(i.) In its nature. Is there a word in universal language which has as much meaning in it as this word salvation? It takes within its range all time and all eternity. Though specially designed for man, it has its influence upon every order of being God has made, and presents the most glorious manifestations of God himself which the world possesses. It glares upon sin with indignation, but throws its arms of mercy around the sinner; offers to him a deliverance from the guilt and power and pollution and inbeing of evil; gives him the favour and image of his Maker; assures to him victory over his final adversary; introduces him to, and acquits him before the great white throne; and arrays him in all the glories of an everlasting heaven.
To understand it fully comes not within the range of angelic intellect; and yet it demands our highest regard, as it has had the attention of enquiring prophets. ’Tis true they had not the light upon it that a better dispensation has given to us. It is not to be expected that they should
be penetrated with its glory as we ought to be; but they were so impressed by its grandeur, that their thoughts were raised above all merely temporal deliverances, and they felt that their own interests were wrapped up in the theme. “And thus,” we are told, “did this sweet stream of their doctrine, as the rivers, make its own banks fertile and pleasant as it ran by, and flowed still forward to after ages; and by the confluence of more such prophecies, grew greater as it went, till it fell in with the main current of the gospel in the New Testament both acted and preached by the Great Prophet himself whom they foretold as to come, and recorded by his apostles and evangelists, and thus united into one river clear as crystal. This doctrine of salvation in the Scriptures hath refreshed the city of God, his Church under the gospel, and still shall do so till it empty itself into the ocean of eternity.”
(ii.) This salvation in its provision, is of grace. “Who prophesied of the grace that should come unto you.” The apostle does not mean to say by this clause, that there is something in the theme exclusively adapted to those to whom he wrote. But we understand him to mean, in general terms, that the ancient seers searched diligently into that system of mercy, which should in after times, and under the Christian dispensation, be more fully revealed.
The word “grace” may have reference to the manner in which this scheme should be made known; intimating that it was by divine favour that the new economy supervened upon the old. But we take it rather to denote the gospel salvation itself. It is altogether a system of grace. In its projection; in its development; in its accomplishment; in its application; in its final consummation, it is all of grace. “By grace ye are saved.”
We are not among the number of those who doubt or deny the entire and absolute fall of man. Whatever good there was in him was then destroyed; whatever evil there is in him, was then induced. He is fallen in mind and soul and body. Physically, morally, spiritually, he is a wreck. But was no vestage left of that divine image in which he was created? Not one. No lingering desire to regain his glory and the position he had lost? None. Was he altogether dead to virtue and his Maker’s claims? Yes, altogether. But was his nature so far polluted as that no trace of his original purity could be discovered? Not a trace to be seen even by an Omniscient eye. And was there left to him no inherent power to do that which is good? None whatever. “From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it; but wounds, and bruises, and putrifying sores: they have not
been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment.”
Then see his position. If his fall, which is so entire, is his own act, he is as much amenable to his Maker as he was before. The fact of his fall will not lesson his obligations: nor will it impose upon God any necessity to show mercy. He therefore stands before his Judge a condemned criminal; and the course which the Judge shall take is entirely within himself. There is nothing which can force Him to show favour. If He say, die, He is as justly glorious as He was before. If then, there is no obligation upon God to save: and if He does determine to be gracious, the salvation must be of grace. Oh, is it possible to conceive the solemnity of that moment when the destinies of untold millions were in the balance? Can you picture the suspense of heaven and hell when waiting Jehovah’s fiat? Surely for the moment the pulse of nature throbbed not; heaven’s music ceased to flow, and the howl of the pit was hushed. Then God, on his azure throne, holding in one hand the sword, and in the other the sceptre, stretched out the sceptre saying, “Deliver him from going down to the pit; I have found a ransom.”
Your salvation is of grace. You are required to pray; but you are saved by grace. You are
required to believe; but you are saved by grace. You are required to labour; but you are saved by grace. You are required to suffer; but you are saved by grace. You will have to die; but when you stand a spirit glorified before the throne, it will be by grace.