What Do You Mean Salvation?

Came to our home via Netflix. We are subscribers to that home delivery video movie service. A lot easier. Don't have to go anywhere beyond your mailbox to either pick up or to take back a movie. And the movie that we watched sparks some thought that will help introduce the topic that I want to talk about. The movie was entitled The Guardian, and I had not heard of it.

I don't even remember seeing it coming out in major release whenever it did. It starred Kevin Costner in one of his movies, and it was an interesting movie. It was about the United States Coast Guard rescue swimmers and the work that they do. And for those of you that are into all these movies, I would say it was kind of a top gun on the water is the way to look at it because it kind of had the same idea of how these elite Coast Guard swimmers train and qualify for their role to become a swimmer.

I don't know if any of you have ever been rescued by a lifeguard of any nature in any body of water in your life, but if you have, you would appreciate the work that they do. And watching this movie, I came to appreciate the role of a United States Coast Guard rescue swimmer and the training they have to go through and the matters that they have to endure to qualify for that elite position with the Coast Guard. What they do essentially is these are top swimmers who are helicoptered out to any situation where someone is drowning, where a ship has gone down, whether it is a fishing vessel usually in the case either off of the coast of America, United States, on the west or the east coast.

Fishing vessels will sometimes get in distress through storms or other matters and sink, and you've got four or five hands out there that have to be rescued. Or you may have a couple of people in a recreational craft that have been overcome by waves, kayakers in some cases, or in a motorized launch, and they are in need of rescue. They send out a distress call and helicopter winds up from the nearest Coast Guard base and goes out with a swimmer on board.

And they go out and they find those who are in distress, and they come down within just a few feet of the water, usually obviously 30, 40 feet probably off the surface of the water, so that the swimmers can then jump in. They don't have the aqua lung on, they just have a snorkel on and a mask and fins and a wetsuit, and they jump out of the helicopter with the life vest at times, and then they will go into the individual.

And as they were showing the scenes and going through the course of the movie, they showed these individuals coming up to the people who were drowning or marooned wherever they may have been. And it was interesting to note how they approached them. They came up and they stopped just a few feet away from them. They didn't immediately go to them, and they identified themselves. They said, I am a Coast Guard rescue swimmer.

I'm here to save you. And they would repeat that till they got an acknowledgment from the individual who was in distress. And then they would proceed to rescue them. And the normal lifeguard approach of rescuing someone, they would want to come in from behind and take their arm down over the across the front of the person who is drowning and secure them, and then more or less lock them back in a position against their body, and then start to swim back to where the helicopter has dropped either a basket or a ring, a buoy ring, and they secure that person there, and then they are drawn up into the helicopter to safety.

But that's a very tricky process once they are even there to the person who is drowning to get them in a position where they can take them back. The whole process is not over with. If you... and again, I should say one of the problems that sometimes a person being rescued gives is they panic, and they will resist their rescuer, and they will sometimes, if a person is a rescuer is not really trained well, they can both can drown, because the person being rescued in their effort to survive, they may just crawl all over the rescuer, overwhelm them, and they both go down together.

And so the rescuer, and as they showed this within the movie, has got to employ the tactics necessary.

Sometimes it's just basically a cold cock to the head to knock them out so that they don't... they both don't drown. And that's the process if the swimmer panics. It's interesting to watch this, because essentially what you were seeing was a person save another person. And that's what rescuers do. That's what lifeguards do. And it's a good way, I think, to introduce the topic here that I want to talk about today, because I want to talk about salvation. The process of being saved. This is a biblical doctrine, which is one of the most fundamental and important ones that we could understand from the Bible. Salvation. It's really what you and I are all about when it comes to our relationship with God and being in His church and doing what we do. You and I want to be saved. But we have to know what we're being saved from, and we want to know and need to understand what is the process of salvation. How is it that it is being... that we are saved?

And the analogy of a Coast Guard swimmer, rescue swimmer, is very fitting in this situation, because a person who is being saved in a spiritual sense is being saved from death, from certain death. The only difference is, and it's not a perfect analogy, the only difference is when it comes to spiritual salvation, we don't always know that we're drowning, that we're facing death, and that we are in need of being saved. God has to approach us and identify Himself, and we have to respond, and we have to cooperate with God. Salvation and the process and the doctrine and teaching of salvation is one of those topics that is not always talked about in religion today. In fact, in doing some research about this and looking at other religions and just looking at other churches and what people know when it comes to the Bible, most people couldn't begin to explain this topic from the Bible and turn to basic scriptures to explain exactly what it is that's being described and what the process of salvation is. It's one of those forgotten doctrines that's almost become extinct in Christianity in the Christian world today because most Christian churches, denominations, and high-profile preachers are more interested in giving sermons dealing with therapy than they are doctrine and teaching from the Bible. And most people don't know what the Bible says. They can't even name one of the four Gospels or the first book of the Bible, much less give a description as to what the doctrine of salvation is all about. That's just a sad description of where many people are today when it comes to understanding this book and understanding the things that are in the book. They can't tell you who Abraham's wife was, much less what salvation is all about. I did a program this week for it Beyond Today on the Bible called The Bible's Challenge to You, and I read a book called Religious Literacy in Preparation for it. There's a recent book that came out, and this book was going through that whole topic and describing how it was, that Americans don't know much about this book at all and why they don't. And the problem is that the author of that book brought out is lies at the feet of churches and religionists going back 175 years in American history. And one of the biggest culprits is the evangelical community, a very broad-based, biblically, supposedly biblical-based, fundamentalist branch of Christianity.

And their approach to the Bible and to the whole topic of Christianity over the last 100-150 years has actually led people to a greater illiteracy rate when it comes to the Bible than really understanding what's in the book and the basic tenets of the book itself. And this teaching of salvation is part and parcel of that. For you and I, in understanding this teaching, it's important and it's critical in understanding how we are to live our lives today in the process by which we live it and also to understand one of the essential components about the Kingdom of God.

This matter of salvation is a teaching that, in a sense, goes hand-in-hand with the truth about the Kingdom of God because the truth of the Kingdom of God was lost from the scene of Christianity, how to be saved and how God is saving the world was lost as well.

And so the connection between the two is quite interesting to note as well in the teaching about the Kingdom of God being brought to this earth at Christ's return and how we are born into that Kingdom and how we enter that Kingdom through really the process of salvation. It's a much broader subject, but salvation essentially is God's rescue of humanity from eternal death.

If you want a broad definition for salvation, that's what it is. We have earned by sin the penalty of death, but God's promise and God's rescue to the safety of eternal life at Christ's return is essentially what salvation is all about and how we get there. By that process, how it's made possible by the life and the death of Jesus Christ. And it's important and vital that we understand that.

The teachings of the Christian faith so often have watered this teaching down or taken it off into various different directions. Many people who feel they need to be saved have a misunderstanding of what they're being saved from. They feel they're being saved either from an ever-burning hell fire or they're being saved for entry at death into heaven, into a reward of the saved at that particular point. And so there's a misunderstanding on those two other topics as to what you are even being saved for or from.

There also is a misunderstanding about the matter of what happens when you are baptized, when you do receive the Holy Spirit, and the process of salvation beginning as to whether or not it is done and complete at that point, as many teach, that that's all you have to do. Give your heart to the Lord, and once you accept and profess the name of Jesus Christ, then you are saved. And it goes hand in hand with the teaching that is, again, at the bedrock of Christianity today, that this is the only day of salvation.

Therefore, the work of the church and individuals is to save souls and to win souls to Christ, to save them now because this is the only day of salvation, this is the only time that is to come. And there's a misunderstanding in regard to how to the plan of God and how God is bringing everyone ultimately to salvation over a period of time through the stages that the Holy Days reveal to us.

But the idea that people have to be saved now and that when they are baptized, that's the instant that they are saved. The typical born-again evangelical approach is more of an experiential approach. That is, you experience this feeling and you decide to give your heart to the Lord at that moment wherever you are. If it's after a very powerful emotional sermon given in any location by someone or you happen to be moved while you are sitting in your driveway and thinking over your life and you've heard something that's that's touched your heart and you give your heart to the Lord and that very moment that very moment you're born again and you are saved.

It's another very popular teaching. And salvation then is assured and there's nothing else to do. No other form of life, no other path of life. The commandments are not really brought into the picture and their proper understanding of what is required regarding the commandments and it's what is called an experience or an experiential approach to salvation and very far away from what the Bible really teaches. The Bible teaches that there is something different that is required.

The Bible teaches that man's greatest enemy is death. There are really two scriptures that I always read at a funeral. One is Ecclesiastes 9 verse 5 where it says that the living know that they will die but the dead know nothing and they have no more reward for the memory than is forgotten. I always read that because it does point to the reality of death. We will die. That is our enemy. And of course 1 Corinthians chapter 15 verse 26 is another one that we read at a funeral where it says the last enemy, Paul writes, that will be destroyed is death. Death is man's greatest enemy. And the reason that the reason that we die and will die are because, number one, we're physical and that it is appointed unto man once to die. But in the spiritual sense of this topic, the reason for death that we have to be concerned with is because of the wages of sin. Let's turn over to Romans chapter 6. We're going to spend a little bit of time in Romans here this afternoon. Romans the sixth chapter.

Romans chapter 6 and verse 23. It says the wages of sin is death. But the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus, our Lord.

Alright, right here in the Bible it tells us that the wages of sin is death. Now, you hold your place there and go just turn your page probably back to Romans 3 verse 23.

We are told in Romans 3.23 that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Every human being has sinned. No matter how good we are, no matter how righteous we may think we may have been at any point in our life, even after baptism in reality.

But certainly, as we think about prior to the commitment of our life to God and the baptism, it says here that we've all sinned and we fall short of the glory of God.

Alright, so there's no one that can claim exemption from the penalty of death that Romans 6.23 tells us is what is earned through our wages of sin.

Wage is what you earn. Minimum wage is death, I guess. We'll look at it. That's the minimum of entry into life and we might all count on that.

We have earned death because we have all sinned in our life. Now Romans 5 and verse 12 tells us how sin entered into this world.

Romans 5.12 says, Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned, as we just read in Romans 3.23.

Okay? And then it goes on to talk about that. Now we're not going to go through all the details of Romans here. We're hitting some of the high points to establish the high areas of what is taught in regard to this subject here.

Death came through sin, and it came because of man's sin, and death spread to all because of sin. This is the condition that we have, and this is what we realize we have to be saved from.

We have to be saved from death because of sin, and that is, in a sense, the drowning condition we find ourselves in.

As I say, the analogy is not perfect, that of a rescuer swimming to someone who is drowning, because obviously, if you're drowning, you know you're drowning, and you're in need of help.

But not everybody understands that they have sinned, or even concerned with sin. Again, sin is one of those big topics of the Bible, but, again, Christianity has either a skewed definition of what sin is.

They don't see it as the transgression of the law, or they don't see the process of how it works, and it's a difficult subject, and you don't find it being discussed.

From time to time, I will be channel surfing, sometimes Sunday morning, and sometimes late at night, you've got the religious channels, and I'll just stay and listen to some of the religious teachers that are on the airwaves.

And some of the more popular ones, they don't want to get into these heavy theological doctrinal topics.

They want to preach, as I said, a therapeutic message that is easy, that helps people succeed, get through another day, get through another week.

Sin is not one of these topics that you will find discussed in depth, continually, with a full breadth of knowledge and understanding that the Bible really does give on the subject.

It's a hard one, because if you really get down to the nubs on it, you're going to be faced with some very hard questions from the Bible as to your life and our requirement, what God expects of us.

He expects us to repent and to acknowledge that we've sinned and to begin walking a path that takes us away from it.

And the only path that you can effectively walk that takes us away from sin is a path of the commandments, the law of God.

I'll come back to that at the end of the sermon here today to understand how they fit into this topic.

But that's the only path we can walk. That's the only riverbed of life we can expect to live and see God's Spirit flow through us.

We all kept Pentecost, and we want the work of God's Spirit to be involved in our life.

And the only riverbed, if you want to look at it to draw that analogy of the Holy Spirit being like a river of water, the only riverbed it will flow through is a riverbed lined with the commandments of God, and defined by those commandments.

That's the only way God's Spirit will work and flow in life.

We'll come back to that here in a few minutes and discuss this application to this teaching.

But salvation here is, we find in Romans 6.23, something that is a gift from God.

Another point we need to understand about eternal life is that God gives it here, as He says, as a gift.

We don't have it. Eternal life is not something we are born with.

We have earned death as a result of our sin.

But God says in verse 23 of Romans 6 that eternal life is a gift of God.

A gift is something that in the purest form we don't earn.

We can't earn it. You receive a gift because someone loves you, because of who you are, or what you may be going through in your life in one sense, and someone decides to bestow a gift upon you.

In the technical sense of what a gift is, it's not something that you have earned.

That's a wage. That's what is our due. A gift is something that is given out of love.

A parent for a child when they give a special gift on a child's 16th birthday, or a wedding anniversary, or other special occasions such as a graduation.

And a gift is given, and it is not necessarily something that we've earned, but it is because of who we are and who the giver is, and the love that is there between the two.

God says that the gift of eternal life is what we have in Christ Jesus, and it comes from God.

Salvation is all about God's gift of eternal life through Christ. That's it.

That's what salvation is. We don't have it ourselves. We don't have an immortal soul.

We don't have any essence of eternity within us when we are born.

The Bible talks about a spirit in man that we have as human beings, that makes us far above the animal plane, the animal realm. There is a spirit in man, but that spirit in man is not eternal life. It is not an immortal soul. It's not something that, apart from the body, has knowledge and understanding when the body ceases to live.

That's another topic that we all should be firmly rooted and understand in our life about the spirit in man. It is not something that is eternal and has a conscious life beyond ourselves.

All the scriptures in the Bible that talk about immortality and eternity show us that it is something that God gives to us or He puts upon us.

We find the scriptures tell us that only God is immortal.

We find that in 1 Corinthians 15 that this mortal must put on immortality at the resurrection.

Something we have to put on. We're not born with it. We don't have it inherent within ourselves.

It's something that God gives to us. If you turn to 1 Timothy chapter 1, hold your place there in Romans and go over to 1 Timothy.

1 Timothy verse 17 says, Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible to God, who alone is wise, be honor and glory forever and ever. Only God is immortal, verse 17 tells us.

Only God has immortality. It's not something that we have.

Over in chapter 6 verse 16, 1 Timothy 6 and verse 16, as Paul concludes at this letter, and he addresses the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, verse 16, who alone has immortality, dwelling in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see, to whom be honor and everlast in power.

God alone has immortality. We don't have an immortal soul. That's the point of this and many other scriptures. Over in 2 Timothy 1 and verse 10, just across your page, it talks about Christ, who before time began 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.

Christ's death brings to life and immortality to light. In other words, we have that understanding of what life is. We'll see a little bit more exactly how that comes about. And the gospel sheds light on immortality. We understand it through Christ's life. Again, it's just not something these scriptures show us that it's not something we have within ourselves. This is one of the, again, basic theological concepts about man that we learn from the Bible that is, again, fundamental to understanding God and His purpose. We have to understand what man is, and man is not, and it does not have an immortal soul. He's not born with eternal life inherent within him. It is something that we have to put on, and that's where the process of salvation comes in.

If we want to live forever, if we want to have eternal life, then we have to be saved.

We have to be brought out of an existence and rescued from an existence that is going to lead to our death. If someone doesn't come to us, and with a very strong arm, strap that arm across our chest and bring us to him in a lock, in an embrace, that is going to begin the process of salvation. Just again, to go back to that analogy, keep in mind that when a swimmer, or a rescue swimmer, goes to a drowning victim, it's not over once they get there.

They have to identify themselves, and then they have to secure them, and then they've got to swim ahead of them. Back to shore, or back to the lifeline that's come down from a helicopter, as in the case of a Coast Guard swimmer. A lot of things can happen. There's a lot of effort that has to go on, so keep that in mind as we work our way through this, and this knowledge and this understanding of salvation, and where we are when we come to the point where we recognize that because of our sins, we have earned death. Now, we're not going to other scriptures in this process to flesh out the whole subject that shows we have to repent. We have to acknowledge the need of God and come under the blood of Jesus Christ, which we do, and receive God's Spirit. But with the whole process that that brings us to is described here by Paul in chapter 5 of Romans. Let's go back to Romans chapter 5 and understand what is taking place here. Romans 5 and beginning in verse 6.

Let's start there. It says, For when we were still without strength, when we were flailing about, drowning, without strength, panicking, at the point of death, in due time, Christ died for the ungodly. Christ's death was for us when we were in our sins, when we were drowning, struggling. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die. Yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. The odds of that happening, a person giving up their life to die for someone are pretty long from a human perspective. We understand what has been done through the death of Christ. This is one of these passages that just bring us face to face with the dedication, the commitment, the sacrifice of Christ for us. Verse 8 tells us, But God demonstrates His own love toward us, and that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. While we were struggling, while we were in need of being saved, and whether we knew it or not, Christ died for us.

And then we come to that point where we let ourselves be rescued, or we cooperate, if you will, with the rescuer. And that process is then when we, through a process of time, knowledge, experience, and understanding come to the point of repentance.

Acts 2.38 is where you would plug in at this point in the understanding.

You might plug in also Acts 2 and verse 21, or Romans 10 and verse 13, which make clear that salvation requires us to believe in the sacrifice of Christ. We do have to believe in Christ. We have to accept that sacrifice to that point. What we are told here in verse 10, then, is when we come to that belief through knowledge, repentance, and changing of our life, we then are justified.

Verse 9, much more having now been justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. We come to a point where we are justified when we are baptized. This justification is another technical theological term that, again, you should have a working knowledge of. Essentially, it deals with us being washed of our sins and forgiven of our sins prior to baptism. We are made just. This is what verse 9 says, that we have now been justified by his blood. When you're put under the water at baptism and a minister asks you, have you accepted Jesus Christ as your Savior, your high priest, and your soon-coming king?

And have you repented of your sins? You make a profession of faith in Christ to the minister, and you say, I have. And you accept him as your high priest and your Savior and your soon-coming king. That is your profession of faith, and you are baptized. You're put under water, and as we are shown here in Romans 6, into a watery grave, and you come up out of that grave, and in a technical sense, at that moment, every sin you've committed in the past is forgiven.

You've been made just before God. And the only way you've been made just is through the blood of Jesus. And you've made profession of that. You've accepted that at that moment and at that point in your life. And there's no question in your mind as to what you have done and what is important and needed in your life. And going back here then to Romans 5, this is where you come to the point where you were justified by his blood. But Romans 5 and verse 9 tells us in the latter part of the verse there's something else. Justification alone is not the full process of being saved, because Paul writes, we shall be saved from wrath through him. We are 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. So the reconciliation and the justification is the process of accepting the blood of Christ, the sacrifice of Christ, and being reconciled. But the process is not over. We then are saved by his life.

That's what the latter part of verse 10 is telling us. We're saved by his life.

And we move on with our life understanding that we have to rely upon the life of Christ.

Now, Christ, we know, has been resurrected. From many other scriptures, we know that Christ comes and lives his life within us. We've just walked through that as we observed the day of Pentecost, the giving of the Holy Spirit. We went through the scriptures. It talks about the the giving of the Spirit, and that Spirit is the life of Christ being lived within us.

That is the life that saves us and brings us to the point of salvation. We are not finished.

God is not finished with us. There is a process of overcoming. There is a process of conversion.

Paul is concerned about this in chapter 6 here of Romans. If you go to verse 1, some of the common ideas are in the world today that there is nothing that has to be done.

Once you are saved by your profession and your acceptance and whatever form or shape you may come to that, then that's it. You're assured of salvation. At that particular moment in time, your salvation is accomplished. But is that what the Bible says? There is not any teaching in regard to a way of life. There is not an understanding of how the law of God fits into this new life. There are many other scriptures to bring in at this point about the new man putting off the old man. After we keep the Passover, we go into the Days of Unleavened Bread, which picture putting out sin. That is really the time when we picture Christ's life living within us as we work against sin and as we practice a life of overcoming. Because Paul is concerned with us here in verse 1 of chapter 6. He says, what shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Certainly not.

How shall we who have died to sin live any longer in it? We don't continue to sin. We have to live within the grace of God. We have to keep that firmly in our mind. Down in verse 14, he says, for sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace.

Just a brief explanation of this concept of grace is important at this point. We are under grace.

We're not under the penalty of sin, which is death, but we are not free completely of sin either.

There are other scriptures that we can point to that show that we continue the struggle against sin. Paul talks about that struggle that is there. He wills to do what is right, but there is this other law that war is within him, the struggle that goes on. But we are living, and we do live, with the grace of God, which means that God does not hold us in condemnation for any sin that we commit. We are walking in a life that is basically according to that way. We are going to stumble.

We're going to make mistakes, but we know we do. Our aim and our goal in life is obedience, even when we stumble. We recognize that. We repent. We get back up. We dust ourselves off. We acknowledge our mistake. We ask forgiveness, and we move forward. We don't feel condemned.

We don't feel that somehow we are unworthy, and we don't live by guilt. This gets into one of the great challenges theologically and even practically for a lot of people. One of the things that caused people to stumble 12 years ago was this very thing of grace and how it works and how it is to operate in a Christian's life. Yes, we are under grace, and we do live by the grace of God.

We're not under the penalty of the law, the penalty of the broken law and its hold and its demand upon us, which is death. Once we have been justified and brought to that point of reconciliation, we're not in that same category anymore. That doesn't mean we are free of sin, or its effects, or that we could even stumble and find ourselves cast off. That is entirely possible to yet happen in our life. Just hold your thought here and your place and go back to 1st Corinthians chapter 9. 1st Corinthians chapter 9. Paul understood this principle.

In verse 27, 1st Corinthians 9 verse 27, he actually begins in verse 24 talking about striving for a crown, running in a race, to receive a prize, and to compete. In verse 26 he says, Therefore I run, not with uncertainty, Thus I fight, not as one who beats the air. In other words, he was saying that he's running a life with certainty. He knows the direction that he's going. He knows how to live. He fights, not vainly just flailing at the air like a tired, worn-out fighter in the rain who can't even see his opponent. He's just wildly slinging the gloves around, hoping to make contact.

He says, I fight. He's talking about the process of conversion. Verse 27, I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest when I preach to others, I myself should become disqualified. Paul knew that he could be disqualified if he did not live up to that calling, if he, for whatever reason, fell away. He could be disqualified.

He's saying in that section that the process of salvation is an ongoing one, and we have to be disciplined. We have to run the race. We have to fight in a disciplined manner, lest we give up or be overcome by sin or neglect, whatever, any number of things that could possibly do it. He said, I could become disqualified, and that could happen with any of us. That's the process of being brought back by the rescue swimmer to the shore, to the lifeline that's coming down from the helicopter, and that work that has to be done, and that cooperation between the one being rescued and the rescuer, and the work and the effort that's being put out to bring them to safety.

It's a process, and it could be several minutes before that is actually accomplished in the actual rescuer, rescuing of a person on the water. But salvation is what we are promised and what we are guaranteed as long as we continue striving in that way. And I started to say, so many people got tripped up over this. And in this matter of grace and a proper understanding of how grace functions and operates and what we are required to do in terms of obedience, keeping God's law, one of the things I've discovered talking with people during that period of time, and subsequently, is the enormous weight of guilt that hangs over us when we don't repent, when we don't properly understand this subject here, and recognize that at our repentance, at our baptism, truly, God does forgive. And there may be things that we will continue to struggle with, weaknesses and pulls of the flesh. The time and experience and the work of God's Spirit have demonstrated, in controvertibly, to my mind and the experience and the fruits of your own lives, that sin can be overcome, that it can be put in the past, and that with help, with proper encouragement, with dedication, with commitment, with zeal, with obedience, with God's Spirit working with us, anything is possible. I repeat, anything is possible. Any sin can be dealt with and overcome. Even the most maniacal and dominating of sins that can grip a human person, a human being into a death grip, you name it, it can be overcome.

And some of the worst ones, obviously, do need God's Spirit, and people's lives and the fruits of people's lives show that that can be done.

But it's when it is neglected, when it's not been properly counseled and managed in the process of life within the Church, through encouragement, through work with the ministry, and our work and nurturing with each other within the Church, that people can get overcome with doubt or guilt, and be very tempted to take up with other false teachings that will seek to alleviate that guilt.

I have one person in mind that I know very, very well who's lived a lifetime of guilt because of just plain physical character deficiencies. And the new teaching of the New Covenant teaching that came into the Church 12 years ago was the exact antidote that person thought that they needed to remove that burden of guilt that they had labored with over their life.

And to be honest, they still labor with because that false teaching itself has not taken the guilt away.

Repentance, the grace of God, overcoming the Spirit of God working in our lives, ultimately is what removes those burdens of guilt and give us the confidence in God that indeed we are living by grace, and that the process of salvation is being worked within us, and that we have that guarantee of eternal life as long as we stay fixed and pointed in that direction within our lives. We work it in that area and we stop sinning. Verse 15 here, Romans 5, Paul says, What then? Shall we sin? Because we are not under law, but under grace.

And what is his answer? No. No, certainly not. We don't sin because we are not under the law.

We can't live that type of life. We are under grace, but we have to work against those pulls.

We have been set free from sin. This is the process that he explains to us. This is what we have to do.

Now, how do we get eternal life? Let's ask that question. How is it that we achieve eternal life ultimately through this process of salvation? Well, in Matthew 19, verse 17, Christ was essentially asked that question by a very wealthy individual, the rich individual, Matthew chapter 19. He gives the answer. Matthew 19, verse 17. Someone came to him and said, verse 16 of Matthew 19, Good Teacher, what good things shall I do that I may have eternal life? Again, he knew that it's something that he didn't have, but he wanted to have it. So how do I get it? It's what you want, it's what I want. We want to live forever. We want the promise of eternal life in the Kingdom of God guaranteed to us. We want to make sure we are doing it right and headed in that direction. Christ 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, eternal life in this case is the point, keep the commandments. Keep the commandments.

And then he goes on to explain the ones to keep, all of them in reality, but he gives his answer.

If you're going to enter into life, keep the commandments. Now, does that mean that if you keep the commandments, you earn eternal life? Can you earn eternal life? No. Ephesians chapter 2.

Let's go over to Ephesians chapter 2. You're getting a theological workout here today but it's always important to review certain things and for some of us it's the first time to understand it. Ephesians chapter 2. Christ said, If you're going to enter into life, keep the commandments. Ephesians 2 verse 8. Paul writes, For by grace you have been saved through faith and that's not of yourselves, it is the gift of God. A lot of works lest anyone should boast.

Okay, how do we reconcile that with what we just read?

Well, the reality is this. No amount of law keeping can earn you salvation.

We've never taught that in the church. We don't believe that today. If you believe that keeping the commandments will earn your way into the kingdom of God, you get your tickets all punched on all ten of them through a perfect perfection, you're wrong. Not the way it works. Wrong. It doesn't work that way. We can't keep our way by righteous living on the commandments perfectly into the kingdom. If by some supreme feat any of you would perfectly keep the commandments, the letter of the commandments in your life where you never ever told another lie, you never ever stole anything, you honored your parents perfectly, you didn't put anything before God in your mind, in your heart, no other idols, right on down the line, you didn't covet anything.

If you did that somehow by some superhuman physical effort, that would not be good enough to earn salvation and to make it into the kingdom. No amount of law keeping is going to do that because the law of God in reality is spiritual. It is not just physical. And in reality, the law of God is spiritual. That is what is so important for us to understand.

Let's turn back to Romans chapter 5.

Actually, let's go to Romans 7. Let's notice a few things about the law of God here.

Romans 7 and verse 14. For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal sold under sin.

Paul writes, the law of God in the ultimate application is spiritual.

And that law is also a spiritual law of love. Back in Romans 5, verse 5, it says that hope does not disappoint because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us. The love of God poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. Divine love is a spiritual love here. And it is the epitome of the law of God. Love is the fulfillment, really, of the law.

When you look at what Romans 13 tells us, Romans 13 and verse 10, you put these verses together and you understand a complete application. Romans 13 and verse 10 says, Love does no harm to a neighbor, therefore love is the fulfillment of the law. To keep the law is to show love. And the love of God is poured out in us, we are told, by the Holy Spirit.

The law of God, we are also told, is spiritual. In other words, you and I cannot keep the spiritual application of the law perfectly by ourselves. It's humanly impossible. You can keep a facsimile of it physically. Any of us, if we really put our mind to it, could go a long way toward keeping the letter of the law. I remember a friend of mine at Ambassador College telling how he first tried to keep the Sabbath, and he didn't want to break the Sabbath. He wanted to rest.

First time he ever tried to keep the Sabbath, he literally stayed in bed all day, so he wouldn't work in any way to break the Sabbath. Now, he was sincere, and he physically tried to keep it. He may have succeeded in that physically. But who knows what was going on in his head? He probably, I'm pretty certain, he broke it spiritually in his mental thoughts about it somewhere along the line during that day. He later learned that you don't stay in bed all day on the Sabbath, and that's not the way to keep the Sabbath. But it's just an illustration of it.

The law is spiritual, and our ultimate application and keeping of that is spiritual. That's why Christ said in John 16, I must go to the Father so that the Spirit, the Comforter that we will send, will come to you. That is the means by which we have to keep the law of God. Christ lives his life within us by the Holy Spirit. That's where we are. You go back to Romans 8 and verse 11, where it says, if 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.

Christ is living his life over within us through the Holy Spirit. The law is Spirit. The love of God is spiritual. We can't do that by ourselves. We have to have the Spirit of God in us, and when we have Christ living his life within us, as we are clearly directed here to be accomplished.

That is the process of salvation and work in our lives. That is the process of bringing many sons to glory. That's where we are working in that sense. That's why, then, when you go back to John chapter 7 and you read what Christ said of the Spirit on that last day of the feast, John chapter 7, you don't do away with the law. You don't toss any of the commandments out the window as a way of life, as a definition of sin and righteousness, as a responsibility that is incumbent upon any Christian. Keep in mind in Romans, or just as an afterthought as you're turning here to John 7, in Revelation 12, one of the signs that identifies the Church of God in the time of the end and the followers of Christ is that they keep the commandments of God, and they understand the testimony of Jesus Christ. But one of the two twin pillars that identify the people of God that the beast power goes after in the time of the end is that they are keeping the commandments of God. The Church of God has always been and will always be a commandment-keeping body of believers, but we are going to be keeping the Spirit of that law because of Christ's Spirit within us.

And that's what he is getting at here in John chapter 7, verse 37, when on that last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out. Now, this is the last day of the feast of Tabernacles, not the last great day, but the last day of the feast of Tabernacles. And he said, if anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. He who believes in me, as the Scripture has said out of his heart, will flow rivers of living water. If we believe in Christ, we profess that belief, and we have repented, and we accept Christ as our Savior, and we know what that means and what is incumbent upon us. He said, as the Scripture has said, out of our hearts will flow rivers of living water. Thus he spoke concerning the Spirit, whom those believing in him would receive, for the Holy Spirit was not yet given because Jesus was not yet glorified.

Pentecost shows us when that then was made available to people and has been available to repentance centers ever since. Rivers of living water is what you and I want coursing through our life. Now, if you've ever stood on a bank of a living basis of living water, a rushing mountain stream, you get a better picture and an idea of the power and the beauty, the depth, the life of water, and this analogy that Christ is saying. Go to Alaska, you go to the mountains of California or the Rockies, and you do some hiking, and you get up into an area where you will have access to a swiftly moving body of mountain water. You come a little bit closer to understanding this picture of what Christ is saying. Forget about the White River.

Forget about the Mississippi River, even, where I grew up, watching that all the time. Big muddy.

Big muddy it is. Get your mind wrapped around a body of mountain water. They're not totally pure.

Don't just dip your cup into those streams, either, and start drinking. You can get a lot of bad things out of those. They look better than the White River, but they can be filled with some pretty nasty organisms in there if you don't do the work to get them out of there. But it looks better, and it's a little bit clearer to focus on to understand what Christ is saying here, the work of the Holy Spirit in our life. Spiritual law can only be fulfilled by spiritual love.

That's what it boils down to. We're not born with that ability. We have to receive that from God by repentance, baptism, belief, and acceptance of Christ, and the imparting of the Holy Spirit.

But we also have to keep, then, the law of God. Now, if you're standing on that stream, you're going to see boulders, big boulders, in the riverbed or along the banks. And you're going to see a very well-defined course as that stream works its way down along the through the meadow or down the mountain side. Imagine the commandments of God as being that riverbed, defined by the banks, defined by the boulders. That's the law of God, the riverbed, along which the water runs. As we keep the law of God, God's Spirit works and moves through our lives. God's law is the riverbed by which this river of living water flows in a riverbed on down in our life. And just as Christ says right here, and promises, out of our heart, out of the innermost thoughts, dreams, hopes, words, and ultimately the actions governed, dictated by our heart. Out of our heart will flow rivers of living water, the fruits of the Spirit of God, of love, of joy, of peace, of long suffering. You go right down the list of those fruits. And the law of God is the way by which we generate those fruits in our life, as God's Spirit really helps us then to bring those things out from our heart. It's God's Spirit that is doing it. We can't take any credit for it. That's why over a period of time you begin to see in your life improvements and changes in the fruits of your life, and you see that you are a little bit more patient today than you were 25 years ago.

Just a little bit more. And when you see it, and you know you've seen it, who do you give credit for?

You have to give God the credit. If you understand how the whole process of salvation has been working in your life from the very moment of your baptism, and you believe, as all these scriptures point out, how it all works in our life, you've got to give God the credit. We can't take it. We can't take any credit for those good works of righteousness that lead to salvation. We can't take any credit for the deeper love we might feel today for each other, for this world, based on a patient understanding of life and what we have been through, and as God's Spirit has chipped away at some of our nature, we've mellowed a bit.

We have to give God credit for that and recognize that's the work of the Holy Spirit.

If we don't recognize that and give that credit, then we're not going to grow, because we're going to be trying to do it all on our own. To the degree we recognize that it's not our works, if you go back to Ephesians 2, let's go back there and finish the thought that I ended. I did not really complete the thought in Ephesians 2, where we read, By grace you have been saved in verse 8 through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.

Again, not our works. We can't boast about anything.

But then he goes on in verse 10, and Paul says, But we are his works, his workmanship.

There are works, but they are works created in Christ Jesus. We are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared before, that we should walk in them.

The law of God defines that walk, and to the degree those works are manifested in our life, it is God's work being done within us. And we can't take credit. That's where it begins.

And that's it. This is the process of salvation. We have been rescued. That strong arm from above has come across our back and brought us, if you will, into a locked-in position, relationship with our rescuer, Jesus Christ. And we are in the process of being brought to safety, rescued from death. And it's not complete. It won't be until the time of the resurrection, but it is guaranteed. And it is available. It is the gift of God. Eternal life is what awaits us.

And it brings us into a relationship where we then totally rely upon the Father and upon Christ, working in our lives by the Holy Spirit to bring this about. And we know exactly how everything else in the picture fits in. We know where the church fits in. We know where the ministry fits in. We know where the brethren fit in. We know where the Holy Days fit in.

All of these various parts of the picture, we could call it the body to get to a biblical term.

We know where they all fit in, working together in this process. We understand the law. We understand the gospel. This is the very process of the gospel that the gospel defines. When Christ came preaching the gospel to the kingdom of God and said, Repent. The kingdom of God is now at hand. Repent and believe the gospel.

It is this message of how God is bringing about salvation. The most important piece of information that we can have to begin the process of stepping into eternal life and answering the question of the man to Christ. What good thing must I do to inherit eternal life and live forever?

Keep the commandments. But keep them in the Spirit. Keep them in the true understanding of what they do produce and how we are to approach them. We don't toss it all out. We walk in that way and that creates that stream bed by which the Holy Spirit runs through our lives out of our heart producing the works, the good works, toward salvation. We understand then our relationship with Jesus. We understand our relationship with the Father. And again, where all of the parts fit together. This is the knowledge that got sidetracked and sidetracked the Christian world very early in the whole story of the church where people began to erect a false structure of a rigid church that they said was the kingdom of God on the earth and instituted a priesthood by which you had to give alms and give repentance through a man and worship a dead saint or worship Mary, the mother of God, and ask all of them to make intercession for you.

And a whole structure was built up by which man could gain salvation. That was the whole story 200-300 years after the death of Christ that derailed the Christian world.

And that the false church erected a false structure in an effort to garner all of the attention of the world toward them offering salvation. And it's a false hope. And it's where the whole story got off the track. We have that direct access to God. We understand how salvation is brought about. You don't need a dead saint to make intercession for you. You don't need the mother of God to make intercession for you. You have a high priest. You have Jesus Christ to make intercession for the Father for you. And you understand the role of the church. The church is not the kingdom of God on the earth. The church is the spiritual body of Christ. And we understand the organizational aspect of it, how all the various members fit together for the edification, the bringing of individuals, edifying the body in love, bringing ultimately many sons to glory.

All the other parts of the picture that are the basic doctrines or teachings here and there fit perfectly upon this foundation of salvation and how it all works.

It's important that that's a bit of understanding that the world just doesn't have.

When we do understand it, it is a beautiful thing to see at work. And it leads us really to understand and to discuss the matter of conversion and what conversion is all about.

And this life, which would take a whole other sermon or two, possibly, to remind us and to walk us through as well. This is not one of those subjects that perhaps is the most electrifying and exciting. And it's not a therapeutic message. If you came today looking for therapy to get you through the day or to get you through the week, I hope that this gets you through, not just a week, but a lifetime of righteous living, which is really the real therapy that we all need. Because we can start drowning in our own works. We can start drowning in our own hang-ups, in our own guilt. We don't understand the basics that this teaching lays out for us and refreshes us in to understand the relationship that we have with God and how He is working with us and is truly rescuing us and bringing us ultimately to the salvation of the Kingdom of God.

And that, brethren, is at the heart of the message of the eternal gospel of the Kingdom of God, and so important for us. Let's be about cooperating with our rescuer. Let's understand that plan and that message as we are being rescued ultimately for entry into the Kingdom of God.