Saved? From What?

“Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him.” (Isaiah 53:10)

What are you saved from? Your sin? Hell? Yourself? What is so terrible that God would send His only begotten Son to be crushed so that you would not have to face it?

Let us first look at God's perspective. God is eternal, existing as a triune being, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, without a beginning or end. God is holy, meaning He is separate from everything. He is separated from everything because He is pure, flawless love and goodness. God defines what goodness is, as he does with love.

God relies on nothing, requires nothing, and is influenced by nothing worldly. In His existence, God wished to express His overabundance of love. God saw how He wanted to express His love in a creation. As the Father spoke His desires for creation, the Son manifested that creation into existence Ex Nihilo, from nothing. God created not because He had to but because he desired to create all things with which to share His abundance of love. This love, this desire for a relationship, is what makes us cherished and valued in His eyes.

God created all things, and with humans, God had already elected those who would call His children before they were created. In the Garden of Eden, sin entered creation through Eve and Adam and was passed to all of humanity. Sin separates us from God, and God will not tolerate it. In Psalms 5:5, the psalmist writes, “The boastful shall not stand before your eyes; you hate all evildoers.” In order to reunite God with His children, God, within the Trinity, decided that His plan of redemption would be the penal substitutionary sacrifice of Jesus.

Some find the most beautiful act of love offensive. That God would crush His Son so that humanity could be saved. Jesus, who was sinless, bore the sins of the world. As a human, he felt the pain, the humiliation, and death. As God, Jesus was resurrected and, in doing so, provided the way for those who place their faith in Him as their Savior to be made righteous before God and be rejoined in a personal relationship with God.

In the garden of Gethsemane, Christ asked the Father if there was a way that the Father would take away the cup before Christ. The cup Jesus was about to drink. The cup that would finish God’s plan of redemption. Jesus asked but also said let the will of the Father be done. So, as Paul wrote, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”(2 Corinthians 5:21). This plan of redemption, this assurance of a way back to God, should fill us with hope and reassurance.

God will not tolerate sin. Sin will be paid for in one of two ways. Eternally in hell by the sinner or borne by Christ. So, what are we saved from? We are saved from the wrath of God. The wrath that was in the cup in the garden that Christ drank. The wrath that God crushed his Son by so that you and I could be made righteous before an all-holy God.

I have been asked point blank if God killed Jesus. Yes, God killed Jesus. Did Jesus go willingly to the cross? Yes, Jesus went willingly to the cross, and another perspective adds more killers to the list—you and me. We killed Christ. He died for our sins that we are unable to control. So, out of Jesus’s love and devotion to the Father, He chose to die on the cross so that we could be rejoined with the Father.

In truth, we were saved from God, by God, for God.  We are saved from the wrath of God as a consequence of our sins. We are saved by God, Jesus Christ, the eternally begotten Son of the Father, who sacrificed his life in place of ours. We are saved for God that we may be made righteous before God, rejoined in a personal relationship with the ability to worship and glorify God as the center of our life, the provider of all things, our Savior, and the one who brings a never-ending plethora of love, joy, and satisfaction to our lives.  

Do you know Jesus Christ as your Savior? If you do not, do not wait any longer. Call out to Him today. There may be no chance tomorrow.

Grace and Peace!