Acts 28:28 Be it known therefore to you, that the salvation of God is sent to the Gentiles, and that they will hear it. There are few things which distinguish the gospel as the spiritual power and significance which it has been able to infuse into the common possessions of human nature. The revelations of God have not been so much creative as adaptive, taking the things which already exist, and giving to them a fresh meaning and force. Nothing illustrates this more than the way in which the truth of the gospel has infused itself into human vocabularies. It brought new ideas which the apostles clothed in the old words to which they gave a fresh meaning. Human speech would have been weakened, and would have lost its wealth, but for what the gospel has done for the dictionary. Take the word salvation. I. Salvation is SAFETY. A man rescued from imminent peril is safe, saved, has found salvation. Jesus Christ has come to make us safe. 1. The peril from which salvation delivers us is that of the penalties of broken law, and that of the inner results of the nature which has been abused by sin. 2. Christ brings salvation because — (1) He has so acted in relation to external law, in respect of guilt, that we are delivered from the penalty and are safe. (2) But there is not only this justifying of man in the sight of God. Christ has set man right in his internal relations by delivering him from sin. II. Salvation is HEALTH. The word is connected with "salutary" and "heal." Jesus Christ is called the Great Physician, not simply because He went about healing the body, but because He is the Physician of the soul. The former is the symbol of the latter. He takes away sin which is the soul's disease, and restores the proper condition of our spiritual nature. How little do we feel the power of this full salvation! We want to escape hell. What we need to escape is the sin sickness of the soul, that restlessness, that feverishness, that wild disturbing passion of our lower nature. III. Salvation is WHOLENESS. When a man was healed the old English version says he was "made whole." And Christ went about making men whole. 1. There is no health if there be no wholeness. There is no perfect cure of the nature if Christ does not restore it to its completeness. Sin is a maimed condition of our nature. Christ comes as the Minister of mind, soul, and body. 2. Let us be careful in our application of this gospel to the wants of our times, to the growth of our Church, to our individual character, to our families, to the life of society and of the State, that we do not present a maimed gospel. IV. Salvation is HAPPINESS. The word was employed as a greeting. Salve. It is a salutation, a wish for joy. We have not come to its full meaning until it has swung itself round this whole sphere of human nature in blessedness and gladness. There is a place for sorrow, but if the gospel does not take you beyond sorrow you have only partly learned Jesus. God is the God of joy and not of sadness. (Ll. D. Bevan, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Be it known therefore unto you, that the salvation of God is sent unto the Gentiles, and that they will hear it. |
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