What the Bible Says About Salvation

(Genesis 3:15) The teaching of salvation is wonderfully simple in Scripture. God has made a way for man to be saved from himself, from his sin, from the wrath of God. Nothing else is more important than knowing the answer to the question: "What must I do to be saved?" (0956250304) ----more----

 

The Question of Salvation

Some questions in this world are more important than others because some questions affect not only time. They affect all of eternity. Questions like what think you of Christ. Or how about this question, sirs? What must I do to be saved? 

Soteriology: The Doctrine of Salvation

We've come in our study of what God says in the word of God to a subject that is of supreme importance because it affects where you're gonna spend eternity. And that is what the Bible says about salvation. Perhaps no other doctrinal subject has been more debated and more discussed and more misunderstood. Then the doctrine of salvation. And yet in scripture, there's a beautiful simplicity to the message of salvation. 

The First Promise of a Savior

I want us to begin where God begins with the very first promise of a savior. It's found all the way back in the Book of Genesis, in Genesis chapter three. It's a great reminder that Jesus Christ truly was the lamb slain from the foundation of the world. That from the very Garden of Eden, God viewed Golgotha. In fact, before he ever created Adam. In the mind of God, his precious son, the Lord Jesus Christ was already on the cross.

From the beginning of time, God intended to redeem fallen humanity, and that's revealed in Genesis chapter three and verse number 15, where the Bible says God speaking, "And I will put iny between thee." That's the devil between the and the woman. "And between thy seed and her seed, it shall bruise thy head and thou shall bruise his heel."

Now Genesis three 15. It's easy to breeze over it, but Oh, don't do that. Mark it in your Bible and mark it in your heart, because Genesis three 15 is the very first promise in the Bible that a Messiah was coming, that a redeemer, a savior was coming. And in it we find the very first message concerning the doctrine of salvation.

Remember, someone has said that the first 11 chapters of the Book of Genesis are a seed bed of doctrine, and that every great doctrine in the Bible can be found there in seed form. And when you come to the New Testament, you find those same doctrinal truths just in more fully developed form. We've been discussing from the Book of Genesis what the Bible says about man who man is.

We've discussed what the Bible says. About sin, but now we come to the good news. Aren't you glad that the God who made man and the God who knew we would sin provided salvation? He made a way so that we could be saved. 

Understanding Our Need for Salvation

Now, what are the basic lessons we learned from Genesis three 15? The first is that man is a sinner. That we are fallen. You don't need a savior unless you have been separated from God. Something has come between you and God. So the very first thing we must remember in the doctrine of salvation is that everybody needs it. Remember what Jesus said in Luke chapter 19, verse number 10, he said, "For the son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost."

People have to understand they're lost before they can understand what it means to be saved or even have a desire to be saved. We might say it this way. You have to understand the bad news before you can appreciate the good news. The good news. That's the gospel of the death and the burial and the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

But frankly, who cares that he died was buried and rose from the dead if there wasn't a necessity for that, but there wasn't a necessity because we're all sinners. Romans chapter three, verse number 23 says, "For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God." We needed a savior. So it brings us to the second great truth.

God's Provision of a Savior

The first is that man is a sinner, and the second is that God alone can provide a savior. God is the savior. He promised that the seed of the woman would come. That's the lovely Lord, Jesus Christ. That's why it's important that we acknowledge that Christ was born of a virgin. He didn't come through Adam's lines.

Sin was passed down from Adam to the next generation through the mainstream of humanity. But he did not come from Adam. He came from God through a virgin Mary. The seed of the woman and the seed of the woman when he came for one purpose. And that purpose was to redeem fallen humanity, to restore us to God, to bring us back to the righteous God.

Our sins separated us from the Lord, but Jesus Christ came for one purpose, and that is that we could be saved. John chapter three, verse 16 says, "For God so love the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." J