Salvation from Sin

by Steve Bray

The Gospel is a message that explains how Jesus Christ has come to save people from sin. And yet, many of those in the church think that Christ can only save them from the penalty of sin, while they themselves must keep on sinning {living by their own will} daily. In order to believe this way, we must either think that God does not have the power to save us from our fallen state, or that He intends for us to go on living in it.

Here is where we need to pay close attention to the Scriptures. Jesus came to save us “from” our sins, rather than “in” our sins. “You shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.” (Matt. 1:21) Furthermore, this salvation is to include more than a few of our worst sins. “Therefore He is also able to save to the uttermost those who come to God through Him…” (Heb. 7:25)

The term “uttermost” means both completely and without limit. We can therefore say that Jesus has come to save us from the very nature that produces sin. As an omnipotent God, He has the power that can enable us to become partakers with Him in His own divine nature.

His divine power has given us everything we need for life {the Kingdom-life of perfect love} and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises {promises that need to be understood and appropriated by faith}, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world {the kingdom of darkness} caused by evil {self-seeking} desires. (2 Pet. 1:3-4 NIV)

In a figurative sense, most Christians believe they are to receive a new life from the Son of God. However, they do not believe that He is able to provide them with the “life” that He received from the Father—the same divine life that overcame sin. This is the point where there needs to be a real renewing of the mind. Christians need to be built up both in their knowledge of the Son and in their faith, so they may look to the Lord in hope to reveal Himself within their hearts in such a way that it becomes possible to “reign in life {zoe} through…Jesus Christ.” (Rom. 5:17) The divine life that comes from Jesus Christ is able to reign over the old sin nature.

The apostle John has explained how believers can be fully saved from sin in these concise words: “In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him.” (1 John 4:9) Similarly, Paul has stated, “The life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body.” (2 Cor. 4:10) From these Scriptures and others that will follow, we will see how it is possible to be “saved” from our fallen nature by becoming partakers with Christ in His Kingdom-life of perfect love. The life of Christ does not sin. And once He has fully established His Kingdom-life of perfect love within our heart, we will begin sharing with Him in His complete victory over sin. This is what is meant by the term full salvation.

Jesus remained without sin because He did nothing “out from” Himself. He completely yielded Himself to be led by the Spirit. Although He had a will of His own while living as a man, He surrendered his own will in order to live by the will of the Father. He thereby revealed how man was created to live “as one” with God, by sharing with the Father in His divine life and will.

If we are living in our own strength according to our own will, which is the essence of Satan’s pride and independence, everything we do is sin. But because of what Jesus has accomplished, we may overcome this old flesh-life. It can be destroyed so that we may be delivered from the self-originated form of life—the root of sin—and begin living under the control and power of the Holy Spirit as Jesus did.

Scripture is clear on this matter. The “body of sin” can be “done away with.” (Rom. 6:6) Paul is not referring to the physical body with its God-given desires. Rather, he is referring to a body of sin that refuses to remain in complete subjection to the Holy Spirit. This fallen nature, which naturally wants to have its own way and live for itself, must be done away with before it is possible to live fully under the control and power of the Holy Spirit. The Son’s life of perfect love will establish God’s complete reign within the heart.

Jesus is called the Second or Last Adam because He has become the firstborn of a new lineage of people who all share in the same divine image. Every child of God is to follow Jesus and learn to live as He did. There needs to be a complete yielding of the human will. Only in following this path of the Son is it possible to come under the full control of God’s Spirit. And only in this way is it possible to share with God in His Kingdom-life from heaven.

God possesses the needed power to raise our spiritual life into a state where we can begin sharing with Christ in all the spiritual blessings that are found in His Kingdom-life within the heavenly realms. (Eph. 1:3) By dying out to the old fleshly way of life where people naturally live by their own will, it is possible to become a partaker with Christ in His eternal life of perfect love. This divine life originates in the Father and passes through the Son before it enters into our eternal soul by the power of the Holy Spirit.

This life is so unique and heavenly in nature that Jesus said we would know when we are living through Him. Jesus said, “Because I live {in the eternal Kingdom-life of perfect love}, you will live also {in the same life}. At that day you will know that I am in My Father {receiving the eternal life from Him}, and you in Me, and I in you.” (John 14:19-20) We are enabled to know that we have entered into this Kingdom-life from heaven when the Son has begun to experientially reveal the Father’s nature of perfect love within our heart.

I {the Son} have made you {the Father} known to them {by revealing the divine nature of self-sacrificing love in a mortal body}, and will continue to make you known {by filling them with the same Spirit of divine love} in order that the love you have for me {perfect love} may be in them and that I myself {in the Kingdom-life} may be in them. (John 17:26 NIV)

Entering into a justified state places the believer in a position where it is possible to be led by the Spirit into the Son’s “life of promise.” We therefore should not think that this justified state is the intended salvation of the Lord. Justification does not completely set us free from the sin nature. While it will provide a real hunger and thirst after true righteousness and holiness, and this initial salvation will enable believers to repress sin, a defect within the heart {the evil root of self-centeredness} will still be noticed. The heart must be “filled” with Christ’s life of perfect love before it is possible to be set “free indeed” from sin. Again, this is the full salvation of the Lord.
Most assuredly, I say to you, whoever commits sin is a slave to sin. {It reveals how the evil root of self-centeredness has continued to captivate the heart.} And a slave does not abide in the house forever, but a son abides forever. Therefore if the Son makes you free {from the self-centeredness that produces sin}, you shall be free indeed. (John 8:34-36)

My little children, these things I write to you, so that you may not sin. (1 John 2:1)

At this point we need to define the kind of sin that is overcome when we are set “free indeed.” John says, “Whoever commits sin also commits lawlessness, and sin is lawlessness. And you know that He was manifested to take away our sins, and in Him there is no sin.” (1 John 3:4-5) Jesus came to take away the “lawlessness” that is in the heart of fallen man. Because the Fall resulted in a self-centered nature that insists on living by its own will, Jesus must do away with this carnal nature if He is to save us from all sin.

At the same time, we need to realize that our knowledge will never be perfect in this world. It is therefore possible to be separated from God’s perfect will without realizing it. God does not hold us accountable for this kind of sin because it is not “lawlessness.” We do not enter into “sin” in God’s sight until we have knowingly violated His revealed will.

Jesus has come to enable us to share with Him in His nature of perfect love. In doing so, He is able to provide us with a heart that always yields to the divine will as it is revealed to us by the Holy Spirit. Perfect love sets us free from the self-seeking nature and empowers us to continually lay down our lives for the divine will as Jesus did.

It is in this sense that we can remain “blameless” before God. There can be no blame when something is done that we do not know to be wrong. A child cannot be blamed for doing something wrong if they have never been told it is wrong. Thus, it is possible to live blamelessly before God when our hearts have been perfected in love and we begin to live only for the will of God as it has been revealed to us.

Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely; and may your whole spirit, soul and body {every part of you} be preserved blameless… He who calls you {into this life of promise} is faithful, who also will do it. (1 Thess. 5:23-24 Emphasis added)

Just as he chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love. (Eph. 1:4)

While the person who keeps falling into sin is given an opportunity to live in the house of God in a reconciled state, he must press on in his faith until he has been set free indeed from the self-centered nature that naturally leads to self-will. No one can live in a blameless state until they have died to their own will and have fully yielded themselves to live by the divine will as Jesus did. “Most assuredly, I say to you, whoever commits sin is a slave to sin. And a slave does not abide in the house forever, but a son {those who have been set free from sin} abides forever. Therefore if the Son makes you free {through the power of His indwelling life}, you shall be free indeed.” (John 8:34-36)

We must note that self-will leads to self-seeking, and everyone who is living in a “self-seeking” form of life, in the end, will be under the “wrath” of God. He will give “to those who are self-seeking…indignation and wrath.” (Rom. 2:8). Therefore, people who continue to follow this course will not be permitted to remain in the house forever. “The {self-sacrificing} love of many will grow cold. But he who endures to the end {living wholly for the will of God} shall be saved.” (Matt. 24:13-14)

Paul knew that a soul filled with perfect love would have power to overcome all the temptations of the devil. And yet he knew that Christians, when they are first justified, have not been strengthened with the Son’s life and nature of self-sacrificing love, which is the source of power over sin. He therefore needed to pray for his converts to be filled with this life of God so they could fully participate with Him in His divine nature.

I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ {with His nature of perfect love} may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you…may have power {from the Spirit of God}…to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. (Eph. 3:16-19 NIV Emphasis added)

God is love, and he who abides in {divine} love abides in God, and God in him. Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness in the day of judgment; because as He is {in His nature of self-sacrificing love}, so are we in this world. (1 John 4:16-17)

If we have not become like the Lord in His self-sacrificing nature of love and continue to be so until the end, we will not have boldness on the great Day of Judgment. God has created us to be a display of His life of love. Those who refuse to yield to becoming a vessel of the Son’s life and nature of love, which will also supply them with an inner compulsion to live by the divine will, should expect to find wrath in the end.

These Scriptures do not imply that we are to contain the infinite God. But the temple of our body is to be filled to overflowing with His life of divine love. For example, a greenhouse cannot contain the sun. But every part of a greenhouse may be filled with light from the sun. It is in this sense that we may now be “filled” with God’s life and nature of love. We can receive the life in the same sense that Jesus received the life from the Father through the power of the Spirit. And as we can learn from the Scriptures, the Son’s life does not live for itself in sin.

When Paul wrote about being “filled to the measure of all the fullness of God,” he knew that he would be stretching the faith of many of his readers. When we look at our wretched and sinful heart, we wonder how this wonderful promise could ever become true in our own life. But it was for this very reason that he went on to say, “Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to Him be glory…” (Eph. 3:20-21) He can do much more than you think or even imagine.

Yes, the power of the Spirit that has begun to work in you, can bring your hearts into a state of consecration that permits the Lord to fill the temple of your body with His glory. “The riches of the glory of this mystery…is Christ in you, the hope of glory.” (Col. 1:27) He is the one who will display this perfect love that surpasses knowledge through the lives of individual Christians. “But we have this treasure in jars of clay {weak mortal bodies} to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.” (2 Cor. 4:7 NIV Emphasis added)

The Son completely emptied Himself of His own glory in order to live as a man in a weak mortal body. And yet, all the fullness of the Father’s life of love could still be revealed through Him by a supernatural work of the Holy Spirit. In the same sense, we are to receive our life from the Son. Our inner nature can become “as one” with the nature of love that Jesus revealed through His mortal body. (John 17:22-23, 26) “For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and you have been given {access to} fullness in Christ...” (Col. 2:9-10 NIV)

We will be nothing but an empty vessel in ourselves. It is only as we permit God to fill the temple with His glory—His life and image of love—that we are made complete or whole. It is the innate sense of incompleteness or emptiness within the soul that produces the evil root of self-seeking. We are by nature covetous {always seeking more for ourselves and not being content very long with what we have, where we are or what we are doing}. Once this body of sin is done away with through an inner manifestation of God’s Kingdom-life of divine love {His life of love satisfies the soul as with the richest of foods}, we are set free from the self-seeking nature. It is Christ’s indwelling life of love that completely sets us free from the independent and self-serving ways of the world, so we can begin living wholly for the will of God and be a vessel of His glory.

Because this eternal life provides a form of love that “surpasses” anything that can be taught through means of human knowledge, or that can be achieved through human effort (1 Cor. 2: 9, Eph. 3:19), we can know that the life needs to be received supernaturally through a work of the Holy Spirit – by faith. This is why we say that salvation from sin must be received as a gift from God. This life is granted to those who have proven their faith by fully yielding to God’s teachings.

The Kingdom-life of promise that Jesus Christ intends to reveal within our heart must be received by following the same spiritual principles that God revealed when He gave the Jews of old a “land of promise.” It is possible to possess a “right” to the inheritance and have access to the “life of promise” before the fullness of the blessing is actually appropriated through a responsive faith. This is why we pray for you as Christians “that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe.” (Eph. 1:18-19) Your justified state, which is the initial salvation of the Lord, is not enough to hold you from the self-seeking way of life to the end. You will need to persistently press forward in your walk of faith, using the grace that God has already granted, until you have entered into the full salvation that Jesus Christ has made available to all true “believers” in this world.

Pastors and teachers are therefore needed within Christ’s church to build reconciled Christians up “in their faith” so they will be prepared to press forward into the life of promise. “And He Himself gave some to be…pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints…till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man {perfected in love}, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.” (Eph. 4:11-13 Emphasis added)

Yes, the Lord expects each of His followers to “come to” this state of perfect love. “A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone who is perfectly trained will be like his teacher.” (Luke 6:40)

Therefore, new Christians will need to learn what the life of Jesus Christ is like so they will have an idea of what they must receive through their yielded and dependent faith. Even though the natural mind cannot fully relate to His nature of perfect love, it will be necessary to have some perspective of the goal. Pastors and teachers are expected to help the members of Christ’s body “to grow” in their “knowledge of the Son of God.” And then, as an expression of their faith, these believers must be shown the necessity of surrendering their whole being to become a vessel of the same Christ-life.

The Lord requires His disciples to yield to every point of the divine nature that was revealed through His mortal body. Therefore, the disciple is to be taught what Jesus is like. We must agree to become like Him and then “let” {yield or submit to} the life that was in Jesus to become fully established within our own heart.

Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who…made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant… And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. Therefore God also has highly exalted Him… (Phil. 2:5-9 Emphasis added)

If indeed you have heard Him and have been taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus…put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness. (Eph. 4:21, 24 Emphasis added)

Therefore be imitators of God as dear children. And walk in love {taking the form of a bondservant as you pour out your life for others, for the good of God’s kingdom}, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet smelling aroma. (Eph. 5:1-2 Emphasis added)

Those who refuse to submit to becoming like the Son in His nature of love, will remain sinners. “Sin is lawlessness. But you know that he appeared so that he might take away our sins {by providing us with His own submissive and loving nature}. And in him is no sin. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him.” (1 John 3:4-6 NIV)

In effect, people who do not hunger and thirst after the Kingdom-life of the Lord have not yet experienced the new birth. Everyone who is born again has a “seed” from the life of the Son planted within their heart. If they do not experience a longing to be like Him in His divine nature, which will be manifested in a real surrender to His ways, they have obviously not yet begun to taste of the glorious love that comes from the life of God.

No one who is born of God will continue to {willfully} sin, because God’s seed {a seed from the Son’s divine life of love} remains in him; he cannot go on sinning, because he has been born of God. This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not {continue to} do what is right {as God expands their understanding of what He requires} is not a child of God… (1 John 3:9-10 NIV)

God will not make us like Himself until we have shown that we are willing to yield to the “light of truth” that He has revealed through the life of Jesus. We are required to consciously choose to become like Him at every point. For example, we will need to submit to becoming like Him in the meekness and humility that led Him to become a self-sacrificing servant who lived for the good of others. (Matt. 11:28-29) Of course, we can only receive His “life to the full” by looking to Him in faith to reveal His Kingdom-life of perfect love within our heart.

As we yield to the Son’s way of life, while being led by the Holy Spirit through the time of testing, He will prepare us for a definite entrance into His Kingdom-life of promise. Those who are willing to “deny” themselves and take the Son’s way of the cross will eventually come to the end of themselves. They will reach the point where they are willing to die to all forms of independence and self-sufficiency. Thus, in due time, they will be prepared to be lifted {exalted} by the power of God into His heavenly Kingdom-life.

The point of entering into Christ’s Kingdom-life, where the Lord reigns in the heart with His self-sacrificing life of love without rival, will be a sudden crisis experience in the same sense that God was able to miraculously take His called-out people of old across the Jordan River and into the Promised Land. While the way into this blessed land is difficult, the Kingdom-life that is received is well worth the price that must be paid.

For if by the one man’s offense death {the loss of divine life from heaven} reigned through the one {Adam}, much more those who receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness {in a second crisis experience} will reign in life {in the Kingdom-life from heaven} through the One, Jesus Christ. (Rom. 5:17 Emphasis added)

The law and the prophets were until John {the Baptist}. Since that time {since the Old Testament dispensation} the kingdom of God has been preached, and everyone {who believes} is pressing into it. (Luke 16:16)

Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life {Christ’s Kingdom-life}, and there are few who find it. (Matt. 7:14)

Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God {by yielding to His teachings}, that He may exalt you {lift you into His Kingdom-life} in due time… But may the God of all grace, who called us to His eternal glory {to be vessels of His life of perfect love} by Christ Jesus, after you have suffered a while {in dying out to the flesh-life}, perfect, establish, strengthen, and settle you {in the Kingdom-life}. (1 Pet. 5:6, 10)

Because of what we see in the church today, there is a real need to keep emphasizing that the Gospel message involves more than being reconciled to God. Jesus came to restore the divine image of perfect love that was lost by Adam at the Fall. The true Gospel message teaches people how they must lose their old flesh-life and learn to live through the life of the Son, by faith, so they may become like Him in His Kingdom-life of love in this world. If we do not deny ourselves and press into this eternal life of love, so we may completely overcome the sin nature {the independent, self-sufficient and self-seeking nature}, then we have effectively neglected the great salvation that Jesus Christ has provided through His death and resurrection.

Therefore we must give the more earnest heed to the things we have heard, lest we drift away. For if the word spoken through angels proved steadfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just reward, how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation, which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord (Heb. 2:1-3)

My little children, these things I write to you, so that you may not sin. (1 John 2:1)