In opening this subject we shall shew,
I. What we are to understand by " salvation" —
II. Its use and importance in the Christian warfare —
I. What are we to understand by the term " sal- vation ?"
It is evident that the expression is elliptical ; nor should we know how, with any certainty, to complete the sense, if the Apostle himself had not supplied the defect in a parallel passage : but all doubt is removed by that exhortation in his Epistle to the Thessalo- niansb, " Let us who are of the day, be sober, putting on the breast-plate of faith and love, and for an helmet, the hope of salvation." From hence we see that hope is the Christian's helmet. Yet, because there are various kinds of hope, and only one that will afford the Christian any effectual protection, we must enter more particularly into the subject, and distinguish the scriptural hope from every other that may be mistaken for it.
In the first place then, true hope has salvation for its object. This is very strongly marked in different parts of Scripture : for we are said to be " saved by hope0:" and salvation itself is sometimes called hope; they who look for salvation, are said to be " look- ing for that blessed hope* :" at other times, hope is called salvation : we are exhorted in the text to take the helmet of salvation. There are many, whose hopes have respect indeed to eternal life ; but they are unmindful of their lost estate ; they are regard- less of that way of deliverance, which God has pro- vided for them through the blood and righteousness of the Lord Jesus ; they expect heaven, because they have done nothing to forfeit it : if they have sinned, they have not sinned in such a degree as to deserve the wrath of God ; they have committed only com- mon and venial faults ; they have, moreover, done many things to counterbalance their evil deeds ; and therefore they hope for heaven as the award of
b 1 Thess. v. 8. «= Rom. viii. 24. a Tit. ii. 13.