Christ's Power to Save to the Uttermost

"Therefore He is also able to save to the uttermost those who come to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them. For such a High Priest was fitting for us, who    is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and has become higher than the heavens;  who does not need daily, as those high priests, to offer up sacrifices, first for His own sins and then for the people’s, for this He did once for all when He offered up Himself. (Hebrews 7:25-27 NKJV)" 

I have often thanked God for saving me from the sin that separated me from Him. Sin that would have consumed my life if I had no Savior. Sin that results in death, eternal death. Yes, I and many who know our Lord Jesus cannot thank God enough for saving us from sin through His Son Jesus Christ.

As we reflect on salvation in Christ, let us take an even closer look at what it means to be saved out of our sin. We have come to understand what it means...at least in part...but have we come to understand what power has now been granted to those who have received His Spirit as a result of that salvation? For those who have received Christ's sure promise of the Spirit of Truth, our ever-present indwelling Helper...there is even more to understand about what it means to have been saved out of our sin.

Much of my life, I have thanked God for saving me from my PAST sin.  Many of God's children have come to that point of worthy gratitude, for we once stood in our past sin without the curse being removed...a place separated from God. We are right to thank and praise Him for saving us from those specific past sins. But as we grow in knowledge and depth of insight into God's Word, we learn that not only have we been saved from past, specific sins, but that we are saved from SIN, that is the sinful nature that once ruled our bodies. We come to understand that on our best day, where we did far more good than bad, that at the end of that day, we were still sinful because the sin nature of Adam had been transmitted to us upon birth, for we are descended from Adam. We come to realize that as a human born after the fall of man, a disease is now carried by the entire human species that takes life away from every one who was otherwise created in the image of a holy God...and Christ's finished work on the cross has now provided the one and only way to be cured from that disease we know as sin. We come to know that the specific sins that our consciences were so preoccupied with (a blessed conviction) are the symptoms of the much deeper disease. Treating the symptom may make the patient feel better for a time, but if the patient is to live...and not just live but have life to the full!...he must be completely healed of the disease. We come to realize that even when the sinful symptoms have been suppressed, that the disease of our sin nature remained. The proof of this is the very next day when we once again sinned in a specific manner...demonstrating the symptoms once again of this dreadful and cursed disease.

This is a turning point for any Christ follower--the recognition that Christ has not only come to take away our bad records and blemishes, our sins of the past, but He has won the victory of destroying our very sinful nature and the Evil behind it. For every 1 pharmaceutical medication that cures a disease, there are probably tens or hundreds that treat disease, proof that a disease is much harder to cure than to simply treat. Is the same not true of our sin?!  Oh how we strive to treat our sin! But our Father has administered the cure. How many times have we focused our finite human strength on conquering a specific sin or sinful habit? Only to find ourselves soon struggling with sin in another area, or even repeating sins that we thought we once conquered? Have you not experienced this yourself? I suspect that any measure of introspection will lead to this discovery for the regenerated in Christ. Why is it not enough? Why do we continue to fight sin? Because we have tried to conquer in our strength instead of the strength granted by our Lord through His ever-present Spirit. Because in those times when we have worked in our strength to conquer a specific sin, we have been lured into treating a symptom instead of curing the root of the disease. The Evil One is content to tempt and plague the child of God with the next available sin. He is not overwhelmed by us, walking in our strength alone, sending all of our troops and forces, so to speak, to fight one division of His army of temptation...for it gives Him an open attack on the unguarded areas. Hear this vital truth of the spiritual battle: The Holy Spirit has been sent to be enough. The Holy Spirit is not a scarce resource. The Holy Spirit never makes a decision to send some of His energy to fight one battle at the expense of another--our God is infinite! When we invite our Lord to be our everything, only then do we have the ability to conquer our enemy at the root, and to conquer the sin nature that so tenaciously tries to cling to our flesh. We require a Savior who can save to the uttermost, to the core. We require a Savior who does not simply clean us off every time we sin, His power limited to things we've done in the past...a perpetual eraser. Perhaps you and I have thought of our Lord Jesus as such. No, our Lord has the power to save us from the very disease of sin, and from the Evil One. 

Back to the question: Why do we continue to fight sin? If I sinned today, why have my efforts not yielded a total conquering of the sin nature such that the specific sins have ceased? One reason: I am not fully yielded to the Spirit of The Lord, I am not yet fully crucified and identified with Christ. Oh to be fully yielded to the Spirit of Truth, in whom there is only righteousness and no deceit! Oh to be walking in the Spirit, truly praying without ceasing! Oh to love our Lord such that we had only the desire to obey His commands and worship Him! Oh to be fully surrendered to the cross of Christ, such that our entire self identity has died a gruesome death, leaving behind only an identity in Christ! That day is coming for all who have received the Promised One, being sealed for the day of salvation. That day is coming. But if just now you have sinned, let that spur you onward to seek The Lord all the more. To proclaim once again that you are His and His alone. That you are chosen and accepted, cleansed by the blood of the Lamb, once a slave to sin, now a slave to righteousness (Rom 6:16-18)! And therefore you have only 1 master and no other master can claim you: you are Christ's. Though you and your Savior be besieged by Evil, though the battle grows fierce, though you suffer harm and feelings of shame--you cannot be separated from Christ! Our Kingdom stands! The battle is won! "Though the righteous falls seven times, they rise again" (Prov 24:16). This is the power of our Lord granted to those who have been saved by Christ. And not only that, we carry within us the Power not to sin, which is the only true measure of being saved from sin--that we would "go and sin no more" (John 8:11). If we do not hold that power to go and sin no more, than we have only partial salvation, only saved from sins past, but not from the nature of sin that would cause us to sin again. Oh, but we have Christ who does indeed save to the uttermost.

We have carried the Holy Spirit in us since we received Him willingly, yet we have sinned since then. Why? The self is not yet fully conquered, fully surrendered, fully crucified with Christ. And how gracious is our Lord to send us His Spirit to live in communion with us, though we are still not fully sanctified to Him?! If man had conceived of a plan of salvation, surely he would have determined that the Spirit of God could only be granted to those who were fully worthy of perfection. But who would ever qualify? Truthfully, we need God to meet that qualification. Perhaps man would have then decided that instead, upon receiving the Holy Spirit, that the temple must then never be defiled again. That either he no longer had the capacity to sin or if he did sin, he would lose the Spirit of God. We know by observation that the first assertion is not true, for we have retained the capacity to sin after receiving Christ! Even the Apostle Paul cries out in his distress over this truth (Rom 7:14-8:2). And the second assertion that the Spirit would remove Himself from any vessel not still perfect would leave us hopeless...and once again we see perhaps the best scriptural example in the Apostle Paul, for he surely retained the Spirit such that he was empowered to write scripture to tell on himself and his ongoing battle with the flesh.

No, man could not conceive of this plan of salvation on his own. This is a divine master plan. That our perfect God would willingly come to aid us, who are plagued with disease and not fully sanctified to Himself. That He would seal us with the promise of full sanctification and unity. And that He would provide us the power not to sin though granting us such an intimate union with the Spirit that He is said to live within us. Coming to a conclusion, regardless of specific theology regarding salvation and the Holy Spirit, for the sincere in repentance and crying out to God for salvation through Jesus Christ, there is an overwhelming and blessed implication: We have been saved from sin. Not just a sin or sins, but SIN. Not just our pasts, but our futures! Do not misunderstand this: This is not a license to willingly sin knowing that The Lord will, in the future, cleanse us of our future sins after they have been committed (he would still only be an eraser in that case)...this is the opposite...that He has empowered us not to sin, to go and sin no more. He has given us the assurance of being saved from ever sinning again...but He has done it in a way that allows us to reciprocate and be co-laborers with Him. He has not made us robots or forced us not to sin, but instead, through His Spirit, He has empowered us with the strength to defeat the full sinful nature that once reigned over our bodies and to defeat the Evil One altogether.

As Christ-followers, we have each received the full armor of God (Eph 6). We have received the power and divine tools to completely conquer the enemy. But too many of us have taken the armor God has given us and placed it neatly on display in our rooms. We admire it, we may kiss it goodnight and good morning, we may take pride in it and tell our friends so that they can admire it, but too many of us refuse to wield it. I encourage you as Paul did, to PUT ON your armor. It is yours, given to you by our Lord. This is what it means to have received the Power to never sin again AND to choose to use it.

He has empowered us, but we must embrace Him, taking up our cross daily. We must learn to fully surrender to Him. We must learn what it means to truly love Him. So as we give thanks to God for saving us out of sin, let us remember to thank Him for giving us access to the Power to go and sin no more and for saving us from the curse of sinful flesh to the very uttermost. And because of that blessed grace, nothing shall separate us from the love of Christ (Rom 8:35-38). Amen.

The Gospel of Christ--A Systematic Exploration

Our bodies bear evidence of sin.  Disease, affliction, decay.  If our bodies carried no sin in them, they would cease to decay and no disease or affliction would be manifest.  This is how we were created--in the image of God.  Adam and Eve, and the human race, were created to live forever in perfect harmony with God, each other, and all creation.  That is, until they sinned in the Garden.  At that moment, the human body took on sin, by choice, and began to decay.  From this point forward, there is an irreparable rift between God and man, the perfect from imperfect, eternal from dying.  But just as through one man (Adam) sin entered the world, so through one Man (Jesus), sin is conquered and we can be reconciled (Rom 5:12-21).


Show me one man who has defied the decay of the human condition.  Show me one man that has lived even 2 generations, let alone eternally.  You cannot.  But I will show you Christ, who lived, has lived and forever will live.  Jesus is the only God-man to have ever lived and therefore lives forever, being fully God, and gives opportunity for all flesh to be saved--being fully man Himself--the only bridge of this gap between dying man and eternally living God.

Our bodies testify that we are born into sin.  For all flesh is grass and perishes (Isaiah 40:6, 1 Pet 1:24), i.e. all flesh contains sin and is therefore decaying.  If all flesh was not with sin, then not all flesh would be decaying...but the scripture, as well as our experience, testifies that all flesh is dying. Therefore, there is no difference in circumstance, moral code,  in perception or reality--all men have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Rom 3:23). All flesh is grass.  All flesh is dying.  All flesh has sin.  All men are dying as a result of being covered in their sins.

Make no mistake--God is incorruptible.  He is too consistent to allow sin to survive.  Therefore, as He has decreed, all sin will die.  And therefore, all men will die.  And though He loves us, He cannot deny Himself.  He has too great of character...perfect character...He will not "change the rules," so that we might live.  We cannot offer any goodness or action such that He says, "I love this one too much to let him burn eternally in Hell.  I will let Him live."  No, God's desire for us to live does not give rise to Him compromising!  He would cease to be God if He could be compromised.  No, God is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Heb 13:8).

How then will we be reconciled to a perfect God?  How will we who are dying ever hope to live more than our short 100 years, if we are so lucky to live even that long?  If we are born into sin, what chance do we have, and how is it fair that God would allow us to be created and born into sin such that we have no chance of avoiding Hell?  God would certainly cease to be good, infallible, and sovereign if the truth was anything short of this: Jesus is the "Lamb slain from the foundation of the world" (Rev 13:8, 1 Pet 1:20, Matt 25:34).  Let's look at this closer.

First of all, God created us knowing our ability to sin.  Not the unavoidable affinity to sin...no, just the possibility and our ability to choose.  Jesus Himself knew what was in man and did not entrust Himself to them (John 2:24).  In the same way, God has never, from the foundation of the world, entrusted His perfect care for the human race to man alone.  No, He is too good, too sovereign, too infallible.  Instead, reconciliation was conceived from the very beginning.  Let's examine free-will, God's foresight, and the means of reconciliation to Him.

Free-will.  This is the capacity to love.  Think about it: can you force someone to love you?  You can force another person to do many of the outward showings of "loving" behaviors in its various forms, but you have no ability to force a person to love from their heart.  This is by design.  Love, it turns out, requires a voluntary choosing of another.  And with any voluntary choice, there are two possibilities: the choosing of someone or something, or the rejection of that same someone or something.  This is free-will.  This is the gift of God to the human race to have the capacity to love!  Anything short of this and we become robots; and we ourselves, as well as God Himself, are deprived of the richness of love, as characterized by freely choosing Him.  And so any question of God's goodness in that He has "allowed" sin (inherently also death and decay, and even Hell that comes with it) to persist is easily answered in the beautiful gift of love made possible by having the choice.  The real question then isn't of God's goodness--the question is of our obedience or rebellion.

However, since God is perfect in foresight and sovereignty, he would have known that all men would sin--all men would choose sin and not Him, and therefore all men would inherit death, both physical and eternal.  "What a flawed system!" you might say.  And you would be correct if not for this truth: God prepared a way for atonement--a way to be reconciled to Him even after experiencing sin and the curse of decay.  This is His Son Jesus Christ, the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world.  This is critical because we might otherwise think God had a moment like this: "Oh no, they are all sinning.  Oh no, through Adam all men have inherited sin and death.  What have I done?  How can I save this?  How can I rectify this?  Oh, I know...I've got it, I'll send my Son to die."  Nonsense. This is not what God did, as it would fall well short of His uncompromising character and power.  Instead, He, from the foundation of the world, made provision for reconciliation through Christ.  Let's examine that at last.

We have established that God is perfect.  Furthermore, He cannot be compromised and is unchanging.  He can accept nothing into His Kingdom except perfection (absolutely zero sin).  The problem arises that all men have sin, and are even born into sin.  This is sin that resides in our flesh, inherited as we are born, as well as willing sin committed as we ourselves have not chosen to love Him by obeying Him (John 14:15, 21, 23-24).  And so every single natural man being born to man is condemned to death.  Therefore, there is a naturally irreconcilable rift, for you can show me no man that has ceased to die, not even Jesus Christ Himself.  This is critical that even the perfect God-Man, the only God-Man, Jesus Christ had to die; though not a natural death of decay in sin--He Himself being perfect and without sin--but rather at the hands of sinful men, willingly taking on death, i.e. voluntarily taking on the sin of man with such sweeping fullness that He being without the curse of death from sin would die, death being the fruit of sin.

Putting it all together, the paradoxical sacrifice of a perfect God-Man is the only Hope of rectifying the chasm between God eternally perfect and man eternally sinful.  There must be a go between--someone or something with a foot on each side, something itself as incorruptible and perfect as the side of God, yet something as perfectly identified with the flesh of Man such that they could exist together and thereby provide a bridge across this great eternal chasm.  In this we see that as Christ's body was crucified, the punishment of death, the inherited death of the flesh was fully upheld and satisfied.  Now, this is satisified in every individual who dies: the body has perished in sin, and the soul is cast eternally into godless Hell for he cannot be reconciled with God.  That is, until through Jesus, something different happened.  In His death, He was still perfect...being perfect, He was the first to ever be reconciled to God after death of His own accord.  Suddenly the gap between God and man has a link, a bridge, a tie-line.  And as Jesus was again raised to life, He secured this passage, this link, this bridge to God--for in His resurrection to life, He did what no natural man could do--He demonstrated the power for perfect God to be greater than the sin of human decay that leads to Hell.  In this, He now remains at the right hand of the throne of God and through Him all can now pass from death to eternal life.

But that's just it--through Him alone.  Without choosing Jesus Christ as Lord, it is as if He never came for that individual...there is no reconciliation, there is no bridge to perfect God--we still have the free-will to choose or reject Him.  But with Jesus--the way, the truth, the life (John 14:6)--we have every fellowship with God the Father and are made perfect in Christ alone, being welcomed into His Kingdom forever.

Questions to consider:
When will you die?
Why will you die?
What will you say to God when you die?
Are you 100% sure that God will accept you?

In Jesus Christ my savior, I can say the previously unthinkable: Yes, I am 100% sure that God will accept me when I die, and I will live eternally with the King.  All the glory to Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior, God the Father, and the Holy Spirit who preserves us through the final day of judgment.  Amen.