Church: Reformed Baptist Church of Franconia | Text: Ephesians 1:3-14 | Date: March 1, 2020 | Speaker: Fred Zaspel

That’s one of my favorite hymns. Great one. Open your Bibles with me, if you will, please, and turn to Ephesians chapter 1. If you do not have a handout, please raise your hand and someone will make sure that you get one. You will probably want one to follow along.

Ephesians chapter 1, a familiar passage, and I won’t be taking time to expound it, but it does set in the framework for us what we want to see this evening. Verses 3 through 14:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places. Even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love, he predestined us for adoption through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight, making known to us the mystery of his will according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory. In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.

Let’s bow together for prayer. Our Father, we gather this evening around your word again. We pray that you will send your Spirit to open our minds and our hearts to understand the truth that you have revealed in your word. We’re grateful for this marvelous topic of salvation, and we look forward to reveling in all the various aspects of it that you have revealed to us. Help us, Lord, to that end, that we may praise you more as we ought. In Christ’s name we ask. Amen.

What is salvation? That’s the topic we begin this evening. So let’s start with the question: what is salvation? What does it mean to be saved? Well, to be saved means to be rescued. That’s easy enough. And yet the topic of salvation is a widely encompassing theme in the scriptures. It’s presented in a great variety of different perspectives, and it entails a great variety of benefits. So we can say in short, we’ve been saved. But when we say that, we mean a lot. And that is if we are speaking with an informed biblical understanding.

And our purpose this evening to start this series on the doctrine of salvation is simply to give a bird’s eye view of the biblical presentation of salvation. And what I want to do this evening is just throw out a big picture of what salvation is according to the scriptures. You can ask my wife; for several weeks I have been hesitating over this because it is going to be so fast and so full and so many details that there is no way anyone is—to the degree at least that these concepts are new to you—there’s no way you’ll walk away saying, “I’ve got all of that in mind.”

And yet I think there’s value in it because what we want to do before we start working our way through the trees, we want to see a big picture of the forest. And that’s what we’re after this evening. Now I’ve given you a handout so you can track along with that. You may want to take some notes. You may want to just sit back and wait and get the notes either with a recording or as we work our way through the details, and just try to keep your eye on the big picture of what is salvation? What does it mean to be saved? What are the benefits that are entailed? And so on.

And we do this with the conviction that these truths are revealed to us in God’s Word in order for us to revel in them. This is good for our souls to know this and to revel in it. So what does it mean to be saved? Ephesians chapter 1 verses 3 through 14 gives us something of what I’ve just mentioned, and that is that big picture of all that’s involved. You’ll notice that it speaks of salvation from the standpoint of the work of God the Father, the work of God the Son, God the Spirit. It speaks in terms of our past blessings. It speaks in terms of our present blessings that we enjoy now. And it speaks in terms of future blessings that we have. It speaks of the work of salvation accomplished by Jesus. It speaks of the work of salvation applied to us individually in our own experience. Those are the kinds of details we’re going to try to explore this evening in broad brush picture of what salvation is.

1. Salvation Is Presented In A Story

So how does the Bible present salvation? Number one, salvation is presented in a story. And that I think is the broadest picture we can see: that the Bible is first of all a story. A story that has a beginning and it doesn’t just end at the end; it’s a conclusion at the end where the story reaches its culmination.

The story begins, of course, in Genesis chapters 1, 2, and 3. God creates man in his image. He is to rule over the earth, but man rebelled and he fell under divine judgment. And now the way back to God—that’s salvation—the way back to God is impossible from the human side. Man now in sin and fallen under judgment is helpless. He has no right of approach to God. And in fact, as we’ll see at various times, sin has so affected his heart that he doesn’t want to if he could. The way back to God now is impossible.

But God in grace made a promise. Genesis chapter 3, verse 15, he promised a champion who would come and defeat the tempter. And wrapped up in all of that is the implication that he should fix all this mess that came about because of the sin of humanity. So that promise of Genesis 3:15—that God will send a champion—then unfolds throughout biblical history. And the hope broadens as God adds promise to promise to promise.

And the major promises are given in covenant. There’s a lot more involved than this, but we’ll just say for now, a covenant is a really solemn promise. God has covenanted to do certain things. And so we come to Genesis chapter 12, and God makes a promise to Abraham that all the families of the world will be blessed through one of his offspring. We go on and we find in 2 Samuel chapter 7, God makes another covenant promise. He promises to David that he will—again, this is the seed of Abraham, but now a son of David, son of Abraham—will reign on the throne forever. And then that promise unfolds and is unpacked all through the Psalms and the Prophets, that this great David’s greater son will come and he will reign over Israel, yes, but he’s going to reign over the whole world. And it’s going to be an eternal kingdom, an everlasting kingdom, marked by everlasting righteousness.

God makes another promise. We come to especially Isaiah and especially Jeremiah that the triune God will effect the forgiveness of sins that is needed for man to be brought back into right relationship with God. He will establish a way for us to be accepted of God so that we can be brought back. Isaiah chapter 53 tells us that that will be accomplished through the suffering of the servant of the Lord. The Son of God will come. He will take the sin of his people. He’ll bear the curse of their sin, and by his sacrifice our sins will be atoned for.

We come to places like Jeremiah chapter 23 and places like that. Not only will he give us the forgiveness of sins, but he will establish for us the righteousness that he requires of us and give us righteousness as a gift. So that now righteousness is not something we give to God, but amazingly righteousness is going to be something he gives us in order that we may have fellowship with him. We find climactically in the Old Testament, Jeremiah chapter 31, where God makes a new covenant. And there he promises that he will effect the forgiveness of sins. He will also send the Spirit of God to work in us what he requires of us. Various kinds of analogies are used: he’ll write his law on our hearts; he’ll take out the heart of stone, put in a heart of flesh. Those kinds of metaphors are used to say that he will transform us from the inside out.

So not only will he give us acceptance before God, forgiving our sins, giving us righteousness, declaring us just, but he will transform us by the Spirit’s work in us until finally we read in the Old Testament that that will be accomplished worldwide and the glory of the Lord will fill the earth as the waters cover the sea. And that, in brief, is the story of salvation. The New Testament picks up on that, of course, tells us it’s secured by the work of Christ, finally brought to culmination in his return. That’s the Bible story of salvation.

As we saw a couple of years ago in a long series, the Bible story of salvation, that story is carried in turn by a number of themes—major themes—running through all of the Old Testament and all through the New Testament as well. And you have big, big concepts carrying the Bible story, telling us again that the Bible story is a story of salvation.

For example, you have this theme of creation. From creation, creation ruined, creation restored, finally new creation at the end that we find in the book of Revelation. From creation to new creation. We find that in the New Testament to be in Christ, to be united to him, is to be a new creation. He himself in his resurrection has entered into that new creation and now joined to him, we are a new creation as well. Of course, we don’t experience that in its fullness yet, but in his return we will.

We find other big themes like Adam. Everything that was lost in Adam will be regained for us in a new Adam. That’s what’s called sometimes Adam Christology: Christ the new Adam. Adam the first, he ruined it all for us. And then comes Adam the second, and he gains it all for us. We have God’s faithful son, Adam. Oh no, he’s not faithful. He failed. Israel is God’s son. Will Israel be? No, Israel fails too. And then we find Jesus, who is God’s son par excellence. And he is faithful. And joined to him, God now has many faithful sons. And we are brought finally to be faithful sons in eternity.

We have big themes like king, kingdom. God promises a king. Just as man failed in the garden to be the vice-regent over the earth and to reign over the earth as king, so God will establish another king and we will reign with him as kings. And of course, at the end of the book, all of that comes to culmination as well. Other themes like rest—the creation rest, and then it’s lost by the fall, and then it’s typified, pictured in the Sabbath rest, in the Canaan rest. And we find that little note in Psalm 95, there remains yet a rest for the people of God. And then Jesus comes along and says, “Come to me and I will give you rest.” And then we find the apostles saying all of that Sabbath rest thing was a picture of what we have in Jesus. And then finally we have in the book of Revelation rest fully and finally accomplished.

We’ve got themes like Exodus to the New Exodus and so on, and priest and new priest and Messiah, and the promise and the fulfillment, and sacrifice and fulfillment in Christ. We’ve got these big themes that run through the whole Bible carrying that story of salvation. And it helps us to understand then what the Bible is all about. Just a note for you as you read through your Bibles, and for those of you who teach Sunday school and such, it’s important to keep those big themes in mind as you read through the Bible and as you come across them in any particular passage; remember how they’re connected to that big picture as you go through.

Well, that’s the Bible story then in big picture. And I must move along a lot faster for the rest of this or I’ll never get done. Understanding salvation then, the doctrine itself. And as I say, it’s given to us in many different perspectives in the New Testament. And salvation is helpfully viewed and better understood, I think, when we recognize these various perspectives on salvation.

Trinitarian Perspective

So let’s run through some of that. First of all, a Trinitarian perspective that focuses respectively on the work of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit in salvation. And so generally in the Bible that usually means something like the Father, God the Father, is the originating cause of our salvation. It is his choice whom to save. He makes a decree of our final salvation. We read in the scriptures of him giving a certain people to the Son and then sending the Son to those people or giving his Son to those people. That’s the work of God the Father.

And then we find the work of the Son who in turn then comes on that saving mission that the Father has sent him on to secure the salvation of those people that the Father has given to him. And he comes and he offers himself in a sinless life, in a perfect sacrificial death in the place of his people so that they will be saved.

And then in turn the Father and the Son send the Spirit to apply to us the work of salvation that Christ has accomplished. So the Spirit comes. He bears witness of Christ. He convicts us of sin. He brings us to faith. He unites us to Christ. And in uniting to Christ we come to experience the salvation that he embodies. He gives us life. He brings us faith. He takes charge. Expressions in the New Testament like being “led of the Spirit” have nothing to do with mystical leading and “should I write this letter?” or something like it. The Spirit of God has come to take charge in your life, the new dominating influence, and he leads us in holiness. He pushes us in perseverance to keep us persevering in the faith. He seals us. He gifts us for service. And then finally he works glorification in us, perfecting that work all the way. So that’s a Trinitarian perspective on salvation. Keep in mind now we’re just doing big picture stuff here.

Christological Perspective

Let’s take another perspective, and that is, as you have in your handout, a Christological perspective. And that focuses on the work of Christ in accomplishing salvation. The work of Christ in accomplishing salvation.

So what are the saving works of Christ? Let’s highlight them. In his incarnation, he joins himself to us in order to become one with us, in order to be our mediator. In his sinless life, he establishes for us a perfect record that God’s law demands. In his sacrificial death, he took our place, he bore our curse, and thereby he rendered satisfaction to God on our behalf. In his resurrection—we have his incarnation, his sinless life, his death—in his resurrection, he entered into the age to come, and he takes us with him then into newness of life. And in union with Christ, we share just as he in his resurrection was vindicated, or to use Paul’s word, he was justified. So now, joined to Christ in his resurrection, we are justified in Christ as well.

Another saving work of Christ is ascension. He was exalted to his mediatorial glory at the right hand of God. From there, he sends forth the Spirit to bring us to him. And from there, he makes intercession for us. And then finally, in his return, he will bring our salvation to its final and full culmination.

So we’ve had a Trinitarian perspective. Narrowing down now, we come to a Christological perspective. What are the works, saving works of Christ, and what do they signify to save us? The Christological perspective is seen also in the offices of Christ. He is prophet, priest, and king. As a prophet, he reveals to us by the Word and the Spirit the will of God for us in salvation. As a priest, he offered himself as a sacrifice to God on our behalf. And as a priest, he continues to represent us to God, and he makes intercession for us on the basis of the work that he has done. He’s also a king. And as king, he rules us, he defends us, and he restrains and conquers our sin, and he conquers our enemies.

As I’ve mentioned, the Christological perspective also focuses on Christ the new Adam. Whatever we lost in the old Adam, we’ve now regained in the new Adam. And Christ is also spoken of as the covenant of his people. It’s an interesting expression in Isaiah chapter 42, that “I will give him, the servant”—that is Jesus—”I’ll give him as a covenant to the people.” That is, he constitutes the covenant. What does that mean? Well, whatever God promised in covenant, He accomplishes and secures for us through Jesus Christ. So did he promise forgiveness of sins in the new covenant? Yes, he did. How will that be accomplished? It’ll be accomplished by Christ. “This is the new covenant in my blood.” Remember, we say that every time we observe the Lord’s table. He is the covenant himself in that he secures all of its blessings for us.

Now all of that that we’ve seen so far—the Trinitarian perspective, the Christ perspective, and all of that—all of that is salvation. One of the terms that’s used is “outside of us.” It doesn’t mean that we don’t get the benefits of it. It just means that it’s done for us by God.

Individual And Cosmic Perspective

But there is an experiential dimension of salvation as well, of course. And that brings us, first of all, to what I call here the individual and cosmic perspective of salvation. The experiential dimension of salvation, both individually, personally, and then also in the larger created order. We spoke of some of that this morning in Sunday school.

The individual perspective of salvation: well, that entails terms like conversion, assurance, renewal, perseverance, glorification. This is the individual experience of salvation. And then in the larger picture, of course, there’ll be a restoration of the entire created order as well. So sin has destroyed and distorted humanity, and along with humanity all of the created order has fallen. Christ comes, makes sacrifice for sin, restores humanity, and just as creation itself has fallen because of human sin, so also now with humanity restored, the created order itself will be restored as well.

Chronological Perspective

Now, returning to the big picture, we can look at salvation in terms of chronological perspective. That’s next on your handout. Chronological perspective. And what I mean there is to trace salvation from its origin to its consummation.

All right, what does that mean? Well, it begins, salvation begins with God’s elective decree. He chose those whom he would save and he predestined their glory. Salvation then is accomplished in the work of Christ. And then finally, our experience of salvation comes in union with Christ by the work of the Spirit. So we have salvation, which as we’ve seen before, remember, is an end-time concept. Salvation is finally fully accomplished and experienced only finally in the end times at the return of Christ. And yet, we find that we experience salvation initially. Some of that end-time salvation has been brought to be ours already. Initially, upon faith in Christ, the new life that is given to us, it’s experienced continually in the outworking of God’s purpose in us. And then finally, it’s experienced climactically when Jesus returns for us.

And so in fact, the Bible often speaks—not often, but the Bible does speak—in terms of salvation in three tenses. Past tense, present tense, future tense. I have been saved. I am being saved. And I will be saved. Is it too much to say that I will be saved? No, it’s not too much at all. It’s not to deny that I am being saved, but it is to say that there’s a climactic aspect, a culminating aspect of salvation that still awaits you. One of the great expressions of that is Hebrews chapter 9, which speaks of Christ returning unto salvation.

Now each of those stages of salvation then, in turn, entail corresponding benefits. So each of those stages—past, present, future—each of them in turn can be broken down to the various benefits that we enjoy correspondingly. Ultimately it has to do with the overcoming of our problem of alienation, estrangement, enmity with God, spiritual death, corruption, and guilt, and condemnation. All of that is overcome in stages.

All right, then that brings us to these next three sections that I have on your handout. And this really will be the framework that will follow in our study in the coming weeks. Salvation planned, salvation accomplished, and salvation applied.

Salvation Planned

Salvation planned: God choosing whom he will save. Everywhere in the Bible that is described as a work of grace on God’s part, not dependent on anything in us. It’s a choice that’s grounded solely in God himself. From eternity, God set his love on those whom he would save, determined to save them, and so gave them to his Son and sent the Son to save them.

Salvation Accomplished

That brings us then to salvation accomplished, and that speaks of the work of Christ in saving us that we’ve already highlighted. In his death, he redeemed us through his sacrifice to God by taking the curse of our sin, the curse because of God’s broken law. Offering himself to God, he renders satisfaction to God; God is pleased because an acceptable substitute has been given in our place, and having satisfied God’s wrath, he provides for us then, in turn, his righteousness that God requires of us. And so in the substitutional death of Jesus, he secures for us every saving blessing.

When we speak of what we need of new life—we need faith, we need sanctification, we need glorification, we need all of these other aspects of salvation—that was secured for us by Christ dying in our place. And having rendered an acceptable sacrifice to God, he’s accomplished the salvation, and then all of those benefits will accrue to us.

Now, salvation again, then, is the broad term, but there are multiple dimensions, and the multiple dimensions of salvation reflect our multiple needs for salvation. So are we bound in sin? Well, then we have redemption. By redemption, we are liberated by the payment of a ransom price of Christ’s blood. Do we owe a debt to God because of our sin? A debt that must be paid? Yes, we do. But now that debt is forgiven. We have forgiveness of sins. How is it that God forgives? Does he just do it by divine fiat? “Let it be done”? No, forgiveness is grounded in a substitutional payment of the debt where Christ stood in our place and paid it.

God in turn then declares us righteous. We are justified before God, the righteous judge, as a result of the fact that we have a righteous substitute who stood in our place. Are we estranged from God, alienated from him, at enmity with him? Yes, we are. But through Christ taking our place, bearing our sin, rendering satisfaction to God, now we are reconciled to God and brought from enmity to fellowship with God. And in fact that reconciliation goes all the way to what we find in the New Testament in the doctrine of adoption. Not only are we made friends with God, we are in fact made his sons and daughters.

Now, in all of that, there’s a certain logic that works. It is through substitution that we have propitiation. Through propitiation, we have a ransom. Because of ransom, we have justification. Because of justification, we have reconciliation. We’ll do that some other time. But just suffice it to say here that every saving blessing comes to us as a consequence of Christ’s death and resurrection. There, he secured for us every saving blessing. Now again, all of that is outside of us. It is something God does for us.

Salvation Applied

And so we have to look at, lastly, salvation applied. And that is our experience of salvation ourselves, individually. And the experience of salvation hinges entirely on the Spirit’s work of uniting us to Jesus. And in uniting us to Christ, we then come to experience the salvation that he accomplished and that he embodies through his successful work.

And joining us to Christ, we come to experience all the salvation that he accomplished. And the experience of salvation then begins with divine calling. Paul says it in 1 Corinthians 1, we are called into the fellowship of his Son. And the individual experience of salvation culminates in glorification, when finally we have everything in full that God has promised. So God gives this life-giving call, uniting us with his Son so that we can experience in Christ the salvation that he accomplished. And in union with him, we share in his resurrection life and the experience of his resurrection and his exalted glory.

And so we have concepts like conversion, assurance, renewal, sanctification, perseverance, resurrection, glorification, and all of those terms that we’ll have to see express the multi-dimensional experience of salvation individually in Christ from beginning to end.

Well, I told you that would be a big, broad picture. Salvation, as the word implies, is rescue. It’s rescue from hell. It’s rescue from sin. It’s rescue from the power of sin. It’s rescue from the consequences of sin, the penalty of sin. Ultimately, it’s the rescue from even the presence of sin, and salvation culminated. We’re brought into the experience of salvation now in this life, although we don’t see it now in its fullness; but our fullness of salvation awaits the return of the Lord Jesus when we shall at last be with him and be like him.

As we come to the Lord’s table this evening, we should remember that all of these blessings that we’re speaking of were secured for us by the Lord Jesus taking our place, dying in our stead, bearing the penalty of our sin, and securing for us every blessing that God has promised.

Let’s bow together for prayer. Our Father, we pray that you will take these thoughts. We pray that you will encourage us with the thought of the fullness of your work for us. We pray that you would incite our minds to revel in these great truths. We thank you for revealing them to us. In Jesus’ name, amen.