Here in Romans, look at verse chapter 2 and verse 7. Chapter 2 and verse 7. Let's read verse 5. In accordance with your hardness and your impenitent heart, you are treasuring up for yourself wrath in the day of—you are treasuring up for yourself wrath in the day of wrath in revelation of the righteous judgment of God, who will render to each one according to his deeds, eternal life to those who by patient continuance in doing good, seek for glory, honor, and immortality. God gives us eternal life, is what this verse is showing, and we seek immortality. We seek it because we don't have it. We look for God to give it to us.

Notice in 1 Corinthians chapter 6. I'm sorry, 1 Timothy chapter 6. 1 Timothy chapter 6 and verse 16. Here it speaks of Jesus Christ, who is blessed and only potentate the King of kings and Lord of lords. In verse 16, who alone has immortality, dwelling, and unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see, to whom be honor and everlasting power. Amen.

Christ alone has immortality, this verse tells us. Now look in 2 Timothy 1 and verse 10.

This speaks again of the gospel. Verse 9 talks about us being saved and called with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace which was given to us in Christ Jesus before time began, but has now been revealed by the appearing of our Savior, Jesus Christ, who has abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. All these verses serve to show this one fact. We don't have immortality. The gospel explains how to get it. Only Christ has it and the Father. Those are the only sources of immortality that we have. 1 Corinthians 6, 16 is especially important in that sense. He is the only one who alone has immortality. We don't have it. And that's so important to understand in this whole issue and this whole matter of salvation that we have to get it from God. We have to be saved from the process. Now, how does God save man? Well, the wages of sin is death, as we've seen. Therefore, for God to give us salvation requires that the penalty for that sin is removed through forgiveness.

And also, it requires that man's nature be changed and a new nature that is not so susceptible to sin be replaced with that. Many scriptures show us that forgiveness of sin is possible because of the sacrifice of Christ. I'll just list them. We won't turn to all of them, but Acts 2.38, we all know very well. We have to repent and be baptized. Baptism is an outward show of the acceptance of Christ's sacrifice for our sins. Acts 2.21 and Romans 10 verse 13, both of those scriptures show clearly that salvation requires us to believe in the sacrifice of Christ and all that that entails. We do have to believe in that. The baptismal vow, when we put a person underwater at baptism, we ask them if they have accepted Jesus Christ as their Savior, their Lord and Master. And you respond to that, yes, you do. You believe in the sacrifice of Christ, and all that it means. It's more than just a profession. It is an acceptance of the responsibility and the requirements that go there as we look at the life of Christ and see how He lived and what He expects us to have. These scriptures show us, then, that we are justified through the sacrifice of Christ and then saved by His life. Let's go back to Romans the fifth chapter. Romans is very easy to understand, and I'm not giving you a lengthy exegesis of the scriptures. Exegesis is one of those real fancy Greek words that means thorough explanation. We're not going through that in great detail here today. Sorry for throwing that word out. I won't tell you what time it is. It's so early in the morning. There are key verses in Romans. When we put together, we get the flow and the thought and the teaching that comes on this subject, especially through these middle chapters of Romans that are so important. But chapter five of Romans does talk about the matter of justification and reconciliation that comes. Let's begin in verse 6. It says, When we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for our righteous man will one die, yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die.

Speaking to the mobility of that sacrifice. But God demonstrates His own love toward us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Much more, having now been justified. Now this then in verse 9 is a very important phrase. Justification. Christ died for us while we were sinners, struggling in most cases, not even knowing it. Sometimes we did know we were dying and needed help. I think sometimes we have to realize that the calling and the conversion goes hand in hand at times with our seeking and our desire for meaning, purpose, something to fill the void in our life. God makes the ultimate decision to call us, and it is according to His will and purpose. There has to be a willing heart and a seeking mind for meaning, understanding, fulfillment, purpose that goes hand in hand with that calling. Otherwise, the seed falls on ground that's just not fertile, not ready to receive it when you look at that particular analogy.

When He says here in verse 8 that that love was still toward us while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. That rescue has been available as a result. Then in verse 9, He says, much more than having now been justified by His blood. When you and I are baptized, we come under the blood of Christ. We accept that sacrifice. That's why when we take that Passover service every year is so important. If we count to cost, we examine ourselves, and we understand that. But this verse here, this first part of the verse, is telling us that we are justified by His blood. We are reconciled to God. The latter part of the verse says we are then reconciled.

That essentially means that through justification, it deals with our past sins to the point when we are baptized. You are made just before God through the blood of Christ. That's why that event is so important. That's why we don't baptize infants. We don't baptize young people who have not fully matured to the point where they can fully understand exactly the step that is being taken.

And to do otherwise is to do disgrace to the Word of God and to a person's life. So we don't feel that we have to baptize an infant just a few days after they're born or get young people at age 10, 11, 12, or 15, 16, 17, whatever it may be, and later, baptize at some point because baptism is for a mature mind that is fully understanding the decision and the responsibilities. And really, at whatever age one is baptized, you've got to be repentant because we are seeking justification, the forgiveness of all of our sins to that point. And this is what verse 9 says, we're justified by his blood. Now, verse 10 goes on to say this. Or verse 9, it says, We shall be saved from wrath through him. For if when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more having been reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. In these verses, we have two concepts. Justification, which deals with being brought up before God at baptism at that particular point where we do profess belief, accept Christ as our Savior, accept baptism and indicate our desire for a new life, we're justified. But that doesn't save us. We're not saved at that point. In one sense, that rescue swimmer has just come to us and announced, I'm here to save you. And he's thrown that big arm, strong arm around our chest, and, you know, grabbed hold of us, secured us, at least at that point, and brought us back against him. And there is, the process is beginning to work. Again, I don't have a perfect analogy in this here, but it should serve to help visualize certain things as we march through this. The process is at work, and now the rescuer and the swimmer have to move together to safety in the process of achieving a full salvation. We are saved by the life of Christ, is what we are told here. And that begins a process that is so important to understand for all of the rest of our life, and how we live and how we move. We don't abandon our teaching. We don't abandon faith in Christ and in the Father. We don't abandon the law of God. We still are subject to the poles of this flesh, and therefore we are going to be subject to sin, slipping, committing sins. That doesn't mean that we are not saved at that point, because when we go down to chapter 6 of Romans in verse 1, it says here, what shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Teachings in Paul's day, as well as teachings today, in some ways, take the forum that the more you sin, the more there grace, and therefore enjoy sin every day. It's kind of the thought. And Paul says, no, we don't continue in sin, which is the transgression of God's law. We don't continue to sin. We are to get more grace. He says that's not the point. Certainly not in verse 2, he says. How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? We are not to live in it. We have to cooperate with God who is saving us, who is in the process of bringing us to salvation. And the law still has a very important role to play. Down in verse 14 of Romans 6, he says, sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law, but under grace.

We're not under the penalty that the law, the transgression of the law holds upon us.

We are under grace, which means we are beginning to be worked with by our Savior.

And he doesn't let go of us. He continues to work with us, if you will. That is grace. We might struggle a little bit, but he's going to hold on even firmer.

And grace means that we are, as I've demonstrated before, we're kind of under this large umbrella, and we're so subject to sin that God doesn't condemn us, and God doesn't just cast us off. We still have to repent. We still have to work against sin. But it will not and should not have dominion over us. It should not rule over us because of a change in heart, a change in spirit, a change in our desire. Plus, obviously, one other key factor, and that is the imparting of the Holy Spirit, which we'll talk a little bit more about here. Verse 15 shows here, what then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? Certainly not.

We have to understand, again, what sin is, the transgression of the law. We have to stop sinning. That's the whole point. We're not going into all the theological dissertations of law and grace, necessarily, here as we work through this, but it is important to understand that we are to stop sinning. When we go back to Matthew 19, we find a phrase, a question that is put to Christ, that is instructive in this whole subject, Matthew 19. The rich man, in verse 17, verse 16, one came to him and said, Good Teacher. This is Matthew 19, verse 16.

Good Teacher, what good thing shall I do that I may have eternal life?

He wanted eternal life. He wanted to live forever.

And he said to him, Why do you call me good? No one is good but one that is God. But if you want to enter into life, in other words, if you want salvation, if you want to enter into eternal life, keep the commandments. Now, this is what Christ taught. This is a very basic, clear, plain statement, unequivocal. We must keep the commandments. The commandments are very important.

We understand that. We are a commandment-keeping church. The church of God, throughout the scriptures, are identified as those who keep the commandments of God. Where would you find that? If someone asks you, how do you identify, how would you find a scripture that identifies the church of God as being the commandment-keeping church?

Think about that for a minute. Revelation 12. Where we find the dragon going after the woman and the children of the woman who are keeping the commandments of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ. The church of God, the people of God, are commandment-keepers. We understand the Old Testament. We understand how it works. We understand how it connects with the gospel, the teachings of Jesus, and how the two work together. We know what part of the Old Testament we are to keep, and we know what was superseded by the New Covenant. We also know what was not done away with under the New Covenant. Christ here very clearly shows, keep the commandments.

And we keep them from number one all the way to number ten. We're here today keeping the fourth commandment because we understand that it is important to keep the Sabbath holy.

And to obey God on this day, and we are here to let God do His work in us.

Commandment-keeping is a very important part of Christianity. It's an identifier of the church of God. It can also be very tricky because even as we are instructed in the Bible to keep the commandments, we are also told, and we also have to understand, that keeping the commandments doesn't save us. Keeping the commandments just of and by itself is not the guarantee of salvation.

Salvation is a gift of God. We are saved not of works, but by grace. In Ephesians 2, we are told that. We saw in Romans 6 that eternal life is the gift of God. It's given freely, and we are saved by grace in Ephesians 2. And that, not of ourselves, is the gift of God, not by our own works. And yet we have to keep the commandments.

We are told that understanding righteousness, we are not the sin. We just read that in Romans.

We should understand that we cannot keep this set of commandments in the law of God spiritually. We can keep the letter, and depending upon how much we rigorously discipline our lives, we would be theoretically possible to keep the Ten Commandments in the letter of the law as a near-perfect or perfect human being, it depends on how you want to look at it. You could keep the Sabbath in a literal law of perfect sense. You could go through life never uttering one word that would take God's name in vain, not even a euphemism.

If you really worked at it, you could honor your parents faithfully all the days of their lives, never showing them dishonor in any deed, and faithfully do that. Never steal, never tell a lie.

Be just like George Washington.

You know, if you really worked at it and disciplined yourself, it is possible to, it is possible to, I guess, keep the Commandments in the letter of the law, but that would not save you.

All through Romans, Galatians, the central part of the teaching in regarding to this teaching of salvation is that we are saved by grace, by the gift of God, and we are not saved by our works.

But we are created, Ephesians 2 tells us, unto good works.

And those works are defined by the law of God because the law of God is spiritual.

The law of God is a divine law. It is spiritual. It is, at its very most important, basic heart, a spiritual law. We're told that in Romans. Let's go back to Romans 5. Romans 5.

I'm sorry, Romans 7. I'm going to show you the one verse of Romans, Romans 7.

Paul says, we know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin. The law is spiritual.

He recognized his carnality and his human humanity, but God's law is spiritual.

Now, it is defined in the points of the commandments, but at the heart of the real ultimate law of God, it is spiritual. And at that level, we must have the help of God to keep the spiritual intent of the law. We could keep it in the letter of the law if we really disciplined ourselves, but to keep the spiritual intent of the law, we have to have extra help. And that help comes through and by the Holy Spirit. Christ said in John 16, verse 7, He said, I must go to the Father so that the Spirit can come and be given to you. And He describes in that section the Spirit as a helper. And it is something that begins to work with us. And when we are baptized, as we saw in Acts 2 on Pentecost, we receive the Holy Spirit. That Spirit is put within us. We have something in our nature, connected with our nature, that is completely different. We have Christ living His life within us, and we have the help of God. Here in Romans 8 and verse 11, it says that the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you. You have God's Spirit dwelling in you if you have repented, been baptized, and by the laying on of hands received the gift of the Holy Spirit. That then helps us and gives us the ability to keep the law of God which is spiritual, and to understand the spiritual application of it, and to live it in a spiritual sense, as we indeed certainly strive to embody the principles and the teachings of the law in our physical life. We don't run around lying. We don't run around stealing.

We don't get openly caught up in sexual sins that lead to fornication or adultery or immorality in any form to violate the entire meaning of that commandment. We work and strive to keep all of those. We recognize that our works are not going to be enough to merit our salvation, to earn our salvation, but we also understand that Christ is living His life over within us through the Spirit as it dwells within us. And that Spirit, that life is within us helping us to keep the spiritual law of God which is really a law of love. Let's go back to Romans 5.5. That's where I want to go back there. Romans 5 and verse 5 where it talks about the love of God that has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us. Hope does not disappoint, Romans 5.5, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. When we have that power within us, then we have the ability to express, understand, appreciate, and live with and through the love of God, the divine love of God which is a spiritual law. And God's law is ultimately a law of love.

It's a law that shows how to love God and how to love man. The first four of those commandments of the ten teaches how to love God. The last six teaches how to love man and define in broad principle that very important aspect. We go deeper and deeper into the principles of each of those laws as we understand their application and God's Spirit draws us as experience in life helps us and we live them. And love ultimately is the fulfillment of that law. Again, here in Romans, let's go to chapter 13. I'm hitting these high points in Romans just to show you how the law fits and works and the other script verses in between elaborate. But in Romans 13 and verse 10, Paul writes, Love does no harm to a neighbor, therefore love is the fulfillment of the law, and the law is spiritual. And the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. You put all of those together. You understand them that as Christ lives his life within us, we have the ability to live and to keep the law of God in a spiritual nature. And that then is not our works. It is God's work within us. It is the work of Christ within us through the Holy Spirit.

Christ said, I must go to the Father so that the Holy Spirit can come. And he did ascend upon his resurrection and the Holy Spirit was given. And in that process, as we see through the day of Pentecost and that meaning, mankind from that point on has had access to the Spirit of God, which is the power within us to keep the Spirit of the law, a law of love, and those works that should be working within us that, again, don't earn us our salvation, but are the works toward which we live and define our life in the Spirit of which Jesus Christ is. And that's the process in a sense of that strong arm over our chest dragging us through the waters of life to salvation, to safety, ultimately the safety of the kingdom of God. It's not a difficult process.

We've touched the tip of the subjects here through these verses here this morning. It's not a difficult process. And Christ made sure that it was all laid out before his disciples and that the disciples laid it out through Paul and Peter and others in the Gospels and the Epistles.

And that teaching is very well established here in the New Testament as to how to achieve salvation, how to be saved, how to come to eternal life. It's not rocket science, as we say.

It's not difficult and the mechanics of it to understand. And yet, overlaid on that subject through the ages have been other ideas that range from nothing more than just professing a belief, as you might set in your car in your driveway and be moved to accept the Lord in your heart.

Or through watching or hearing some powerful sermon delivered by an individual who explains the Scriptures to you and you're touched and you're moved and you experience and you confess and according to the typical evangelical approach to salvation, that's all it takes. You profess the name of the Lord and you're saved. And that's it. But that's not what the Bible teaches.

Or that you must go through certain other hoops of salvation. If you are a part of a Catholic tradition, you have to go through a very well-entrenched priesthood and sacraments as part of the whole process of the church and salvation. What most people don't understand is it didn't take very long for that to those ideas to interface and to intervene between God and man and short-circuit this whole teaching and understanding of salvation.

The counterfeit Christianity that overcame the true Christianity of the Scriptures within a few generations began to inject this idea of a hierarchy of priests and of saints and idols and of the worship of the Virgin Mary and this whole overlay of the church idea of being the kingdom of God on the earth and in the process this doctrine of salvation was hidden.

And it was clouded by the incense, by the robes, by the teaching, by the whole structure of a church that developed through the Middle Ages that involved priests and confessions and saints in heaven making intercession, priests on the earth intervening and granting absolution, and icons and worships and everything else that is a false that's not found at all in the Scriptures. When that was overlaying, salvation was cut off from man and the very plain simple teachings that we've gone through here of how a person is saved was hidden. People were cut off from God.

One of the great needs in our world today is for people to understand how to be saved and to understand what it means and then to begin that process and to working along with God of salvation and ultimately being able to enter into the kingdom of God.

We have all kinds of teachings that the law has done away, that you can't keep the law, that it's humanly impossible and yada yada yada right on down the line to cloud the whole simple story of what the Scriptures teach us in regard to salvation, the law of God, and the process that is at work by God's plan to bring mankind ultimately to the point where they will be saved from the penalty of the second death. In John 7, Jesus stood up on that last day of the feast, the well-known Scripture that we read, usually coming to the end of the Feast of Tabernacles every year. In John 7, beginning in verse 37, this is talking about the work of the Holy Spirit on the last day in verse 37, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. He who believes in me, and again, many Scriptures back up what it means to believe in Christ. It's more than just a profession, a momentary profession and acceptance. It involves understanding, repentance, conversion, baptism, receiving of the Spirit, a new man being created. That's what it means to believe in Jesus. As the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.

But this he spoke concerning the Spirit whom those believing in him would receive for the Holy Spirit was not given, not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified. And so he said, The Spirit out of the... you believe in me, the Scripture shows that out of his heart will flow rivers of living water. And here is the Holy Spirit being spoken of in this sense of rivers of living water. This brings us into then how it is we keep the Spirit of the law.

It is God's Spirit in us. It is Christ through that power being worked within us and to bring us that. That's how the spiritual law is fulfilled and kept and how we develop a spiritual love. We're not born with this. We can only get it from God. God's law is, if you will, the riverbed through which these rivers of living water flow. If you want to understand really how it works, the commandments, the law of God, is like a riverbed. Very unobstructed, very clear, but well-defined. You know, picture your most idyllic river coming down out of the mountains or going through a meadow in Colorado filled with trout or whatever and accessible on all sides, but work very well-defined and the water flowing smoothly through. You've got your banks and you've got your riverbed that keep the water in, keep it from overflowing and defines it as it moves along through the land, the features of the land. The riverbed, if you will, in this part of the analogy, is the commandments of God, the law of God. And the Holy Spirit, as those commandments define our life, we keep the Sabbath. We are here today. This defines our life. On this one point here, let's just use it. We are here not because of our works. We are here today willingly, consciously, resting, observing it, not doing our own work. In other words, as we define that, our jobs, our physical labor, our physical pursuits. We are here not doing our thing. We are here letting God do His thing in us. This is the day for God to work through us and to do His work, a spiritual work.

He can only do it if we cooperate. If we put our heart to it, and it's more than just showing up. This is important. We should recognize that. But it's more than just showing up. It is putting our heart to, indeed, study, to pray, to want to keep this day as a day where God is able to work within us, because we remove all the other distractions. The Spirit can, in a sense, flow through our lives unobstructed, even more on this day. That Spirit should be moving through our lives every other day of the week. But we all recognize we've got a lot of other things going on in our world and our life that crowd out our time, our thought, our energies. But on the Sabbath, there is that heightened opportunity for God's work to be done through us and that Spirit to work through us. As we conform our life to all the other commandments, we shape that riverbed.

And the Spirit is able to flow smoothly through our life.

Now, that sets up the stage for further discussion in terms of what conversion is all about.

And how we move from here. But understanding God's law, in that sense, is like that riverbed by which this river of the Holy Spirit can flow. And this unobstructed, clear channel helps us at least to understand what this life is all about right now as we are being saved through this process and our relationship with God, looking toward that time of when we will be born into the Kingdom of God. We will then finally put on immortality.

Again, to go back to the rescuer and swimmer, a lot of things could happen. We could jettison ourselves from the one who was rescuing us if we so choose.

We could struggle and get ourselves free from his embrace and drown. Go right back to the danger that we were in and drown. That's our choice. Paul said in one scripture here in his writings, he said he brought his body into subjection lest he be a cast-off. He recognized that it was possible that should he choose to not attain to that salvation and that it's not fully guaranteed. It is guaranteed in the sense of God's will and God's purpose and God's going to work with us. We have free choice right up until the last breath of our life.

And we are in that process of being saved through this process of salvation, living under grace, keeping God's word, keeping God's law, and letting God's Spirit flow through us in our lives and shaping and defining us. It's not our righteousness then. If we fully understand that, then when we do a good work, when we keep the Sabbath, when we help somebody, and we recognize that indeed we're a little bit more helpful in loving and compassionate and understanding than we may have been a few years ago, and you recognize that change in your life, you have to give God the credit. We can't take credit for it because that's God's Spirit in us that has changed our nature and worked a miracle, if you will. We have to give God the credit because if indeed God's Spirit is in us and it has produced that work, then it is of Him and it is not of us. The key to our present success is to understand this essential truth and how it works and tap into that power and to work through that, a subject for a second part to this and understanding exactly conversion and what is at work within our lives. But this is the doctrine of salvation. This is the teaching that is very clearly laid out in the scriptures, so important to understand and to get it right and then to move forward with our life understanding that truth and letting that truth guide and shape us and mold us every single day. We're being rescued in the process of a very dangerous world. God has rescued us and offered us that strong arm of salvation. He's come to us and He said, I am your God. I am your rescuer. I am here to save you and we have willingly put ourselves into His embrace and as long as we stay there, we can expect salvation. We can expect eternal life in the Kingdom of God.