Most people would say, “From hell, of course”.
I would like to challenge that statement in this article.
Jesus came and died on the cross, not just so that you or I could be saved from hell. He came and died, and then rose again on the third day, to ransom us from the very clutches of Satan.
When God created this here world, He gave Adam charge over every living creature, and made Adam the “prince” or ruler of this world. When Adam sinned in the Garden of Eden, he lost his rightful rulership of this world and he handed it over to Satan. So from that time on, everyone and every thing (even the animals) have been under the rulership of Satan.
It was very necessary that God become man (flesh). Don’t ever believe it when someone tells you that Jesus was not fully human, as much as you or I. However, He did have something normal humans don’t have, or at least didn’t have in those days. He had the constant presence and empowerment of the Holy Spirit upon Him night and day. He was subject to temptation as we are, and was tempted, I believe even more so than most of us are. He could have sinned; there was a possibility of that. The difference is that He did not sin. He could have, but he chose not to. If He had just once done something / anything on His own, without consulting the Father, He would have been disqualified. All would have been lost. We would all have been lost with no hope of redemption.
It was necessary that a fully human man be sacrificed. A man without sin. This was the only way to legally take back the rulership of this world from Satan. If Jesus was not fully a human then He came for no reason and legally it was all for nothing. Here is the ultimate picture of kidnapping. We were all kidnapped and Jesus paid the ransom.
If Jesus had stayed dead though, it still would have been for nothing. I’ll get to that in a moment
The way of salvation
In order for any of us to actually be saved, we have to die like Jesus.
We have to die to doing things our way.
What Adam did that lost him his spiritual life and the rulership of this world, is that he ate of the tree of the “knowledge of good and evil”. In other words, he no longer would submit to the Godship of God. Adam wanted to decide what was good or evil in his own life. This is the sin that wrecked everything. It wasn’t just an apple (fruit) and it had nothing to do with sex. It was that Adam decided to govern himself. To usurp the rightful place that only God should have. Adam wanted to be God for himself.
Jesus came and did the opposite. He came and did nothing of Himself, but only that which His Father had commanded Him to do. Jesus allowed God to be God of His life. This is what gave Him the victory over Satan. Even before Jesus died, He was already victorious on this point. But then Jesus had to pay the penalty of our sins, by dying in our place. We are the ones who deserve to have died, but Jesus took our place. He did not have to, but He did it out of love for all of us. Just think that when Jesus died, he was thinking of you.
There is nothing special about the cross. Jesus could have died from the bullet of a gun and it would have been just as effective. In fact, several scholars have determined that it wasn’t actually a cross at all, but rather just a stake, with nothing going across the top, except for the plaque that was put up saying that Jesus was the king of the Jews.
What is important, is that He died physically. The life that was in His body was extinguished, and the blood that was in His body was shed for yours and my sins. The life is in the blood.
So what did Jesus’ death accomplish for me? It paid the penalty of my sins. But that is not the end. He also rose again from the dead. This is the most important part. If we identify with Jesus’ death, we are forgiven our sins. But if we identify in his resurrection, this gives us new life. The resurrection is tied to the baptism of the Holy Spirit. This is what makes it possible for you and I to live the same life that Jesus lived here on earth.
A picture of this is in the act of baptism. When we are baptized and are submerged under the cold icy water, we are symbolically identifying in Jesus’ death and it is like a tomb. When we come up out of the icy water, we identify in His resurrection new life. His resurrected life needs to come and live in us. This is why in the Bible, when every person came up out of the water, the disciples immediately laid hands on them to receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Without the Holy Spirit, we have no chance of being truly born again.
I have heard many times preachers saying that Jesus died so that we might live. I say that we must die so that Jesus can live in us. It is the opposite. We are not supposed to live. We are supposed to die. We are to die to our ways, to our way of thinking and our ways of doing things. Unless we truly die, Jesus cannot be resurrected in us. Every one of us has to renounce the sin of Adam (which we are all guilty of) and give back the Godship to God, so that He might be God in our lives. Only then are we truly saved.
So what are we saved from? We are saved from ourselves, from our own disastrous ways, that only lead to death and destruction. Our ways leave us prisoners in the clutches of Satan, to do what he wants, which is always sin.
Are you dead yet?
Or is there still a little bit of life kicking up its heals and getting in the way of your true salvation?
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