
In this message we shall consider the person of Christ in salvation. Some do not know the difference between salvation and redemption. Redemption is what Christ accomplished on the cross. When this redemption is applied to us, it becomes our salvation. Salvation, therefore, is the application of the redemption accomplished by Christ on the cross.
In salvation Christ is the Savior. He is the Savior in order to save us. Concerning Christ as the Savior, Luke 2:11 says, “A Savior was born to you today in David’s city, who is Christ the Lord.” In John 4:42 the Lord Jesus is referred to as the Savior of the world. The Lord is the Savior of fallen mankind based upon His person and His redemptive work. He is the very God becoming a man to be our Savior, and He has accomplished full redemption for us the sinners, through which He may save us from God’s condemnation and from our fallen condition. What He is and what He has accomplished make Him competent to be the able Savior to save us to the uttermost from all our problems.
Isaiah 40:3 prophesied that John the Baptist was coming to prepare the way for Christ so that He may come to be the salvation of God to all flesh (Luke 3:4-6). When Christ came and was presented to God as a child, the old, righteous and devout Simeon blessed God for Him as God’s salvation (Luke 2:30). Christ is not only the Savior. As the Savior He is also the salvation God prepared for us. Apart from Him there is no salvation. If we receive Him, we receive salvation immediately. When Zaccheus received the Lord Jesus, the Lord said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house” (Luke 19:9).
In salvation Christ is not only our objective Savior; He is also our subjective life. In Colossians 3:4 Paul speaks of “Christ our life.” The expression “our life” is a strong indication that we need to experience Christ in our daily living. Christ, not our self, our soul, should be our life.
If Christ is not our life in our practical experience, then all He is and all He has attained and obtained will remain objective. Paul’s use of the expression “our life” indicates that we and Christ, and also God Himself, have one life. God, Christ, and the believers all have one life. The life of God is the life of Christ, and the life of Christ has become our life.
To say that Christ is our life means that Christ has become us. This is subjective to the uttermost. If Christ does not become us, how can He be our life?
Christ must be our life in a practical and experiential way. Day by day we need to experience Christ as our life. We should have one life and one living with Him.
Romans 5:10 says, “If, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved in His life.” This verse covers both the reconciling death of Christ and the saving life of Christ. Reconciliation includes redemption and justification. Christ died on the cross for our redemption. Through redemption we have been justified by God and reconciled to Him. Now there is nothing between us and God. However, we still have a number of subjective problems. For this reason, even after we have been reconciled to God, we still need to be saved in Christ’s life.
Although we have been saved already through Christ’s death, we still need to be saved in His life. On the one hand, we have been saved from hell and the judgment of God. This was accomplished once for all through the death of Christ on the cross. On the other hand, we still need to be saved from many present problems, including temper, disposition, pride, and jealousy. Although we need to be saved from hundreds of items, in the book of Romans Paul deals with seven major things from which we need to be saved.
First, we need to be saved from the law of sin (Rom. 8:2). Within our flesh, our fallen body, the law of sin works spontaneously and automatically. This law of sin is the power of evil that operates spontaneously within us.
The second negative item from which we need to be saved in Christ’s life is worldliness (Rom. 12:2a). We were born into a worldly environment and then raised to be worldly. Worldliness is in our being; hence, it is a subjective matter, a matter of our constitution. The love of the world is an element of our fallen constitution.
The third item is naturalness (Rom. 12:2b). We all have a natural life and a natural disposition. Our constitution is natural. All these natural elements are enemies to God. God has nothing to do with our natural being, our natural life, our natural strength, our natural disposition, or our natural power. These natural elements are deep within our being, much deeper than the law of sin. The law of sin is related mainly to our flesh, but our natural being is our self. For the sake of God’s purpose, we need to be saved in the life of Christ from our naturalness.
We also need to be saved from our individualism, that is, from being individualistic (Rom. 12:5). Because we all have the tendency to be individualistic, none of us naturally likes to be one with others. It is not God’s intention to have a group of individualistic believers. On the contrary, God’s intention is to build up the Body for the fulfillment of His purpose. In order for this purpose to be carried out, we need to be saved from individualism.
The life of Christ also saves us from divisiveness (Rom. 16:17). Our natural man does not like to be one. To be one means to be restricted, bound, and eventually put to death. Throughout the centuries there has been a shortage of oneness among believers. Instead of oneness, there has been division upon division. All divisions come from the element of divisiveness in our fallen nature.
The sixth negative item from which we need to be saved is self-likeness. By self-likeness we mean the appearance and expression of the natural self. We need to be saved from self-likeness by being conformed to the image of the Son of God (Rom. 8:29). In so many respects we do not yet have the likeness of Christ. Instead, we bear the likeness of the self. Therefore, we need to be saved in life from self-likeness, and we need to be conformed to the likeness of the glorious Christ.
Finally, we need to be saved from our natural body (Rom. 8:23). Eventually, in God’s full salvation our body will be redeemed, that is, glorified. The day is coming when our physical body will be transfigured.
All that Christ has accomplished on the cross is an objective fact, but we still need a subjective experience of this fact, an experience in life. Christ died on the cross as our Substitute, but there is still the need for us to be identified with Him in His life. The only way Christ’s accomplishment in substitution can be applied to us in our experience is by our having Christ as our life. In the Gospel of John He said definitely and emphatically, “I am the life” (14:6). To be saved in His life is actually to be saved in the person of Christ Himself. As long as we are in Him, we are in the process of being saved in His life.
According to 1 Corinthians 1:24, Christ is God’s power. He Himself is the saving power. To those called by God, the crucified Christ is God’s power for carrying out, for accomplishing, what God has planned and purposed. In salvation Christ is the power of God.
We see God’s power in the cross of Christ. It takes the power of God to defeat through the cross of Christ, Satan, the world, sin, fallen man, the flesh, the natural life, the old creation, and the ordinances. What other power is greater than Christ crucified as God’s power? What other power can destroy Satan or overcome the world? Only God has the power to accomplish these things. This power is not that of doing things by speaking, such as the power of God exercised in creation. Rather, it is the power of crucifixion, the power of the wonderful death of Christ. This means that the crucifixion of Christ has become the power of God. The death of Christ has become God’s power to destroy Satan, to solve the problem of the world, to eliminate sin, and to terminate fallen man, the flesh, the natural life, and the old creation. By this power God is able also to solve the problem of the ordinances. By one death, the death of Christ, all the problems in the universe have been cleared. Thus, Christ crucified is God’s power to abolish all negative things and to carry out His plan.
Christ is not only God’s power, but also God’s wisdom (1 Cor. 1:24). He has been made wisdom to us from God (1 Cor. 1:30). Wisdom is for planning and purposing, whereas power is for carrying out and accomplishing what is planned and purposed. In God’s salvation Christ crucified is both God’s power and His wisdom. We need Christ as both power and wisdom.
First Corinthians 1:30 says, “Of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became wisdom to us from God: both righteousness and sanctification and redemption.” “Him” refers to God. What we believers, as the new creation, are and have in Christ is of God, not of ourselves. It is God who put us in Christ, transferring us from Adam into Christ. It is God who has made Christ wisdom to us. God has put us into Christ, and now we are in Him. Formerly, we were in Adam, but we have been transferred out of Adam and into Christ. This was not an outward transfer; it was an inward transfer of life. In life we have been transferred from one realm into another, from Adam into Christ. We are now in Christ, who is the embodiment of the Triune God, and Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God.
In 1 Corinthians 1:30 Paul does not say that Christ became our wisdom; he says that Christ became wisdom to us. For Christ to become wisdom to us is different from His becoming our wisdom. Day by day, we need Christ to be wisdom to us. Christ being our wisdom is rather general, not experiential. But when Christ becomes wisdom to us, we experience Him.
In 1 Corinthians 1:30 the phrases “to us” and “from God” are crucial. Christ became wisdom to us from God. The expression “to us from God” indicates something present, practical, and experiential in the way of transmission. Continually Christ should become wisdom to us from God. This indicates a living, ongoing transmission.
In 1 Corinthians 1:30 both the punctuation and the grammar are significant. After the phrase “from God” there is a colon. This indicates that wisdom includes the three items which follow the colon, that is, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. According to Greek grammar, the word “both” here is used with respect not to two items but to three. Although this is awkward in our language, the translation is accurate according to the Greek. In this verse Paul definitely says that Christ “became wisdom to us from God: both righteousness and sanctification and redemption.” This wisdom implies righteousness, sanctification, and redemption.
Christ was made wisdom to us from God as three vital things in God’s salvation: righteousness for our past, by which we have been justified by God so that we may be reborn in our spirit to receive the divine life (Rom. 5:18); sanctification for the present, by which we are being sanctified in our soul, that is, transformed in our mind, emotion, and will, with the divine life (Rom. 6:19, 22); and redemption for the future, that is, the redemption of our body (Rom. 8:23), by which we shall be transfigured in our body with His divine life to have His glorious likeness (Phil. 3:21). For us to be fully saved, we must pass through these three steps: regeneration in the spirit, sanctification in the soul, and transfiguration, redemption, in the body. When this process is complete, we shall be the same as the Lord Jesus (1 John 3:2). It is of God that we participate in such a complete and perfect salvation, a salvation that makes our entire being — spirit, soul, and body — organically one with Christ and makes Christ everything to us. This is altogether of God, not of ourselves.
Righteousness, sanctification, and redemption refer not only to three stages of God’s salvation, stages related to our past, present, and future, but to three aspects of the nature of God’s salvation that we need to experience daily. Every day we need Christ as our righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. We continually need Christ as our righteousness so that we may be fully justified by God. We need Him as the sanctification of our soul, the sanctification of our mind, emotion, and will. Furthermore, we need Him as the redemption of our body. Strictly speaking, the redemption of the body will take place in the future. Nevertheless, we need and can enjoy Him as this redemption today (Rom. 8:11).
In salvation Christ is also the Author and Perfecter of faith. Hebrews 12:2 says, “Looking away unto Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of faith.” The Greek word translated “Author” may also be rendered Originator, Inaugurator, Leader, Pioneer, Forerunner. Jesus is the Author of faith; He is the Originator, the Inaugurator, the source and the cause of faith. The Author is the Originator and the Inaugurator. Then He is the source and the cause. Because the Author is the Originator, He is also the Pioneer and Forerunner. Therefore, He is also the Leader and the Captain. If we put all these titles together, we have an adequate definition of Jesus Christ as the Author of faith.
We need Christ as the Author of faith because, according to our natural man, we do not have any believing ability. We do not have faith by ourselves. The faith we have through which we are saved is not of ourselves; it is the gift of God (Eph. 2:8). We have obtained this precious faith by God’s gift (2 Pet. 1:1). When we look unto Jesus, He, as the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45), imparts, dispenses, Himself into us as the believing element to believe for us. Then spontaneously the believing ability arises in our being, and we have the faith to believe in Him. Hence, it is He, Himself, who is our faith. We live by Him as our faith, by His faith (Gal. 2:20), not by our own faith.
Jesus was the Author and the Originator of faith in His life and in His path on earth. He originated faith when He was on earth. The life He lived was a life of faith, and the path He walked was a path of faith. In His life and path He originated faith. Hence, He is the Author of faith.
Jesus, being the Pioneer and Forerunner, has cut the way of faith. His life was a cutting life, a life that cut the way of faith. Wherever He went, it seems that there was a “mountain” or a “river” frustrating Him. But step after step He cut the way of faith, closing the gaps and removing the mountains like the builder of a highway. Because He has cut the way of faith, He is also the Pioneer and Forerunner on the pathway of faith.
As the Pioneer and Forerunner of faith, Christ is also the Leader and Captain of faith. He has cut the way of faith and, as the Forerunner, has taken the lead to pioneer it. Hence, He, as the Captain, can carry us through the pathway of faith in His footsteps. As we look unto Him as the Originator of faith in His life and in His path on earth and as the Perfecter of faith in His glory and on His throne in heaven, He transfuses and even infuses us in a very subjective way with the faith which He has originated and perfected.
Christ is also the Perfecter of faith. The Greek word translated “Perfecter” in Hebrews 12:2 may also be rendered Finisher or Completer. Christ is the Finisher, the Completer, of faith. By looking unto Him continually, we shall have Him finish and complete the faith which we need. Christ is the Perfecter of faith mainly in His glory and on His throne in heaven. He is sitting on the throne in glory to complete the faith which He originated while He was on earth. Being the Finisher and Completer of faith, He will finish and complete what He has originated and inaugurated.
Hebrews 6:18-20 says that the believers “have fled for refuge to lay hold of the hope set before us, which we have as an anchor of the soul, both secure and firm, and entering into that which is within the veil, where the Forerunner, Jesus, is entered for us, become forever a High Priest according to the order of Melchisedec.” The Lord Jesus has entered the heavens as the Holy of Holies within the veil, and with Him is the heavenly haven for our refuge, which we can now enter in our spirit (Heb. 10:19). The anchor signifies that we are on a stormy sea and that without the anchor of hope we may shipwreck (1 Tim. 1:19). The entering is the entering into the heavens, the Holy of Holies within the veil today, where the Lord Jesus entered. Our hope, as a secure and firm anchor, has entered there, and we also may now enter in spirit.
The Lord as the Forerunner took the lead to pass through the stormy sea and enter the heavenly haven to be the High Priest for us according to the order of Melchisedec, the order of the priesthood that is in both humanity and divinity. As the Forerunner He has cut the way into glory.
In order to enter into the Holy of Holies within the veil as our Forerunner, the Lord Jesus fled everything. He fled His mother and His brothers (Matt. 12:46-50), and He fled Judaism, so that He entered “into that which is within the veil,” that is, into the presence of God, where He is now the Forerunner and High Priest to minister to us that we may be brought into glory. He is the Forerunner in glory; He is also the Captain leading us into the very place where He is as the Forerunner.
In Hebrews 2:10 Christ is called the Captain of salvation. This indicates that in His salvation Christ is leading an army composed of the saved ones as the soldiers. As the Captain of salvation, Christ is leading an army of believers into glory. Every day He is leading us into glory, into the expression of God. While Christ is leading us into glory, He is the glory within us. This is Christ as the Captain of salvation. He is saving us into glory. The very Christ who dwells in us, who dispenses Himself into us, and whom we are now enjoying is, in God’s salvation, the Savior, salvation, life, power, wisdom, the Author and Perfecter of faith, the Forerunner, and the Captain of salvation.
The salvation of which Christ is the Captain is the salvation that brings us into glory. As our Captain, Christ the Savior took the lead to fight through into glory. He did not enter into glory suddenly. During all His years on earth, a fighting process was taking place. The seed of glory was in Him and was fighting its way out. In the Gospels, the life of Jesus was a life of fighting. He was always fighting the battle for the seed of glory. He fought that the glory might come out and that He might be brought into glory. He fought for His glorification, and His fighting paved the way into glory. In this matter of fighting for glory, He was the Pioneer, for He pioneered the way into glory. Therefore, He is qualified to be the Captain of those who are entering into glory, and He is called the Captain of our salvation.
God’s goal is to bring His many sons into glory (Heb. 2:10). Christ, as the Pioneer, has fought His way into this glory, and now He is the Captain of salvation leading God’s many sons into His glory. The Christ who has come into us is not only the Savior; He is also the One who took the lead to enter into glory, into the full expression of God.
Christ entered into glory as the Pioneer and now He dwells in the full, glorious expression of the divine being. As the One in glory, He is the Captain of our salvation, who one day came into us and now dwells in our spirit. But in His coming into us He did not leave the glory. Rather, He brought the glory into us. This means that when the Captain of salvation came into us, the glory came with Him. The Captain of salvation came into us to be the glory. He came in to be the seed of glory. Now we all have this seed of glory, that is, the Captain of salvation Himself, within us, leading us into glory, into the expression of God. Eventually, when our whole being has been permeated and saturated with the element of glory, the glory will come out of us. When we experience this glorification, we shall be fully in the expression of God.