What It Means to Be Saved — Rolfe Barnard

I'm going to ask you to turn tonight to the Book of Acts, chapter 22. Last evening I spoke to you along the line of Paul's definition of what it meant to be a Christian. Tonight I want to come at the same truth, I hope and let of the Lord, and just ask the question, what does it mean to be S-A-V-E-D saved?

The Cost of Representing Christ

If there isn't anybody in the world tonight who gives the slightest evidence of being a captive of the Lord Jesus Christ, we'd reckon his brain and searching his heart to find out how we can represent Christ in this age where the spirit of Antichrist breathes down our necks, where everything that's worth believing is under severe attack, and where preachers all over the world are taken out, and where it's a question of whether we're going to have any open churches in America two years from now, and a deeper question of whether we have a right to stay open.

I believe, don't make it so, that everyone who names the name of Christ and makes a good confession, say amen to the fact that you realize something has died and that new thing has not yet been born. I'm dead certain that we can get all the labels we want, we can call ourselves fundamentalists and Bible believers and grace people, and make any label we put on ourselves, that we're going to have to come to the hard core discipline of the New Testament, and we won't have any right to claim to be Christ's representatives, for nothing short of utter, utter abandon, commitment to the redemptive program of Christ Jesus is going to enable us to keep our heads above the water.

I believe last fall it was, after I left you, dear people, I went north to Pennsylvania, as I recall, and then to Canada, and I believe I went first to Canada, I'm not certain. But up in Pennsylvania, Pastor said, I want you to take a couple of hours, I want you to take a couple of hours, I want you to take a couple of hours, and I want you to take a couple of hours, and I want you to take a couple of hours, and I want you to take a couple of hours, and I want you to take a couple of hours, and I want you to church full of folks that get drunk every Saturday night, rob poor banks and come and repent Sunday morning, and go out and put his arm around some old devil and love him to Jesus, than this stuff, this religious Phariseeism that we call fundamentalism.

I learned that all those young men and women, I watched them, and they showed me their training and what they had to do. I recommend it to this church and this school and every church. I believe a church now that is not an institute training to do battle in this day has no right to exist.

No youngsters, for they send them over to do missionary work for what we call a heathen. They spend two years sleeping on the ground. It gets cold up in Pennsylvania, but since the Natives are going to preach to all sleep on the ground, the youngsters have to learn how to sleep on the ground.

And then three months out of every year, the two years those youngsters are there, they have to live off the earth. Learn to live off of berries, acorns, pork salad, whatever you can find, lying around, because that's the way the folks they are going to preach to live all the time.

I ain't going to join that mission group. I want to be religious, but I don't want to get radical around here, because I believe that there is a hell, perhaps. Men ought to repent to a certain extent, they are going to be punished properly, but I don't want to get too deeply involved, and you don't either, do you?

But we are going to get involved, but we are going to be out of business as sure as a job made green apple. This business of substituting attendance on a place of service for obedience to Jesus Christ is already out.

We just haven't found it out. I want to talk to you out of the book tonight, again, on what it means to be saved. What does it mean to be saved? Now, every church in America is split wide open on this subject.

I think that it is of Satan, not of God, for churches to split over doctrine. I don't believe any of us know enough about any doctrine to fuss about. But I wish that the Holy Spirit would favor us with his presence one more time, and reveal the awful split in all of our churches over this question of what it means to be saved.

For I think we'll find out that most of our churches, this one included, to be saved means an eternal joyride of talking and a good ball game. But in the New Testament, it's a white horse of a different color.

The Gospel as the Power of Salvation

I believe that God has shut us up and brought us to this hour, and put us in a cage like he did Elijah, and caused us to be all by ourselves. He's not been pleased with what we preached to men and women when we had an open door to reach them.

I do not believe God is going to give us another hearing in my day, until with iron-core discipline we quit making a joke out of what it means to be saved by the grace of God, and that when we go out to witness, we'll have something to say.

And I don't believe God is going to put his fire on us until we get back to the gospel that transforms men and women and settles some things at the beginning. I'm so tired of this nice gospel that's made us invent 1 ,700 different terms to make this generation of nice little people who have gone through some sort of emotion and profession or something like that, and we've had to invent all of these terms.

I hear them talking about, he's a born-again Christian of some other kind. He's a praying Christian, that means of some other kind. He's a consecrated Christian, that means of some other kind. Now, that's a bunch of sassy prayers.

He's a Christian who loves the Lord, that means of some other kind. He's a Christian who served in the Lord, that's some other kind. He's a Christian who is all out for Christ, that means of some other kind.

Now, that's not so! That's what our trouble is. We just come on back for ourselves individually and go a little more into Bible truth and find out whether we've got the slightest reasonable evidence to call ourselves a captive of the Lord Jesus Christ.

I don't know whether this is so or not, but I believe it. I just do not believe that we're going to have any kind of fire except false fire until we get back to the gospel. And the gospel is the power of God unto salvation, not your testimony, not you telling somebody what great things the Lord has done for you.

There is no power in that. The power is in the gospel. And we just, well, camp here a while and just say something and come out behind our alibis. Why, it's been 40 years since we've had any Church members who could do anything else except go out and try to get somebody to take Jesus, they've already taken him a dozen times.

Or go out and try to get somebody to come here and preach, when the only kind of personal work there is in the New Testament is to go out and preach the gospel, just like Peter did to old Cornelius. And I hope this school will tear up and burn up before tomorrow, and this church will be wiped off the face of the earth, the world's in bad enough shape, unless we're ready to come under Christ's discipline, quit playing rumble peg, quit making a joke out of what God does when he revolutionizes a man and changes him by his grace, and learn the gospel and go out and every time you can get a sinner still, don't waste time trying to get him to do anything, tell him the thing that's got power to transform men.

It's the God's truth that we've got to quit being little babies and wanting somebody to believe that we are the people in whom the Lord is triumphant for his power and grace. And it's got to come to a place where we've got to take down our sign and quit claiming to be a child of God, unless we're full of the gospel and just spout it off every time we can get a fellow to stand still.

Now, there's been none of that. There's been none of that. All this feverish activity of the flesh, we've been using it as a substitute for doing what we're commanded to do. The Lord never did tell the Church to go into all the world and tell what Jesus means to you.

The Lord never did tell the Church to go into all the world and try to get somebody to make a decision. The Lord never did tell the Church to go out and try to get somebody to come here and somebody to preach.

I guess those things are better than nothing, but we've got to the place now that better than nothing ain't going to get the job done. We're going to have to start doing what the Bible says. That means you're going to have to start the school now, and if you can, quit being so bloomin' religious for a little while, and just come on and be an old sinner saved by grace, I hope, and sit at the feet of the Master, Teacher and the power of the Holy Ghost, until the Lord, having worn out your traditions, can send an army out from this place to do what the Lord told you to do, preach the gospel.

You don't believe that, but it's so. Imagine the Lord hadn't put the hand to kill the Apostle Peter, and finally got the Apostle Peter to leave some of his prejudice behind, and he sent him down to that old Cornelius.

The first thing Cornelius did, said, Brother Cornelius, I've come down here to ask you if you won't take me. Well, we've got Brother Jackson preaching for us, and we'd like you to come out to one of the services.

He didn't say that, did he? No, he just opened up the book and preached! And that's what everybody's going to have to start doing! This is the heart of it. You've got to have a heart of it. Let's look at this passage briefly.

Saul's Conversion and the Call to Obedience

Three times in the book of Acts we have the account of that dramatic experience when Saul of Tarsus was on his way to Damascus on destruction bent, and the Lord Jesus Christ confronted him, revealed himself unto him, and lifted him straight from the anchors, saying, Lord, what wilt I have me do?

Acts 9, Acts 22, Acts 26. Acts 9, Luke does the talking. Acts 22 and 26, the Apostle Paul does the talking. And you're familiar with his experience, an experience that settled something, that from there on out, the Apostle Paul would just be interested in one thing!

He said, Lord, you call the shots, what wilt thou have me do? The old Vance Pabner said, When I was a boy I went to the old-fashioned altar, and I went through the motions the brethren told me to do, and I didn't know much what was going on.

I didn't know one doctrine from the other when I went down there or after I got up. The only thing I knew when I walked out of that little church building that night was that I was under a new master.

That's exactly what happened to Saul of Tarsus. Everything's not settled in a person's conversion experience, but this is, that from now on out, there's just one thing that will make me tick. What wilt thou have me do?

And so the Lord was kind to Paul, and he sent a fellow by the name of Ananias, verse 12. Ananias was a devout man according to the law, having a good report of all the Jews which dwelt there. This fellow Ananias came unto Paul and said, Brother Saul, receive thy sight.

In the same hour I did, and I looked up upon him, and he told me what had happened to me and why it had happened. And here it is. Ananias said to Paul that God of our Father hath chosen thee. Young preachers, if you decide to tackle the doctrine of election, study it at least 30 minutes before you do, because it's been butchered all over this country, and it's been made an enemy of the gospel, and it's led so many people to turn the grace of God into lasciviousness.

That means they haven't got it right. Study it under this aspect, that God of our Father hath chosen thee, for it were that three things would be true of you. First, that thou shouldst know his will. You little peck of wood running around here, I'm saying, and I'm saying to find out what the will of God is.

Well, he'll show it to you when he sees it. All you need to do is get saved. The will of God chooses people. He would be able to live in a God-ordered world. It's to be in the will of God. This got us in the mess we're now in that is totally separated from doing the will of God.

I'll tell you why God laid his hand on you, Paul. I'll tell you why he crossed your path. I'll tell you why he revealed himself to you, so that you'd know the will of God. This is the biggest thing between the eternities, the will of God.

This is the only place a man can fit in, in this world, for this is God's world. I want you to know it, and then I want something else. Second thing, the reason God chose you is that you might see that just one.

He'd reveal himself to you. This is worth fighting for. I'm just not going to waste my time trying to get somebody to change their belief in a certain doctrine, just make you a little meaner. Hear me!

But I will, and please God, whatever it costs, I've been in this battle. Jesus Christ, not believe something about him. They're in the person here whose belief right now is as sound and orthodox as the devil's is.

But Paul, I went down and interfered with you and laid my hand upon you. You might see that just one. Third thing, that thou should hear the voice of his mouth. Until these three things are about you, are true of you, for God's sake, don't touch the doctrine of election, and for God's sake, don't say nothing about being a Christian.

This is it! The devil is a Christian. He's a man or a woman who's been apprehended by Almighty God. The will of God has been made central in his life. That's what conversion is. And it's been made central in his life because he can say, I've seen somebody, and that somebody is the Lord Jesus Christ.

And I have not only seen him, but I've heard the prophet. 167 times in the New Testament, salvation is ascribed to a sinner being enabled by the Spirit of God to respond to the gospel. 167 times. If you haven't seen him, shut up.

If you haven't heard from him, shut up! This world's confused enough as it is. And if you haven't been broken and triumphed over, the freedom you want is the freedom to do the will of God. For God's sake, shut up and come to the mourner's beach and get right with God before you go out to represent him.

Is that just your opinion? No, sir. These three things have got to be true in your experience, or you are misfit. For the 15th verse says, these things God chose you and brought these three things in you, for he's got something for you.

For thou shalt be his witness unto all men. Of what? What you believe about something? No, sir, of what you've seen and heard. This isn't optional. It isn't that God's people ought to be witnesses, it is that God's people are witnesses.

And God's people are witnesses of what they've seen and what they've heard. Now, somebody said, Brother Barnaby, this is in the realm of the supernatural. Sure, sure. But this is why God laid hold on Calvary.

And you've got to get your two plans of salvation or two gospels or something, or you've just got to camp here. This is it. This is it. What does it mean to be saved? What on earth does it mean to be saved?

Salvation as More Than Profession

There ain't a bit of use on earth, us trying to deny the fact that if any of us have ever got to the Lord, it'd be a wonder. How on God's earth anybody could have got saved in the last 40 years is some miracle.

For the biggest joke between the eternities is what it means to be saved. I've had preachers cancel meetings on me when they heard that I said what the Lord said. Not everyone that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, that's good Calvinistic, hard-shell Orthodoxy, isn't it?

Lord, Lord. Not everyone that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter the kingdom of heaven. But who will? He that doeth. The present tense part is simple. And these folks that have got us some little church like Brother Tyner and some little theories and boxed up God so even God's afraid to knock on the door, afraid it'll be in the wrong dispensation.

Why, bless God, they said, Brother Martin, preach this salvation by works. I never did deny it. Unless God Almighty lays hold on you and fixes you so that the one thing that characterizes your life is doing the will of God, you're going to split hell wide open.

That's right. That's right. You had to put up with that fool business for years. Now, Brother, I'm not talking to you about being baptized. I'm not talking to you about joining the church. I'm just talking about being saved, says that prayer.

As if there's anything in the New Testament even smell like that junk. We made a joke out of what it means to be saved. It's a good thing we've invented all those terms. We'd be in a mess. We liable have to repent and lean on Jesus Christ, a Sunday school teacher in a Baptist church in the South, not long ago, 12-year-old boy's class.

A little boy asked the teacher, Do you think Adolf Hitler was saved, was a Christian? And the teacher had been reading our books and listening to us preach and attending the old Sunday school class and listening to all your terminology and believing what she'd heard, the product of what passes for salvation in your day and mine.

And the teacher said, Well, son, we can only hope. We know he didn't live like you ought to, but we can only hope when he was a little boy he gave his heart to Jesus. Since when was salvation believing something?

Since when was salvation a transaction? Since when was salvation something more than believing, something more than a transaction? Since when was salvation anything short of a new birth, not into a peculiar feeling, but a new birth into a new way of life wherein one surrenders oneself utterly to be an instrument of God Almighty's eternal redemptive purpose?

That's what salvation is.

Salvation as Whole-Person Surrender

Have the will of God made known to you, made central in your life. Live in that life in the will of God, doing the will of God. Looking at the glow of the one who by faith is more real to you than mother or father or brother or sister.

No way listening to the voice of his mouth. It would be wonderful if we put back in the hands of King Jesus the only map he's got. To direct our lives. What does it mean to be saved? Surely it means three things.

That faith which is the response of men. That faith that cannot do anything except receive. Faith that recognizes it can make no contribution. For the blessing of the beggar. For his arms and hands. For offering.

Saving has got to mean at least three things. It's got to mean the response of the whole man to the Lord God when he calls. I'm not going to dwell on this, but God only knows how much hell has been caused.

How many souls have been damned, shouting hallelujah just two feet before they got there. Depending on this little stuff they call the salvation of the soul today. Thank the Lord for saving my soul. But the Lord don't save your soul, he saves you.

I'm well aware of the fact that something in the Bible about man is a soul. They got this business about him having a soul. He is a soul. God breathed into Adam and he became a living soul. He lives in a body and he's got a spirit.

Jesus Christ is some phantom that's floating around that will enable us to call ourselves Christians when it hadn't affected us and when we hadn't responded to his call. By the giving not of something we call a soul, but the giving of ourselves.

Nothing less than this total recorner of something floating around in him will pass for conversion. To have confidence in anything else, I don't care how ancient it is and how prized by convention the religion it is, is to delude oneself.

I wish I knew how to get what I'm trying to say. You see, salvation has utterly been divorced from practical living now. Because there's nothing saved about you, Brother Tyner, but something floating around that didn't affect that old body of yours and that mind of yours.

You, you, it's the committal of oneself to Jesus. My soul, because we haven't preached that, we've got this vile body heresy. And out of the vile, vile body heresy has come this situation ethics now. And when had this situation ethics had meant for us fundamental Bible teachers.

Because we stem from interrelationship to this old hope that I live in, and there ain't nothing wrong with that. This flesh of mine is not vile. It ain't that old nature of mine, vile. There's anything vile about this body.

And when we lost that by separation, we opened the gate for what's happening now. Hear me. Saving faith is a response to the all-out givenness of Jesus Christ. And we say, that little took on me because I'll give Jesus anything on God's earth he asked for except myself.

I'll quit chewing tobacco and drinking liquor and quitting adultery and cussing and anything, but I'm not going to relinquish myself. If I had the money, I'd give you a million dollars to help build your school here, but I'm not going to dethrone myself.

The Dethronement of Self and Enthronement of Christ

All the days of your life and mine, salvation has been divorced from the utter dethronement of S-E-L-L, self. And I'm glad God never let me be a pastor, having to fool the bellyaches of unsaved church members who are still sitting on the throne where God says nobody's to sit except Jesus Christ.

Grace upon grace. Mercy upon mercy. Turn this back on his son. The ash of his holy wrath upon him. To burn it! What on God's earth he wanted with me, I'll never know. But he wanted all of me. And that's what salvation is.

What does it mean to be saved? It certainly means that Ralph Barnard is granted the ability, if you can do it, but I hope you will, the greatest privilege and greatest miracle that could ever happen to Ralph Barnard would be to have the ability to take the crown of the universe off of my head and put it on the head of Jesus Christ in order to surrender myself to the will of God in Christ.

That's what sovereignty is. Salvation! That leaves you still deciding what you'll do, isn't worth a dime. In the act, the crisis of conversion, this business has to be settled. If it's not settled, then it'll never be settled by taking sooth and surf afterwards.

It's got to make you a willing captive and slave of the Lord. I know this has been minimized. If I called his name, some of the folks here tonight that I met this summer would recognize him. He said to me the other day, Brother Barnard, send me some books and send me some tapes.

He said, I know that God is God. He said it rings true in here. I know God's sovereign. That just means that he's God, not a pretender. But he said the preachers have all warned not to touch it, that it'd ruin them.

The lack of it's ruined what we call Christianity today. And I know we've minimized this. And yet, absolute, total surrender to the rule of Christ, the will of God, they're the same thing. Anything short of that is not saving faith.

A thinker today says those who seek to eliminate this frickin' element of absolute claim would thus eliminate that which more than anything else throws into sharpest relief the distinctive essence of the living touch of God upon the human spirit.

Ladies and gentlemen, you'll say, What does it mean to be saved? It means it puts you in a place where you do not have the luxury of following your own desires. You do not have the luxury of doing as you please.

You've just got one thing. Lord, what will have me to do? You're just one of a Christian. Now, to get saved doesn't mean that you'll be perfect, but it does mean that you're perfectly committed to one thing.

It doesn't mean that you walk a perfect road, but you walk the perfect road imperfectly. But it does mean, hear me now, for anybody to claim to be a Christian who could sleep five seconds or eat one meal when he's not conscious that he's not in the will of God that's sick.

I can't preach perfectly, but I can preach. I can't live a perfectly holy life, but I can live a holy life. God says I must do some things, but the only thing in the Bible God says I must be is holy. I must do gracious things.

He doesn't ask me to be gracious or be loving, he just tells me to be holy. And holiness is conformity, willingly, to the will of God. Now, that'll cure you of the bellyache if you ever get saved and does just one thing count with you, what's the will of God.

That'll keep you from meddling in somebody else's business, honey. It'll keep you busy. Why, Brother Barnes, you preach in Christian perfection, so does the Bible. You're either headed in that direction or you're headed for hell.

God's not going to be satisfied with anything less, and nobody's going to walk the streets of glory that is utterly conformed to the image of Jesus Christ. God says for you to be holy, how holy, even as I am holy.

A fundamental expression of the Christian life is doing the will of God on earth, regardless of the cost. Then there's submission to the sovereign rule of God in Christ must be present in a saving relationship with Christ.

Now, if I believed this, I could understand how come I'd have to spend most of my time boiling and crying when I'm alone, talking to God about my sins. Of course, if I had this nice little salvation that the will of God's optional, and holiness is optional, I don't think I'd ever have to do that.

I'm just talking to you, my brother. I had a phase, what it actually means to claim to be a Christian. I had a crisis experience, and my will was broken. My evil heart was subdued, and it left me a willing captive.

To where I'd sing this song, I'm not my own. I'm bought with a price that belongs to somebody else. I can see why church would wet these red carpets every time they met for prayer in penitential confession of S .I. in sin.

Not that you've got to cure the batter, but that you fell so short of doing the perfect will of God in your own. I know we can't have a prayer meeting now, Harlow. We just say some prayers and say some words, because we ain't shot anybody lately, neither have we been staked and lashed to the will of God.

And if all is some little things of the flesh, they're bad enough. But when sin is any lack of conformity to the holy law of God, which is the expression of the character of God's person and the expression of his will, then poor brother Barnard has to do a lot of confessing.

I recommend it to you. If you've got surpassed that most of your life isn't one repentance after another, you're going to split hell wide open. You know nothing about salvation. What does it mean to be saved?

It means the response of Roth Barnard, dethroning myself, the enthronement of Christ. How can I enthrone Christ but doing his will? Utter surrender. And it means, in the last place, to respond to Christ's giving of himself, surrendering to be his instrument in his redemptive purpose.

Salvation as a Commission to Witness

I've got messed up here and preached too long to you, but I ain't going to let you go for another minute. Listen to me. I'm 64 years old. I'm not as old as I hope to be, but I'm not as young as I used to be.

For 36-and-a-half years of my 42 years as a minister, I've been hitchhiking from one place to another. I'm just going to share the deepest heartbreak of my poor little ministry. How in the name of God, Brother Jackson, did we get off the track somewhere and preach a nice little gospel that enabled men and women to say, I'm saved, when they're not from that hour on, knee-deep in the business of saving sinners?

We just, well, face it, we've come to a day now when in the pulpit and the pew, you and me put together, we don't give a hoot whether anybody gets saved or not, as long as we live.

Like hogs, like we do.

We are disgraced in things that smell like being a captive of the one that God ransacked heaven and emptied to come down here, though he is rich and become poor. Where on God's earth did we get off the mark of speaking peace to our juniors and intermediates where they can't even sit through a service out here and bubble gum or write notes?

They don't know nothing about salvation. Where did we get off the track of raising up this generation of you men and women, and you haven't wept over a sentence in so long you can't recall? You don't know what it is to be a saved person, because a saved person is a commissioned person.

As my Father has sent me, even so send I you. All the days of my life, only the folks that have got a special call are supposed to be Christians. Isn't that awful? We've got to face it, folks. Folks come to me sometimes and say, Thank you, Brother Barnard, for saving me.

Well, I did. If I'm a Christian, I'm a Savior. Who made me a Savior? The Lord. When did he do it? In John 20, he came and breathed on his people the Holy Spirit and commissioned them. He said, Now, Brother Coots, I want you to do the same thing I'm doing.

He said, The Father sent me down here to represent him, and I'm sending you to represent me. And we've got to be God for some poor old sinner. For your next-door neighbor that you can't even talk to, with your children that don't hear a word you say, O God, help us to take down our sin and surrender ourselves to him.

And you can't surrender to him without surrendering to his redemptive program, to be a Savior. As my Father has sent me, I'm sending you. This is what it means to be saved. We cuss out the Methodists for baptizing infants, and we're just as bad.

We're baptizing folks who haven't the slightest conception of the fact that God Almighty, in saving them, he tries them to possess them. That his last word is not, I save, but I claim to my. If he ever gets to this conception, God will have to get him some secretaries to listen to the prayers and watch the tears of us nice little church people.

He will not live another hour. And to be Savior, the anointing of the Holy Spirit, even Christ wouldn't sit out on his mission until the Spirit came upon him. In Greensboro, North Carolina, one night the pastor got up and said, We've got Miss So-and-So here tonight.

She's a missionary. Is she going to get up and give us a word of testimony and sing a special number? And she did. When she got through, I got up and I was hoping that I might get their attention. I said, It's so good to have a Christian here tonight.

There's no difference between being a Christian and being a missionary.