A Savior

 

John 3:17-19

17 For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.

18 “He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. 19 And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.

 

When the phone rings and you don’t recognize who is calling, or when the doorbell rings and you don’t know the person standing in front of you, what’s the first thing that goes through your mind?

I want to know what they are there for.  I want to know why they are calling me or standing on my front porch.

We have here Jesus giving us His reason for coming to this earth.

He came to save us.  Though He will one day judge the earth, the priority of His first coming was not to be the judge, but to save.

God’s heart is that people would be saved.

In 1 Timothy 2:3-4 it says,

3 For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, 4 who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.

God’s desire is not for men to perish, but for men to be saved.

Until we come to the point where we stop seeing people as ugly, horrible enemies, and start seeing them as objects of God's love, as people for whom Christ died, then I don't think we've come to know God's heart at all.

The Bible doesn’t say, “Go into all the world and convict those dirty rotten sinners that they’re going to hell”.  But instead, it says:

15 And He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.

The gospel is the “good news”.   The good news is that God loves you, and sent Christ to be the object of His wrath and be the substitutionary sacrifice for our sins.

However, with good news, then we must ask, well, what is the “bad news”? 

Verse 18 brings the bad news to light.

The great Bible teacher J. Vernon McGee said,

J. Vernon McGee said,

“There are a great many who feel that the world is on trial today. It is not. The world is lost. You and I live in a lost world, and we’ll not wait until the final judgment to see that we are lost. Our position is something like a man who is in prison being asked whether or not he will accept a pardon. That is the gospel. It is not telling a man that he is on trial. He is already condemned. He is already in prison waiting for execution. But the gospel tells him a pardon is offered to him. The point is, will you accept the pardon? How wonderfully clear that is. The gospel is to save those who are already lost.”

There is a pardon.  There is good news.  So, what must I do to be saved?

Acts 16:30-31

30 And he brought them out and said, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”

31 So they said, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, you and your household.”




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