The Culture of Hope Founded on Faith
Salvation is necessary because the rebellion and sin of Adam and Eve separated us from God and a penalty must be paid in order to tear down that separation. God’s righteousness and perfection preclude His fellowship with anything less righteous and perfect than Himself. In God’s perfect justice and righteousness, partiality towards or pardon of any sin or sinner would violate the need for a penalty as prescribed by His own Law. Nor could He judge all sinners with the penalty of sin since God is love. To pay the penalty of our sin Himself is the only way He could return us to fellowship with Him.
When we accept God’s gift of salvation through belief in the death, burial, and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, we are redeemed. Jesus’ shed blood bought back your soul from the evil that rules this world. As Romans 5:8 tells us, “But God commends His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”
Colossians 2:13-15 explains redemption in terms of the spiritual forces holding claim on us because of God’s Law: “And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses, blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to His cross. Having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it.”
Jesus has not only paid the price of redemption, but He has also drawn us into His family by adoption: “Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world. But when the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father. Wherefore thou art no more a servant, but a son, and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ. (Gal. 4:3-8).
As redeemed and adopted children of God, then, our inheritance is the Kingdom with Christ and our response is gratitude: “Giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light, who hath delivered us from the power of darkness and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son in whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins” (Col. 1:12-13).
