The Theme Throughout The Entire Bible
This theme is repeated throughout the entire Bible: salvation belongs to the Lord. In the Old Testament, we see that God is always saving his people from danger. It is full of stories of God’s saving work, songs about God’s salvation from enemies in Psalms, and prophecies of salvation to come in the prophetic books from Isaiah to Malachi. When the angel came to Joseph, he said, “Name him Jesus, because he will save his people.” And then Jesus said, “I have come to seek and save the lost.” So when the Bible talks about salvation, it is proclaiming the central concept of the Christian faith and Scriptures.
Have you ever been asked by someone, “Are you saved?” That’s a great question—but saved from what? What does “salvation” mean? We are saved from our sins, but why?
The Christian belief is that we are saved from God by God. This sounds odd at first hearing, and we may even protest. Often times we prefer to bail God out of actually being God. We are comfortable with a God who saves, but we don’t often like to think of God as judge. In order to be the saving God, he also has to be the judging God. It is his Law that we have broken and that stands in accusation of us. He has the final say over us. It is not me, or the devil, or the world; it is God, because he alone is sovereign. It is his call either to leave us condemned and dead in our sin or to raise us from the dead.
As theologian Mark Mattes has said, “God is so for you as your defender that he is against himself as your accuser.” This is the message of the cross, which is God saving you from God’s wrath by diverting it to Jesus. You are saved from God’s wrath by God’s mercy. Salvation belongs to the Lord!