When God sent his son to this world he came to save us and that is why he is called “Jesus”,
which means: “He will save his people from their sins”. So I want to look at this word
‘save’ – what does it mean? I remember seeing a railway poster which said “Jesus Saves”. Some
Christian must have put it up. Somebody had written underneath “not with the Woolwich”.
But what does “save” mean? There are two big questions which we will ask. Number one:
why do we need to be saved? Number two: why does God save us? What did he have in mind? And
the first basic issue is: saved from what? Did he come to save us from fear, from depression,
from uselessness? From what? The answer is very specific in the Bible: he came to save us from
our sins. Until we understand what sin is, we won’t understand what the title “Saviour” means.
Let us go right to the heart of it. God has written this world off. We have made such a mess
of it; we have messed up our human relationships, our environment. The world is in a mess – anybody
who won’t agree with that is just living with their eyes shut. So God has actually decided
to make a brand-new outer space and planet Earth, and he wants to put people in it,
just as he wanted to put people in this one. But if he puts us in that new world as we are,
we will have it polluted in no time. So the reason why he wants to save us is to prepare us for that
new world. Frankly, that means more than just saving us from our sins – it means saving us
from ourselves and making us such new people that we can go into that new world without ruining it.
And that is why salvation is a process; it doesn’t just happen in a moment, like that. It takes a
lifetime and more, and God actually begins to save us when we turn from our sin unto him in faith.
That is when it all starts but it is only a start; it is only the beginning, and the end
is when we are absolutely perfect, and ready then for the new world. That is why God has come – or
sent his Son, to save us, to make us perfect. Now my wife has tremendous faith but there is
one thing I teach that she has real difficulty believing, and that is when I tell her that one
day her husband will be perfect. Well, she has real difficulty with that. In fact, she said,
“If I built my faith on experience, I couldn’t believe it, but she says, I will try and base it
on the promises of God.” God has not finished with me yet, but that is the end of being saved – that
we shall be perfectly restored to what God meant us to be when he made us, perfectly restored to
his image or to the image of his Son – perfectly like Jesus. That is quite a target, but that is
God’s target and that’s why he begins to save us right now. Then I have to believe that one day
my wife will be perfect, but that is rather easier for me than it is for her, to believe that I will.
But that is the end of being saved – that we shall be perfectly restored to what God meant
us to be when he made us; perfectly restored to his image or to the image of his Son – perfectly
like Jesus. That’s quite a target but that’s God target and that’s why he begins to save us right
now. He has got to start somewhere and if you let him he will start with you right now. That
is the glorious news and he starts with pretty bad people. In fact, he doesn’t mind what he
starts with as long as we let him finish the job. That is another story, but it means that salvation
is not automatic. It comes from co-operating with God from beginning to end, and if we stop
co-operating with him, as we are perfectly free to, then the whole process of salvation
stops and God is frustrated, having begun a good work in us, and then we do not want to continue.
So that’s it. So I don’t believe in this cliché “once saved,
always saved”. No! Once we are really saved – which is still future for me – then I can say
“once saved, always saved,” but not until then. So how does it all start? Let us just look at
that for a few minutes. It starts with something called repentance – not a popular word. But it
means quite simply agreeing with God’s verdict on your life, believing that he knows you better
than anyone else – and he calls every one of us a sinner because we are just not what he wanted us
to be. We have fallen far short of his ideal for us and he must be very disappointed with many of
us. He knows what I could have been by now, and what I am not by now. Had I really co-operated
with him all my life, and made every decision according to his will, and really listened to him
and obeyed him, I would be a very different person to the one I am now. So he must be disappointed.
However, he still has hopes and God has hopes more than I have, but I now share his hope that
one day I will be perfect and able to go into that new universe without ruining it – either
for me or for other people, or for him. But if I went as I am now I would spoil it very quickly.
So I am in the process of being saved, and that is why it is called in the Bible the way of salvation
or the road of salvation. It is a process, and once you get on that road it is an exciting road
to travel but it is a tough road, it’s a narrow road, as Jesus says, but it leads to life, whereas
the broad road that most people are on leads to death. And it’s better to be on a road that
leads to life than a road that leads to death. Well now, let’s go back to the beginning. It
begins when I have a good look at myself and realise how God sees me – not how other people
see me but how he sees me – because he knows the truth, the whole truth, about us, whereas we
manage to hide quite a lot from other people. And we put a face on, and we want people to think we
are nice and good; and we compare ourselves with other people instead of comparing ourselves with
Jesus. When you do that, you feel dirty, you feel ashamed. You want to say with one of his friends,
Simon Peter, “Depart from me for I am a sinful man, O Lord” – I am not good enough for you.
Now that is the beginning of it all – when you realise you are not good enough for God,
you are not good enough to go into that new universe, you are not good enough to go to
heaven. When you realise that, you repent and that is not just saying sorry, it is turning away from
everything that you know is spoiling your life for God – not for you, not for other people,
but for him. And you deliberately stop doing the things that he does not like you doing, and you
stop even thinking the things that he doesn’t like you thinking, or even feeling the things
he doesn’t like you feeling. You realise that you have been living for what you thought was right,
what you thought was good, but in his eyes it is just not good enough – and you turn from those
things and you turn to him. And you say: “Lord, I realise what I am, I realise where that will lead
me unless something changes. Will you please start with me now; will you begin to save me right now?
That is repentance, and it can be quite a hard thing to do. It means giving up some things that
are very precious to you. Having said that, that’s always step number one. Step number two is to
believe in the Lord – not just in God but in his Son Jesus Christ – and to believe that he has done
everything he could to save us, and that he will do everything he can, provided we cooperate. And
in particular, you realise that Jesus actually was punished for all those things you have realised
were wrong, and that he paid a heavy price for our salvation – that’s how we talk – and
he paid the price of his own blood. When you realise that somebody actually died for you,
died in your place, and then rose again to bring you new life, something happens that is quite
revolutionary in your life. Jesus becomes your Saviour and your Lord, and from now on he’s in
charge; from now on it’s his will, it’s his pattern for your life. And you find yourself
with totally changed ambitions. It is what he wants you to do that you want to do now.
That is step number two, but of course you will never do it on your own. If you try to be as
good as you ought to be on your own, you will fail miserably. We need help, and here comes the third
amazing thing. You now know God as your Father, you know Jesus as your Saviour, but you need more
help than that. You need the Holy Spirit, and Jesus promised on the night before he died – he
told the twelve friends he had: you need somebody else to come and stand by you, somebody else to
come and help you and that is the Holy Spirit. And as soon as I get back to my Father in heaven,
I will pray to him and I will ask him to send you the same power that I’ve had. That’s an
incredible promise as well as an incredible prayer – that you can have the same power that Jesus had,
not just to do miracles but to be what he was, to be what God wants you to be. And so he sends
the Holy Spirit into your heart to live in you. Jesus is now in heaven on the right hand of God,
and from there he controls everything. But you need help down here and it is the Holy Spirit
who takes over from what Jesus was while he was on earth and, as Jesus said: he is
another comforter or another standby, someone who can be with you and help you to do what I have
helped you to do while I have been with you. Well now, what do we do then? The answer is:
you need two baptisms – one is in water and the other is in the Holy Spirit. Baptism in water
is not something that gives a baby a name. It is nothing to do with that. Baptism in water is to
be plunged right into water, covered over with it, buried in it, bathed in it. In fact it’s a
burial of someone who is now dead and it’s a bath for someone who was dirty. It is a clean start,
and from the very beginning, people have become Christians by being baptized in water in the
name of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. That is essential to this process of salvation. It
begins it properly, gives you a clean start. I remember when I baptized Cliff Richard and
he said afterwards in his biography that I washed him, rinsed him, and hung him up to dry and that
he never felt so clean in his whole life as he did at that moment. He had experienced baptism
as it ought to be. I know another young man who had a tattoo of the devil on his body and he got
baptized in water as a believer and when he came up out of the water the tattoo had been washed
away. That is what it is about – to give you a clean start, set you free from the past. But
it doesn’t do anything for your future. It cleans up the past, but you need another kind of baptism
for the future, and that is what we call baptism in the Holy Spirit, and that’s to be so filled up
with the Spirit that you overflow. That’s how you tell when the petrol tank of your car is
full to overflowing. It comes out of the hole. And you have got an overflow right underneath
your nose – just here – and when you’re full of anything it comes out of your mouth. If you are
full of happiness, you laugh; if you are full of anger, you shout; if you are full of fear,
you scream. Whatever you are full of (Jesus said this), whatever the heart is full of
comes out of your mouth. And so, sure enough, when people get baptized in the Holy Spirit,
they get so full of the Spirit that their mouth opens and something comes out. It may be praise;
it may be a language that you have never learned. Have you ever heard of tongues? Well,
all it means is languages. It is not a funny word; it just means that you will be given a
language that you never learned at school and you can speak fluently in this language to God. It is
a new experience in prayer as well as praise. Well now, those four things – Repentance,
Faith in Jesus who died and rose again, Baptism in water, and Baptism in the Spirit – those are
the four steps that I know for getting into the kingdom of God – coming under his rule,
living by his rules. That is what it means. The “Kingdom” means he reigns and rules,
not like a constitutional monarch such as we have in our Queen, but somebody who actually rules as
well as reigns and that is what God does. That is what we mean by the kingdom of God.
And so in these four ways you have entered the kingdom of God, you have started on the way of
salvation – and if you continue on that way, you will never stop until you arrive in a brand new
heaven and a new earth: a new earth that is more wonderful than this world and has none
of the dangers or disasters or sicknesses of this world. Something to look forward to, and that is
the dream that will become reality one day. Well, that is roughly what I understand by
salvation. It is something pretty big, and it is not just for you and me,
it is for the whole world. It is for creation itself. Even nature is not what God intended
it to be. It left his hand as something very good. Things have gone wrong, deeply wrong,
but he wants to put it right. And it is as simple as that – salvation is God putting things right.