Salvation... take it or leave it

Salvation.... We hear many Christian words like “Salvation”, “Fellowship” and “Transgressions” a lot in our church goings and weekly routines but what does the word Salvation actually mean?

When we look in the dictionary it says “the act of saving or protecting from harm, risk, loss, destruction etc...” However the theology version says this “deliverance from the power and penalty of sin; redemption”. So what does this actually mean?

It means that we have a Saviour who has already paid the ultimate price for us, the undeserved price of his life for our lives. A man who came to save us from ourselves and our own sin...

“God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God,” 2 Corinthians 5:21

How INCREDIBLE is that? God sent his only Son to live in a fallen world full of evil and destruction to take on the sins of all mankind.

He came and was sinless, blameless and led a righteous life. But his penalty for that was death, death on a cross because of the sins we have done and will no doubt do.

John 3:16 “For God SO loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

This verse makes me realise just how undeserving of God’s Grace I really am, but that’s just what it is, Grace!

It’s like what Andrew Wilson always says “we get what we don’t deserve”. It’s a gift freely given to us, a gift of eternal life through him who died for us! Since we were babies, we grow up knowing what is right and what is wrong. Our hearts ache, our conscience tells us we are wrong when we do something, but it’s what we do when we do something wrong that we know where our hearts are.
So how can we inherit this Salvation? John 3 says “whoever believes in him”. It’s taking that first step of faith, its making the decision knowing that you sin but want to be forgiven and want to be made righteous. It’s believing that a man named Jesus came down to die for your sins, to take away all the bad in you and be made righteous. Receiving salvation is knowing that we are saved, knowing that we believe in a God who created this world, can move mountains, stop stormy seas, heal the sick and provide for the poor. It’s forgetting all the questions and the doubts but knowing the truth and choosing to believe it. We have already been saved; Jesus did that on the cross for us. Now it’s our turn to receive our salvation and enter into his Kingdom and have eternal life with a God that loves us.

“Whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God” John 3:21.