In last week’s column we defined the term “salvation” and briefly why it is necessary if we are to reach Heaven when we die.

At this point, it’s important to define the problem that spiritual salvation addresses.

To be just a little facetious, if your problem is needing something to do on Sunday or getting “a little religion” into your life, any old religious system will do. Take your pick. 

But if you have come to realize that your problem rises to the level of being seriously alienated from an all-powerful and holy God, that’s another situation altogether.

C.S. Lewis observed in his book, Mere Christianity:

“It is after you have realized that there is a real moral law, and a power behind the law, and that you have broken that law and put yourself wrong with the power — it is after all this, and not a moment sooner, that Christianity begins to talk.”

A Big Deal to God

We’re not talking about a casual chat about a trivial matter. When the great ship Titanic was listing and rescue seemed distant, the wiser passengers sprang into action, knowing that time was running out.

They didn’t argue about the seemingly extreme action of abandoning ship, nor did they debate the seriousness of their dilemma. They knew something had to be done — and done quickly.

Likewise, with spiritual salvation, when God begins exercising people about the personal spiritual peril they are in, trivialities go out the window.

For most people, this often requires a jolting paradigm shift that dramatically revises their entire outlook about themselves and where they stand with God.

In The Cross of Christ, the late theologian John Stott wisely pointed out: 

“If we bring God down to our level and raise ourselves up to His, then of course we see no need for a radical salvation, let alone for a radical atonement to secure it.

“When, on the other hand, we have glimpsed the blinding holiness of the glory of God and have been so convicted of our sin by the Holy Spirit that we tremble before God and acknowledge what we are, namely, ‘hell-deserving sinners,’ then and only then does the necessity of the cross appear so obvious that we are astonished we never saw it before.”

Only Two Types of People

We often hear the phrase “when I’m gone” — particularly among the elderly, in anticipation of their ultimate demise.

But exactly what does the word “gone” mean in this context?

One prevailing view is that we simply cease to exist and that we “go on” in the minds of our survivors, if we go on at all.

Such a view is often accompanied by a sense of tragedy and melancholia.

But is death, as we know it, the end of it all? Short of divine revelation, who could know?

Although the world may be silent on life after death, scripture is overflowing with the subject and with its profound effect on everyone who has ever lived.

The Bible divides humanity into two groups: Those who are saved, describing such people with terms like beloved, eternal life, sons of God, like Christ, called, under grace, free from the law of sin and death, in the spirit, kept by the power of God, and Citizens of heaven.

And those who are not saved, who are described by terms like lost, perish, condemned, under the wrath of God, blind, in the powers of darkness, and dead in trespasses and sins.

Because of the scripture’s rather black-and-white view of this, most of the world chooses to ignore such writings, relying instead on science or fellow human beings for guidance, but not without considerable risk.

Lewis Sperry Chafer wrote in his book, Salvation:

“Men are not said to be lost in the eyes of their fellow men, or as measured by the standards of the institutions of the world. They are lost in the sight of a holy God, with whom they finally have to do, and under the conditions that exist and are effective in a larger sphere.

“In like manner, men are not saved by an adjustment to the estimates and conclusions of the limited world of fallen humanity, or by what seem to be reasonable or unreasonable … To be saved, one must see himself as God sees him, and adapt himself to the divine principles of another world, which principles have been faithfully recorded in the written Word.”

How About You?

A blunder in this life can cost us our money, happiness or even freedom, but the problem only lasts a few decades at most.

Consider, though, a mistake that can never be reversed, the consequences of which you must live with for all eternity.

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