Greetings!
Was God's method of salvation half-baked?
“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness”
(1 John 1:9).
When we come into agreement with Him about our helpless and wretched condition, He does two things. He (1) forgives our sins; and He (2) purifies us of all unrighteousness. Our problem is twofold, and His provision takes care of both. We have the problem of the sins we commit— the behaviors we engage in for which we are culpable and which create a separation from God. Sins that have to be atoned for. We also have the problem of the unrighteousness that causes us to commit sins. Sin and sins.
His plan for securing our salvation was
not half-baked. His plan takes into account the whole problem. Suppose that Jesus took care of our sins by atoning for them Himself, but then left us in the condition that had caused the problem in the first place. He would have left us to live in defeat and failure and hopelessness. but the amazing plan for our redemption includes a remedy both for our sins and for our sin. Our atonement did not end at the Cross. He didn’t defeat sin by dying, but by merely dying and then rising from the dead. The Crucifixion was the prelude to the Resurrection.
Our full spectrum salvation includes what Christ did for us, and who Christ is in us. Everything He won at the Cross, all the power of His overcoming life that was evident in His resurrection, all of who He is indwells you. He disperses His life through you and it has to be filtered through your limited personality and earthbound body, so you aren’t Jesus. I say it like this: Jesus in His Jennifer form. but, everything about Jesus lives presently and powerfully in us, and the more flesh that dies off, the more fully He is manifested through us.
He is doing His powerful work from inside us.
“Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to
his power
that is at work
within us
” (Ephesians 3:20). because of His life in us, we can experience His life through us. As He makes headway in the restoration project, flesh progressively loses its hold and sins abate, and gradually disappear. We’ll never be sin free on this earth, but we will be headed in that direction. We can be more sin free than we were yesterday, and can be more sin free tomorrow than we are today. He has worked out a salvation that takes care of the root of unrighteousness that grows a fruit called sin.
Twofold Problem, Twofold Solution
“We were reconciled to him through the death of his Son
[a completed action], [so]
how much more, having been reconciled
[a finished work],
shall we be saved
[an ongoing, continuous action that has its completion in the future]
through his life
” (Romans 5:10, material in parentheses added for clarification). We are reconciled through His death, but we are saved by His life. This concept is the basis for the book
The Saving Life of Christ
by Major Ian Thomas, and it has profoundly affected my understanding.
We are reconciled to the Father through the
death
of the Son, but we are saved by the
life
of the Son. Our salvation has two components: (1) what Christ did for us, and (2) who Christ is in us. We have a twofold solution for a twofold problem. Jesus poured out His life for us so He could pour out His life in us.
At the Cross, Jesus shed His physical blood
that ran through His physical body. His body was torn and He died an agonizing, brutal death that He felt in all His muscles and joints and nerve endings. He experienced the full force of death in His body on the Cross. “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed” (1 peter 2:24). When our sins got what they deserved, their sentence was carried out on Jesus’ body. When His whole life had been poured out at the Cross, the price was fully paid that would reconcile us to the Father. because of the Cross, He forgives our sins. We are reconciled by His death.
Then, that very body that had passed through the torment of sin’s deserved death, rose again. He “was declared the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead, according to the Spirit of holiness” (Romans 1:4 NASb). The resurrection proved Him to be the Son of God. because He passed through death and came out alive, He had finished the work He had been sent to accomplish. He could now pour out His Holy Spirit and live inside His disciples. peter explained on the Day of Pentecost at the Spirit’s outpouring, “Exalted to the right hand of God, he has received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit and has poured out what you now see and hear” (Acts 2:33).
This filling with the Spirit of the risen Christ is so profoundly transformational that Paul describes it like this: “And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you” (Romans 8:11). Stop to take it in. The very Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead lives in you.
The Lord Jesus pours out His Spirit into us— the same Spirit who put life back into His broken body. Jesus resides in us through His Spirit, and works in us and through us to bring about the completion of our salvation. He died to get you into heaven, and He lives to get heaven into you. In an ongoing, continuous, active process, you are being saved by His life.
We are reconciled by His death, but we are saved by His life. Twofold problem, twofold solution.
Two Outpourings of Blood
Jesus poured His life out once on earth, and once in the heavenly realms. “Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death. . . . For this reason he had to be made like his brothers in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people” (Hebrews 2:14, 17). He poured out His life at the Cross and we reconciled us by His death.
After He, the Eternal High priest, had offered Himself
as the atonement for our sins, He then entered into the Tabernacle in heaven, there to offer His blood on the Mercy Seat. “When Christ came as high priest of the good things that are already here, he went through the greater and more perfect tabernacle that is not man-made, that is to say, not a part of this creation. He did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves; but he entered the Most Holy place once for all by his own blood, having obtained eternal redemption” (Hebrews 9:11–12). He poured out His life on the Mercy Seat What happened to the life He poured out in the true tabernacle? “On that day a fountain will be opened to the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, to cleanse them from
sin
and
impurity
” (Zechariah 13:1). We might suggest that the risen Lord’s life became a flowing fountain rather than a stagnant pool. If this fountain is going to cleanse both sin and impurity, it will have to be flowing inside. It would be flowing waters— living water. And where does living water come from?
REFLECTION
Have you embraced your full spectrum salvation? The same way that you received atonement and forgiveness for you sins, now receive power for your life. The same Jesus who died for you lives in you.
Jennifer Kennedy Dean
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Jennifer Kennedy Dean 2019
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