Ye have been saved.' Now, as I have said, saved,' and salvation,' and Saviour,' are all threadbare words. Let us try to grasp the whole throbbing meaning that is in them. Well, to begin with, and in its original and lowest application, this whole set of expressions is applied to physical danger from which it delivers, and physical disease which it heals. So, in the Gospels, for instance, you find Thy faith hath made thee whole'--literally, saved thee.' And you hear one of the Apostles crying, in an excess of terror and collapse of faith, Save! Master! we perish!' The two notions that are conveyed in our familiar expression safe and sound,' both lie in the word--deliverance from danger, and healing of disease.
Then, when you lift it up into the loftier region, into which Christianity buoyed it up, the same double meaning attaches to it. The Christian salvation is, on its negative side, a deliverance from something impending peril-and a healing of something infecting us--the sickness of sin.
It is a deliverance; what from? Take, in the briefest possible language, three sayings of Scripture to answer that question--what am I to be saved from? His name shall be called Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins.' He' delivers '--or saves--us from the wrath to come.' He saves a soul from death.' Sin, wrath death, death spiritual as well as physical, these are the dangers which lie in wait; and the enemies which have laid their grip upon us. And from these, as the shepherd drags the kid fromthe claws of the lion or the bear's hug, the salvation of the Gospel wrenches and rescues men.
The same general conceptions emerge, if we notice, on the other side--what are the things which the New Testament sets forth as the opposites of its salvation? Take, again, a brief reference to Scripture words: The Son of Man came not to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.' So the antithesis is between judgment or condemnation on the one hand, and salvation on the other. That suggests thoughts substantially identical with the preceding but still more solemn, as bringing in the prospect a tribunal and a judge. The Gospel then reveals the Mighty Power that lifts itself between us and judgment, the Mighty Power that intervenes to prevent absolute destruction, the Power which saves from sin, from wrath, from death.
Along with them we may take the other thought, that salvation, as the New Testament understands it, is not only the rescue and deliverance of a man from evils conceived to lie round about him, and to threaten his being from without, but that it is his healing from evils which have so wrought themselves into his very being, and infected his whole nature, as that the emblem for them is a sickness unto death for the healing from which this mighty Physician comes. These are the negative sides of this great Christian thought.
But the New Testament salvation is more than a shelter, more than an escape. It not only trammels up evil possibilities, and prevents them from falling upon men's heads, but it introduces all good. It not only strips off the poisoned robe, but it invests with a royal garb. It is not only negatively the withdrawal from the power, and the setting above the reach, of all evil, in the widest sense of that word, physical and moral, but it is the endowment with every good, in the widest sense of that word, physical and moral, which man is capable of receiving, or God has wealth to bestow. And this positive significance of the Christian salvation, which includes not only pardon, and favour, and purity, and blessedness here in germ, and sure and certain hope of an overwhelming glory hereafter--this is all suggested to us by the fact that in Scripture, more than once, to have everlasting life,' and to enter into the Kingdom of God,' are employed as equivalent and alternative expressions for being saved with the salvation of God.
And that leads me to another point--my text, as those of you who have used the Revised Version will observe, is there slightly modified in translation, and reads Ye have been saved,'--a past act, done once, And with abiding present consequences, which are realised progressively in the Christian life, and reach forward into infinitude. So the Scripture sometimes speaks of salvation as past,' He saved us by His mercy': sometimes of it as present and progressive, The Lord added to the Church daily those that were (in process of) being saved': sometimes of it as future, now is our salvation nearer than when we believed.' In that future all that is involved in the word will be evolved from it in blessed experience onwards through eternity.
I have said that we should try to make an effort to fathom the depth of meaning in this and other familiar commonplace terms of Scripture. But no effort prior to experience will ever fathom it. There was in the papers some time ago an account of some extraordinary deep-sea soundings that have been made away down in the South Pacific, 29,400 feet and no bottom, and the wire broke. The highest peak of the Himalayas might be put into that abyss, and there would be hundreds of feet between it and the surface. He casts all our sins,' mountainous as they are, behind His back' into the depths of the sea'; and no plummet that man can drop will ever reach its profound abyss. Thy judgments are a great deep,' and deeper than the judgments is the depth of Thy salvation.
And now, brethren, before I go further, notice the--I was going to say theory, but that is a cold word--the facts of man's condition and need that underlie this great Christian term of salvation--viz, we are all in deadly peril; we are all sick of a fatal disease. Ah!' you say, that is Paul.' Yes! it is Paul. But it is not Paul only; it is Paul's Master, and, I hope, your Master; for He not only spoke loving, gentle words of and about men, and not only was grace poured into His lips, but there is another side to His utterances. No one ever spoke sadder, sterner words about the real condition of men than Jesus Christ did. Lost sheep, lost coins, prodigal sons, builders of houses on the sand that are destined to be blown down and flooded away, men in danger of an undying worm and unquenchable fire--these arc parts of Christ's representations of the condition of humanity, and these are the conceptions that underlie this great thought of salvation as being man's deepest need.
It goes far deeper down than any of the superficial constructions of what humanity requires, which are found among non-Christian, social and economical, and intellectual and political reformers. It includes all that is true in the estimate of any of these people, and it supplies all that they aim at. But it goes far beyond them. And as they stand pottering round the patient, and administering--what shall I say? pills for the earthquake,' as we once heard--it comes and brushes them aside and says, Physicians of no value! here is the thing that is wanted--salvation that comes from God.'
Brother! it is what you need. Do not be led away by the notion that wealth, or culture, or anything less than Christ's gift to men will meet your necessities. If once we catch a glimpse of what we really are, there will be no words wanted to enforce the priceless value of the salvation that the Gospel offers. It is sure to be an uninteresting word and thing to a man who does not feel himself to be a sinner. It is sure to be of perennial worth to a man who does. Life-belts lie unnoticed on the cabin-shelf above the berth as long as the sun is bright, and the sea calm, and everything goes well; but when the ship gets on the rocks the passengers fight to get them. If you know yourself, you will know that salvation is what you need.
