God accomplishes His salvation through Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit. Having raised Jesus from the dead and having exalted Him to His own right hand to be both Lord and Christ (Acts 2:33, 36; Eph. 2:20-22; Phil. 2:9-11), God has sent the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:33) to bring life to men (John 3:5-8) by revealing personally to them (John 15:26) Jesus as their Savior who died for them and as their Lord who was raised for them (Rom. 10:9-10; Titus 3:4-7; II Tim. 1:9-10). When a man responds to this revelation by turning from his false gods (repentance) and turning to the true God (I Thess. 1:10), acknowledging Jesus as his Lord (faith), he is saved (Acts 2:38; 16:31). Apart from God and His grace revealing Jesus Christ to him by the Holy Spirit, a man will not repent and believe (conversion) (John 6:44, 65; 16:7-11). Baptism is an outward sign of this inward work of God's grace.
The decision of faith involves at least three elements.
"9 Because, if you confess with your lips that Jesus is LordUnless Jesus is risen from the dead, He cannot be Lord. Faith in general is not just belief that certain statements are true but is the commitment of one's self and giving of one's allegiance to something or someone as one's own personal ultimate criterion of all decisions, intellectual and moral. Saving faith in Jesus Christ is the commitment of one's self to Jesus Christ as one's own personal ultimate criterion ("My Lord and my God," John 20:28). The living person, the resurrected Jesus Christ, not just what He taught, becomes our criterion of the true, the good, and the beautiful (John 14:6). As He is our living Lord, His will becomes the criterion of all our decisions, intellectual and moral. By the Holy Spirit His will is personally communicated to us (John 14:15-17, 26; 15:26; 16:12-15; II Cor. 3:17-18; I John 2:26-27).
and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead,
you will be saved.
10 For man believes with his heart unto righteousness,
and he confesses with his lips unto salvation."
(Rom. 10:9-10 ERS)
"I have been crucified with Christ;Baptism is the outward sign and symbol of this identification and participation with Christ in His death and resurrection (Rom. 6:3-4; Col. 2:12).
it is no longer I who live,
but Christ who lives in me;
and the life I now live in the flesh
I live by faith in the Son of God,
who loved me and gave Himself for me."
(Gal. 2:20; see also Rom. 6:5-11; Eph. 2:4-6; Col. 3:1-4).
"Truly, truly I say to you, he who hears my wordHaving in the decision of faith identified ourselves with the death and resurrection of Jesus and having acknowledged the resurrected living Jesus as Lord, we have also received spiritual life. For Jesus Christ is life, and to have Him is to be spiritually alive to God.
and believes him who sent me has eternal life;
he does not come into judgment
but has passed from death to life."
(John 5:24; see also John 3:36; Rom. 5:17)
"11 And this is the testimony,Fellowship with God is restored (I John 1:3) and we are reconciled to God (II Cor. 5:18). We are born again (John 3:3; Titus 3:5) and have become new creatures in Christ Jesus (II Cor. 5:17).
that God gave us eternal life,
and this life is in his Son.
12 He who has the Son has life;
he who has not the Son has not life."
(I John 5:11-12).
But this decision of faith is only the beginning of the Christian life. Being made alive in Christ we have become members of His body (I Cor. 12:12-13). Not only is our fellowship with God restored, but also our fellowship with our fellowman. The barrier is removed and we are no longer separated and alienated from one another (Eph. 2:19). We are no longer spiritually isolated from one another. All those who have acknowledged Jesus Christ as Lord and have received Him as their life together form a new community or society, His body, of which He is the head (Col. 1:18). In His body we know the reality of God's love and are able to love one another because He first loved us (I John 4:11, 19) and has poured His love into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which He has given to us (Rom. 5:5). Since the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus (Rom. 8:2), when we received life in Christ, we also received the Holy Spirit (Rom. 8:9).
The Christian life is a life of fellowship and communion with God the Father through Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit (I Cor. 1:9; II Cor. 13:14; I John 1:3). Through Jesus Christ we have access in one Spirit to the Father (Eph. 2:18; Rom. 5:2; Heb. 10:19-22). God speaks to us through the written and spoken Word of God and we speak to Him in prayer. The Christian life is also a walk of faith. It not only begins in faith, but it continues in faith (Col. 2:6). The walk in the Spirit is the walk of faith (Gal. 2:20; 5:25). Faith in the Father who loves me; faith in Jesus Christ with whom I have died and have been raised to new life; faith in the Holy Spirit who dwells within me. The Christian life is also a life of being transformed into and conformed to the image of God (Rom. 8:29; II Cor. 3:18). The resurrected God-man, the Son of man, Jesus Christ, is the image of God (Col. 1:15; II Cor. 4:4). By the last Adam, the man from heaven, man is being restored to the image of God. In faith we have put on the new man which is being renewed according to the image of Him who created him (Col. 3:10; Eph. 4:23-24).
The Christian life is the present tense of salvation. We are being saved from death unto life, from sin unto righteousness, from wrath unto peace. Salvation is not yet complete. It has begun for those who are in Christ Jesus (Rom. 8:24), and it is still continuing (I Cor. 15:2). But it is not yet finished. With hope we await its completion (Rom. 8:25; Gal. 5:5). We are in between the times; the time of His first coming and the time of His second coming. Our spirits are now alive to God and to those in Christ, but our bodies are still dead (Rom. 8:10). Our bodies are still subject to the spiritual and physical death that came from Adam's sin. Only by the quickening power of the Holy Spirit of God who dwells within us can we now experience physical healing and control of the passions and desires of the flesh (Rom. 8:11-13). This salvation of the body from death is not now total or complete and will not be until He returns. But neither is the salvation from sin to righteousness complete. The faith that we have in Him who raised Jesus from the dead, this faith is "about to be reckoned" to us for righteousness, even as Abraham's faith was reckoned (Rom. 4:23-24). But our righteousness is not complete. Our faith is weak, and not all things we do are done according to trust and faith in the true God. We have many hang-overs from our existence in death apart from Christ. This old man must be put off (Eph. 4:22-24; Col. 3:5-10) with its many evil practices. This can be done by the power of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus (Gal. 5:16-17, 24) as we walk in the Spirit by faith. The Christian can sin but he does not have to sin. The Christian is dead to the slavery of sin with Christ and alive to God in Christ (Rom. 6:1-10). He is to reckon it to be true and yield his members not to sin but to God as instruments of righteousness (Rom. 6:11-13). Temptations to sin still exist, but God has provided a way of escape (I Cor. 10:13).
Legalism is a temptation and an obstacle to the walk in the Spirit by faith. As good and right as the law is (Rom. 7:10), this law is not man's highest good, and observing the Ten Commandments is not man's righteousness. God Himself is man's highest good, and trust in and love for God is his righteousness. This love fulfills the law (Rom. 13:8-10), which a legalistic living by the law does not do. Man's basic problem is not "Are you keeping the law?" but "Which god are you trusting?" Is it the true God or is it a false one? This is not just the problem of the non-Christian and the unbeliever but also the problem of the Christian. Many psychological problems that Christians have are the result of a divided loyalty. They are trying to hang onto the true God and a false god at the same time. This double-mindedness, this divided faith (James 1:7-8) makes a Christian psychologically and morally unstable and hinders his relationship with the Lord.
And strange as it may seem, this is the situation behind the Romans 7 kind of experience of many Christians. As we observed above, the experience of Romans 7 is the experience of the man under law. And if a Christian is having this kind of experience, it is because he has placed himself under the law which God says he is not under, for he is under grace (Rom. 6:14). He is attempting to serve two masters at the same time: the law and the Holy Spirit. And it cannot be done (Gal. 5:18). It only creates psychological and moral problems: guilt on the inside and sin and failure on the outside. Being indwelt by the Holy Spirit, the Christian does not need to walk by the law but by the Spirit. The Christian's goal is not moral perfection but the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22-23). The Apostle Paul's question in Galations 3:3 is particularly relevant and right to the point: "Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?"
Paul's obvious answer to this rhetorical question is no. For "as you...have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him" (Col. 2:6). Moral perfection is perfection by the flesh, by the works of the law, and is contrary and opposed to the fruit of the Spirit and the righteousness of faith (Gal. 5:19-21). The weakness, if not the error, of most Christian preaching and teaching is that it is an exhortation of the Christian to perfection by the flesh, by the works of the law. Having begun in the Spirit, the Christian is urged to seek moral perfection. The Holy Spirit is brought into this kind of preaching, if at all, as the source of power to enable the Christian to keep the law. This Spirit-empowered law-keeping is not what Paul means when he speaks of "walking according to the Spirit" (Rom. 8:4; see also Gal. 5:16,25). To walk by the Spirit is to be led by the Spirit, and if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law (Gal. 5:18). To walk according to the Spirit is to make all one's decisions with reference to the Holy Spirit as He personally guides, fills and empowers the believer. The walk in the Spirit is the moment by moment walk of faith and personal trust in the God who personally by His Holy Spirit reveals and communicates Himself along each step of that walk. The "normal" Christian life is this walk according to the Spirit; it is not a legalistic Spirit-empowered law-keeping, but Biblical Spirit-filled law-fulfilling by love.
Christian legalism not only ignores the clear statements of the Scriptures that the Christian is not under law (Rom. 6:14), but also the equally clear statements of the Scriptures that the Christian is dead to the law.
"Likewise, my brethen, you have died to the lawNot only is the Christian dead to sin but dead to the law. Through Christ's death he has died to sin and to the law, and now in the resurrected Christ he is alive to God.
through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another,
to him who has been raised from the dead
in order that we may bear fruit to God."
(Rom. 7:4; Gal 2:19)
"But now we are discharged from the law,The Christian has passed from under the reign of death and sin unto reigning in life in Christ Jesus (Rom. 5:17). The law was the rule in the dispensation of death (II Cor. 3:6-7); the letter kills and the law condemns. The Holy Spirit is the rule of life in the new dispensation of life (II Cor. 3:17-18). Since the Spirit gives life (II Cor. 3:6), the dispensation of life is the dispensation of the Spirit (II Cor. 3:8), the Era of the Spirit. Since the Christian has passed from death to life, he has passed from the rule of the law to the rule of the Spirit. The law as the rule of Christian life has no place in the Era of the Spirit. And if the law has no place in the Era of the Spirit, legalism as an idolatry and misunderstanding of the law has no place in the Era of the Spirit either.
dead to that which held us captive,
so that we serve not under the old written code
but in the new life of the Spirit." (Rom. 7:6)