Word of Salvation – Vol. 31 No. 41 – November 1987

 

Confessing Jesus As Saviour

 

Sermon by Rev. M. P. Geluk on Lord’s Day 11

Reading: Acts 4:1-22

Singing: Ps.H.446: 1,2; Ps.H.446: 3,4; Ps. H. 384; BoW. 1; BoW. 704:1,3,4.

 

The Christian church proclaims a wonderful message when it says: Jesus saves!  But anyone hearing that has every right to ask: from what?  You also should ask: from what does Jesus save me?  And where are we after Jesus has saved us?  The answer is that Jesus has saved us from death to give us life.  That is the ordinary sense in which we use the word “to save”.

When you pull a drowning person from the water or someone from a burning house that is an act of salvation.  You have saved that person from death to life.  In the same way is a sinner saved from death to life.  Not saved means that person will die in his or her sins.  They will perish in hell and die eternally.  Saved through Jesus means the opposite.  It’s to be alive forever.  Jesus is a real lifesaver.  We are used to seeing lifesavers patrol the beaches and their job is to pull people to safety if they get into difficulties.  Jesus is the best life-saver there is.  Salvation in its basic sense is to be saved from sin to goodness, from death to life.

In Lord’s Day 11 the Heidelberg Catechism gives us a very basic choice: “Either Jesus is not a perfect saviour, or those who in true faith accept this saviour have in him all they need for their salvation.”  So, is Jesus for you and me a perfect or an imperfect saviour?  If He is the perfect saviour then we have in Jesus all we need for eternal life, as well as to be a new and good person.  It is of course not difficult to say with our lips that we accept Jesus as our perfect saviour.  But let me ask you: is Jesus so precious and meaningful to you that continuously you want to go back to your confession that nothing and no one is as important to you as Jesus?  Can you, for example, sing from the heart, that is, really mean it, the following hymn:

“How sweet the Name of Jesus sounds
In a believer’s ear!
It soothes his sorrows, heals his wounds,
And drives away his fear.”
“It makes the wounded spirit whole,
And calms the troubled breast;
‘Tis manna to the hungry soul
And to the weary, rest.”

(Psalter Hymnal 384)

If you find yourself wanting to do that because nothing or no one else in life is a lifesaver like Jesus, and you are actually doing it, then Jesus is for you the perfect saviour.

Today we are “Confessing Jesus as Saviour”.

1.  In Him only there is a lasting salvation.

2.  In Him there is complete salvation.

1.  As we confess Jesus as saviour can we then in the first place believe that in Him only there is a lasting salvation?  Either we are everlastingly saved only in Jesus, or we are not saved that way at all.  This either-or choice faces every person who comes to hear of Jesus.  Take, for example, those men who questioned Peter and John about the healing of the cripple near the gate to the temple.  These men who began to question the apostles were not just ordinary noisy hecklers you can get in any crowd.  They were none other than the ruling council of the Jews called the Sanhedrin.  It was made up of rulers, elders, and teachers of the law.  Even the high priest of the temple was present as also other men of his family.  What did they want from Peter and John?  Well, they were greatly disturbed because the apostles were teaching that Jesus had risen from the dead and they had done an astonishing thing in Jesus’ name.  Peter and John had healed the cripple.  Many had witnessed the miracle.  The man who was well into his forties was seen jumping around like an excited five-year old after Peter had pulled him up to his feet.  What the religious teachers wanted to hear from Peter and John was how they did it.  “By what power or what name did you do this?” they asked (Acts 4:7).  For these teachers, the problem was not so much the man being healed but that it was done in the name of Jesus.  The apostles had answered them, “It is by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified but whom God raised from the dead, that this man stands before you completely healed” (vs.10).  Now there is the either-or.  Either Jesus had saved the cripple from his lameness or He had not done so.  If Jesus had not, then how could they explain this bouncing piece of evidence who was now praising God?  If Jesus had, then the high priest, elders and teachers had crucified the Son of God for the Passover that year.  These leaders had to make a choice.  Either Jesus was God and the saviour they needed, or else Jesus was a devil who performed miracles.  One thing they knew Jesus could not be.  He could not be just an ordinary human person, for a human alone could not heal the cripple.  And to make their predicament worse, Peter and John said, “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.” (vs.12).  They clearly heard it again.  These men had heard it from Jesus and now from His apostles, namely, that in Jesus only there is lasting salvation.  They saw the courage of Peter and John whom they knew to be unschooled, ordinary men, and realised painfully that they had been with Jesus.

What a beautiful thing to have people say about you that you have been with Jesus.  Do you think there are people around you who could think that about you?  The high priest and his colleagues did not, of course, say it out of respect for Peter and John.  They wished it wasn’t true because they hated Jesus.  They had arranged for His crucifixion but they knew for a fact that Jesus had risen from the dead.  They might not have known about Jesus’ ascension but in any case they knew for certain that Jesus was unmistakably present in the apostles.

They had good reason for hating Jesus.  He had stripped their pretensions away and exposed their hypocrisy; He had shown them up as men who did not really see God as the only One who would save them but who sought their salvation also in their many rules and regulations, in their traditions and customs.  They had rejected God as the only saviour for they depended on their own efforts.  That much had become clear when they crucified Jesus whom they had refused to accept as the Son of God who was appointed to be mediator between the Holy God and sinful men.

Many years later, in the 15th and 16th centuries, the Reformers protested that the church had again cluttered up that beautiful scriptural confession: saved by Jesus alone.  It was not a case of wanting to get rid of Jesus, as with the scribes and Pharisees, no, the Roman Catholic church had been adding to Jesus.  An elaborate system of saint-worship, financial payment for sins, church rituals and homage to cardinals and popes had developed.  All these things were taught to the people making them believe that they contributed towards salvation.  However, the Reformation was a movement that returned to the scriptural truth about Jesus being the only saviour.  Confessing salvation in Jesus alone became so precious to true believers that they rather offered themselves up to torture and burning at the stake than to say that salvation could be also found in Mary, in the church and in the pope.

So Peter and John, and the other apostles, had said: – by Jesus alone.  The Reformation had also said: – by Jesus alone.  What do we say today?  We need to think about it for with the pope’s visit to Australia many say that it’s a good time to work together with the Roman Catholic Church.  But the question must be asked: do we rest our hope and assurance for salvation in the name of Jesus only, or also in Mary, the church, or the pope?

As we know, the name “Jesus” means saviour.  We give our children names that sound nice or we call them after ourselves or other relatives.  Maybe it was the meaning of the name that attracted us to it.  In Bible times names said something about the person that was true.  For example, Moses means ‘drawn from the water’, Samuel ‘means asked of God’, and Daniel ‘God had judged’.  In many cases, however, the sinful behaviour of the person came to contradict the meaning of that person’s name.  Take the name of John, it means ‘the Lord has been gracious’.  But there have been many Johns who have rejected and resisted the grace of God.

Jesus is the only Person whose life and work fully backed up the meaning of the name.  The angel told Joseph to give Mary’s child the name Jesus, for He would save His people from their sin.  The name Jesus owes its origin to the O.T. name of Joshua and the people of Jesus’ day would know that through Joshua God had taken the Israelites out of the desert-wilderness and brought them into the promised land.  In a similar way, God, through Jesus His only Son, will deliver sinners from their captivity to sin and place them into the perfect life of the new heaven and earth.

To believe in Jesus’ name, therefore, means that we believe that God through His Son has come into the world to save men from their sins.  Sin brings death, Jesus brings salvation.  Jesus is the saviour.  He has come to save the lost.

Jesus took His task very seriously and refused to be side-tracked.  But people and the devil tried to persuade Him to do just that.  The devil tried many times to tempt Jesus to give up His work of saving sinners.  For the devil hates God and all the good God does.  The devil wants only evil and destruction and he knows very well that in order to save people from their sin, Jesus will destroy him completely.  And there have been many people who were serving the devil when they tried to stop Jesus from being a saviour.  Some wanted Jesus to be a revolutionary and break the yoke of the Roman Empire.  Others wanted Him to be an earthly king or a person who settled disputes as did those two brothers in the Bible who could not agree on how to divide an inheritance.  Right through the ages there have been people who wanted Jesus to be anything but a saviour from sin.  They portrayed Him as a social reformer, a moral teacher, a religious leader, a philosopher, a great example, a peace-loving person and a pacifist.  But whatever place they give to Jesus, it will always be a lie and a side-tracking of His real mission, if Jesus is not left to do what He really is, the Saviour from sin.  We must continue, therefore, to believe that in Jesus only there is eternal salvation.

2.  But then secondly we must also confess that in Jesus there is complete salvation.  Jesus rescues and delivers us from sin in such a total way that it is possible for those who believe in Him to be placed in such a right relationship with God that God looks at them as if they have never sinned.  Jesus is a complete saviour.  In Him all our sins are dealt with, past sins, present sins and even the sins that we will, no doubt, commit in the future.  Jesus has suffered punishment that was due to us for every sin committed.  Through Jesus we receive complete forgiveness and it means that in God’s sight we are no longer seen as guilty.  We have a full pardon.  We have been placed in a relationship of peace with God.  To bring all that about Jesus experienced the wrath of God upon sin and hence He suffered and died on the cross.  And because Jesus saves completely, the Christian must go on believing that he will be protected and watched over by God for as long as it takes God to establish His kingdom in full.  The work of salvation that Jesus has begun in anyone of His people will be brought to full completion.  Trials, persecution, and suffering may come in God’s all-wise plan, yet these will not cause the believer to fall away from salvation.  And the Christian must not insult Jesus’ complete salvation by thinking that in times of illness and hard times, God is punishing him.  Harmful consequences of our own foolish actions may come upon us, such as disease, if we continue to eat, drink or smoke too much.  But it would be wrong to think that God gives you cancer or allows you to have an accident as a punishment for sin.  For Jesus has paid for all our sins by His death on the cross.  For Christians to still think that they are being punished for their sins is to go on seeing Jesus as an incomplete saviour.

What other attitudes prevent people from seeing Jesus as the complete saviour?  Well, in the days the catechism was written most people knew what sin was but they were prevented from knowing Jesus as the complete saviour.  There was a lot of religion around; people had a general knowledge of God and the laws that governed the nations reflected more or less the teachings of the Bible.

Martin Luther, for example, had a deep consciousness of sin but he grew up in a time when he could not see Jesus as the complete saviour because the church of that time was false by teaching that Mary played a helping hand in your salvation.  In order to be forgiven of sins you had to confess them to a priest, you were required to give to the church, say a number of prayers, look to Mary to help you be received by Christ, and go faithfully to Mass.  Because all these things were seen as stepping stones to forgiveness, sinners found it difficult to understand that full pardon was received only in Christ.  The conviction about sin was not the problem rather it was the lack of hearing about complete forgiveness only in Christ.  And it ought to be remembered that Roman Catholicism is still teaching the very same things that have just been mentioned.  The present pope has stressed it several times that Mary is needed alongside Christ in order to receive salvation.  Thus the Roman Catholic church to this very day still denies that Jesus is the only and complete saviour.

What also prevents people today from realising that Jesus provides complete and full salvation is not being prepared to admit to the sinfulness of sin.  When people sin easily, it is because obedience to God is not considered to be so serious.

What are some things that God wants from His people?  Well, among other things He wants us to marry only in the Lord, to be utterly faithful to one’s partner in marriage, to consistently read His Word, to pray regularly, to worship Him with the rest of the Church we belong to as often as there are worship services, to keep the Lord’s day for rest and worship, to bring up one’s children in the Lord and therefore to support Christian education, to fight against abortion and to oppose pornography.  But we have allowed ourselves to become slack in the doing of God’s will and we refuse to be convicted of our sins.  Our many excuses bring about an easy-going Christianity and consequently we are not so desperate in seeking full forgiveness from Jesus.  We have become vague about sin.  We’ve become more excited about ourselves and others than about Jesus.  We tell each other how great it is to be Christian, how we praise the Lord, and how we recommend the Christian faith to others.  Christianity has become our product and we look to business people in order to learn how to market our product and how to reach the unsaved with confidence and flair.  But if we no longer see in our own lives the sinfulness of the sins we commit and if we no longer struggle to make a clear break from our sinful situations, then why should we get too serious about Jesus dominating our lives?

God hates all forms of sin like we hate cancer.  If we cannot see that, we are left with only the shell of Christianity.  We are no longer concerned about being wholly devoted to Jesus in faithful service and obedience to Him from the heart.  In such situations we may still speak of being the Lord’s people but our deeds deny it.  Our needs are being satisfied elsewhere.  Jesus is not our complete saviour.  Being saved has been reduced to mean: going to heaven.  Salvation has become a future thing.  As for the present, we look more to ourselves, to our possessions, our skills, our families, our being good people, and so on.  Or, if we have little or nothing going for us, then we allow ourselves to become miserable, moody and feel badly done by.  We keep to ourselves for the wrong reasons, or we look for a crutch to lean on, and maybe some place to lick our wounds.

But where is that faith, that trusting in the perfect saviour, the Lord Jesus?  Is Jesus no longer the only saviour, is He no longer the one who meets all our needs with His full salvation?  Without Jesus the Saviour, we can become so terribly lonely, for other people do not always understand and besides, they are limited in what they can do.  And as for the things we fill up our life with…well, you cannot always sit in front of the T.V. and you cannot always go back to your hobby and interests.  These all have their limitations.

How can we see Jesus as the only and complete saviour, who heals our wounds and calms our fears, who brings spiritual health to our homes, our friendships, our churches and ourselves?  There is only one way.  Repent and believe! See again the sinfulness of sin and repent of it, and that means to turn away from it and to turn to the saviour.  Oh, you may stumble and fall many a time as you seek to let Him be your perfect saviour, but look to Him again and seek Him once more.

Jesus the saviour.  He has gone down into the darkness of our sin and into the depths of hell and death in order to save us from them.  He has risen again to a new life in which all His people may share.  He has given us His Holy Spirit to stay with us forever.  Jesus, Saviour, the Way, the Truth and the Life.

We need Jesus, for we live in a world and are members of a church where there are failures, some of which we ourselves have helped to bring about.  There are disappointments and we stare at some terrible things, sometimes from a distance and sometimes from close by.  We see in ourselves weaknesses, lusts, rebellion and hopelessness.  Yet, in all of that we also see the cross of the saviour, standing as it were in the midst of people.  His death is salvation for us.  In His resurrection we may rise to a new life, a new hope and a new heaven and earth to come.  By faith, yes, even though it may be a weak faith, a struggling faith, but by faith we take hold of Jesus, the Son of God.  His name is above every name.

It means saviour.  Hallelujah!

Amen