My Sunday school teacher asked us the question Sunday "what did God save you from?"
I was surprised at some of the answers and at the same time very thankful to God who has, without question offered me knowledge of him and his wisdom. What I say, I don't intend to offer with a sense of pride, but rather with a sense of trepidation, for the answer is as true in this moment as it was when I said it.
I heard the answer, sin, hell, relief from sins
I don't fully understand these answers in a sense. What is sin going to do to you? Hell is certainly a punishment that we're saved from, but to say that we're saved from the condition of punishment, rather than the punisher himself seems to, in sense and at least in my mind, demonstrate a very child like state of mind. Similar to my son who sometimes doesn't fear me, but rather being punished...I think we recognize that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of all knowledge. This ofcourse leads to a loving and wonderful relationship with our creator.
In truth, God poured out his wrath on his Son, so that we would not have to face it.
God saved us from his wrath. Sin is a violation of the law which God put in place so that sin would increase all the more. God didn't create this so he could save polly pure hearts...he did not even spare his Son so that he could save the most wicked, the completely depraved, the fully undeserving so that Grace is Grace all the more. And he tolerates the wicked so that his chosen understand his mercy.
Yes, God saved us from HIS Wrath. Not going to hell is simply a by-product of what should be our ultimate fear, facing the wrath of The Almighty God. This is a fear so great that in Revelation, it says that men would rather be crushed by stones than to face the Lamb.
3 comments:
Certainly the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And I agree that God indeed saved us from His wrath which abode upon us from birth. We were indeed doomed to wrath and sin to heap up even greater wrath upon ourselves the bible teaches. However, the child like answers you heard were correct.
Rock of Ages cleft for me, let me hide myself in thee. Let the water and the blood from thy wounded side which flowed, be of sin the double cure: save from wrath and make me pure. (Agustus Toplady 18th century)
Where is the wrath of God poured out? What is the eternal place of torment stored up for those who are unsaved? The Bible teaches us to not fear man who can kill the body, but fear God who can cast your soul into Hell.
All we were born on the railroad tracks to Hell with Sin as our guide.
Jesus became Sin for us and bore the punishment (wrath) so that we are no longer on those tracks - we have the Holy Spirit as our guide.
True, scripture teaches us that we are to fear God and we are saved from His righteous and just wrath. I guess, I am wondering though, why is the response of Sin and Hell childish given that Hell and wrath could be synonymous?
In a very true sense, God saved us from Hell, judgment, wrath, damnation, eternity without Him, Himself, ourselves, folly and the list goes on. None of the answers that are listed there seem at all childish to me. They seem to heap up the wonderful greatness of His mercy and love culminating in the ultimate salvation - the saving from His wrath.
I understand what you're saying and I think it's the safer thing to say.
I would also offer that perhaps in my writing I was in too much of a hurry to say what I wanted to say rather than setup what I thought I heard.
But again, what I hear is a me oriented view of salvation. I heard someone say once about attacks from Satan, how we internalize that, and think it's against us. But it's not. it's not against us at all. If we only knew how much of a factor we do not play, our language would have to change. And I think the point I was trying to make was that I heard an incomplete view of salvation and child like in the sense of spiritual maturity. Certainly those things are true and we're saved from them...but my astonishment had more to do with who I heard them from, rather than what I heard...which was definitely not communicated.
I was thinking yesterday, something else that might be interesting is to look up all the references to sin and God taking it away or removing it etc and also look up references to saving from wrath and then compare the results.
If it could be said that one is mentioned more than the other or in greater detail, would that make it more important or obvious?
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