”Why Believe in Salvation?” - Chapter 6 of Know Why You Believe

Know Why You Believe
By K. Scott Oliphint

“Why Believe in Salvation?” – Chapter 6

Chapter Overview

• Reasons
  
  • The God Who Saves
  • The “People” Problem
  • The Divine Design
  • Divine Determination
• Response
• Conclusion
• Questions

Reasons

The God Who Saves

• Who is the God who saves?
  
  • Triune God: Father, Son, and Spirit
  • No salvation without the harmonious but distinct operations of the triune God.
    
    • The Father sends the Son.
    • The Son comes as a man to suffer, die, rise, and ascend.
    • The Spirit glorifies the Son and applies the redemption accomplished by the Son.

The “People” Problem

• The Human Condition
  
  • Must be understood through the lens of God and his Word.
  • Made by God in his image.
    
    • Given responsibility over creation.
    • Given moral commands to be obeyed.
    • Original human parents rebelled.
    • Adam, our representative, plunged all of humanity into the universal condition of sin.
  • All of humanity is now in this fallen sinful condition and liable to the judgment of God.
  • Death is the penalty for sin against God.
  • Now, “There is no one righteous; there is no one who seeks God; there is no one who does good.”
  • All of humanity is guilty of sin and condemned to death and all of creation suffers under the weight of the curse.
  • We cannot measure up to God’s standard.
• The Need for Deliverance
  
  • It is essential to understand that sin and death is the universal condition of humanity in order to understand salvation.
  • “Salvation” means there must be deliverance from something.
  • Divine salvation is deliverance from sin and its consequences.
• We All Need Salvation
  
  • Comparing ourselves with others doesn’t work, because the standard is God.
  • Salvation is not just for the “really wicked,” because we are all wicked.
  • We are all rebels against God, and we all need to be saved.

The Divine Design

• The One Offended
  
  • God is holy and righteous.
  • Sin is an offence against God’s holy and righteous character.
  • God’s holiness and righteousness demand that he judge sin.
  • God cannot simply overlook our rebellion.
  • We are condemned sinners; we cannot remedy our standing before God.
• The One Offended Removes the Offence
  
  • Our sinful and rebellious condition is not the end of the story.
  • God has determined to rescue and forgive sinners.
  • Salvation is God’s design.
    
    • There is no possibility of self-atonement.
    • Salvation involves atonement for sin by means of sacrificial death.
    • The death that sin brings can be covered only by the death that bloodshed requires.
    • The only sacrifice that can truly cover our sin is a sacrifice that God initiates, that he can accept, and includes the shedding of blood.
    • But more than an animal sacrifice is required to atone for human sin.
    • Only another human being in God’s image can stand in the place of another person.
    • Only a perfect, spotless human being can stand in the place of a condemned, guilty person.

Divine Determination

• Christ, the Final Sacrifice
  
  • The good news is that God’s attitude toward sin is not only to punish it. God also determines to cover the sin that we have brought into the world.
  • Animal sacrifices in the OT were only provisional and temporary.
  • Only the perfect God-man, Jesus Christ, could truly atone for our sins.
  • Christ’s whole work from Bethlehem to Jerusalem and then to heaven is necessary for our salvation:
    
    • Incarnation as a man to represent us.
    • Life of perfect obedience.
    • Sacrificial, blood-shedding death as an atonement.
    • Resurrection as validation of his atonement and victor over death and the forces of evil.
    • Ascension to reign at God’s right hand.
    • The sacrifice that God requires was now met in the Son. It was met because God provided it. He provided it in his own Son.
    • He alone was able to accomplish what we could not accomplish in order to provide a solution to the problem that we ourselves perpetuate in the world.

Response

• Unless we respond properly to what God has done, we will remain in our sins and will suffer the deserved penalty, which is eternal death.
• What Christ has done has to be applied to us to be effective in and for us.
• What is the response?
  
  • Believe the Lord Jesus Christ.
  • What does this mean?
• Saving Faith
  
  • Not just a mental acknowledgment of facts about Christ
  • Acknowledgment of sin and rebellion and a renouncing of it and desire to turn from it
  • Acknowledgment of personal inability and insufficiency to save ourselves
  • Trust/reliance on Christ alone
    
    • When we trust Christ, we place ourselves—our very lives each and every day—into his hands.
• Saving Faith Is a Work of Grace
  
  • It is an awakening and transformation by God himself.
  • Our eyes are opened to see things properly for the first time. We see the world as God’s world.
  • We see Christ, our Savior, as the only one capable of delivering us from eternal peril.
  • He transports us from the darkness of our sin into the light of his glorious grace.

Conclusion

• We can’t believe in salvation without believing in sin (our sinfulness).
• We can’t believe in sin without believing in the holy, righteous God whom we have offended.
• When we see God as he has revealed himself to us in creation and in his Word and when we see ourselves as we truly are, we recognize that we need God’s salvation.
• We believe in salvation, because without it we perish.
• A further argument for the truthfulness of biblical salvation is that it is so unlike every other religion in the world.
  
  • Every religion has some way of reaching the “right” place, but it is always by human effort.
  • Christianity is unique in that it tells the story of a holy God who in grace condescends to save those who rebelled against him.

Questions

• What would God be like if he did not punish sin?
• Why is death deserved for those who sin?
• Are there different kinds of “belief”?
  
  • What is biblical saving faith?
• What are some reasons why people do not trust in Christ to be saved from their sins?