SALVATION, SAVIOUR
SALVATION, SAVIOUH
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ence of their Ion;; expected Saviour. With the I isL-n saints, who have died before them, they shall be caught np to meet the Lord in the air ( 1 1 h 4"), and, freed from the last trace of the tiesli which has hitherto haiiiiiered them (1 Co 15°""'-), shall enter into the joys of His heavenly kingdom. It is this frlorious exjierience — still in the future — to ■which St. Paul refers when he uses salvation as an esihatolo'dcal term (e.y. Ho 13").
But salvation is not merely deliverance from future punishment. It includes also freedom from sin as a present power. Indeed it is this present deliverance which alone makes the future possible. Through union with Christ, the believer has be- come a new creature (2 Co 5"). He has died to sin (Ro 6^), crucilied the flesh, with the passions and the lusts thereof (Gal 5^), and entered upon a new spiritual life of righteousness, peace, and joy (Ro 14'"). Already he is a saved man (Ro 8 , 1 Co 1'8, 2 Co 2'"), reconciled with God (Ro 5'), claiming and receiving the privileges of a son (Ko 8" "), rejoicing in daily experiences of a Father's grace, knowing how to glorj' even in tribulations (Ro 5'), siTice he has learned that all things work together for good to them that love God (Ro 8'"). No doulit he still has his conflict with evil. But the conflict is no longer a dis- couraging one. Wlieicas lie once felt himself the slave of the flesh, sold under sin (Ro '"'■'), now he knows himself to be its master. Tne law o{ 'he spirit of life in Christ .Te.sus has made hiu f;ee from the law of sin and of death (Ro 8-). And ri-o day is coming when, through the transformation of his body, he shall be freed from whatever defding contact still remains (Ro 8").
Being freed from sin, the Christian is also free from law. Law has authoritj- only over the sinner; but the man who thmugh union with Christ has entered upon a new life in the spirit is free from law (Ro ti'* 7' 10*). He is not only delivered from the fear of its punishment, but — what is more important— he lia-s exchanged the bondage of its requirements for the freedom of the new man in Christ Jesus (Col 2", Gal 5'- "■ '»). In place of the spirit of fear he has received the spirit of a<lo|)tion, whereby he cries, ' Abba, Kattier ' (Ho S''). Knowing himself to be heir of all things, he refuses to le entangled again with the beggarly rudiments of ritual prescription under wliich lie was once held in bondage (Gal 4^", Col 2*'). As a Christian he lives on a higher plane, and breathes a different atmosphere from that of work-righteousness, however earnest (Ro 3*'- ■-', Gal 3--'). Thus the break with legalism, practically begun by .Jesus' teaching concerning the childlike spirit, is theoreticallj' completed by the Pauline doctrine of a justification or right- eousness by faith inste.'id of by works.
With the mention of faith we touch the heart of St. Paul's doctrine of salvation. We are saved by faith. And faith, to St. Paul, means more than belief. It is more even than trust. It is an act of the will by which the believer so lays hold upon Christ that he actuallj' becomes partaker of His risen and triumpliant life (Kph 3", CJal S^"- ", Bo 1 1"", Col 2"- " S'-* ; cf . McGillert, Apoxtnlir Age, pp. 141, 142). For the Christ whom St. Paul knows as meilintor of salvation is more than man, even the best of men ; more even than the .Jewish Messiah, great as are his prerogatives. He is a jire-existent Divine Being, coming into the world from a higher realm, and imparting to those who are subject to the law of sin and death the new spiritual vitality without which deliverance is hopeless.
This doctrine of Chriet bb the Incarnation of a pre-existent Divine Heini?, wiilch is common to St. l*aiil, tlie writer to the Hel'rewB. una St. Joiin, pave Chrifltianitx ilB ciiief jtoiiu of lonuol with oontemporuy Oreeic thought, and formed the
bridge by which men naturally passed from the titter to tlie former. But with all reco^'nition of the point*" of similarity between the Lojros doctrine of the Alexandrian pliilosopheni and the NT teaching concerning the pre-existcnt Christ there is one point of dilTerence, whose importance cannot be over- estimated. The interest of the one is cosniolo-rical ; it grows out of a desire to understand the world. The interest of the other is soteriological ; it sprin^^s from the need of deliverance from sin. To St. Paul, helpless under the burden of tiie flesh, finding that, when he would do good, evil is present with him, seeking in vain for a deliverer from his intolerable liond-i^'e, — to St. Paul, we repeat, the signilicaiice of the heavenly Man, revealed to him in the experience of the Damascus road, COQ- eista in the fact that He is a life-giving spirit (1 Co 1^*^).
We are ready now to understand the significance of the death of Christ. It is the means by which He gains the victory over the flesh and enters upon the new resurrection life. No merely forensic conception can do justice to St. Pauls thought at this point. It is not a matter primarily of guilt or of penalty. In sin he sees a power of evil, working out its own deadly and inevitable fruits. Christ took to Himself this sinful flesh, and let it work out upon Himself its natural consequences. He submitted to death, which is the rightful wages of sin, in its most aggravated and shocking form. In the striking words of Gal 3'" He became ' a curse for us : for it is written. Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree.' But the death, which to an ordinary man would have ended everj'thing, was to Him simply the door through whitth He passed into the higher life of the heavenly Kingdom. Being sinless, it was impossible for Him to be holden of death. Rising from the grave in newness of life, He opens the way for like escape to all who through faith in Him become parta.kers of His Divine and heavenly life.