So Great Salvation, Outline — Paris Reidhead

The Biblical Foundation of So Great Salvation

Our text this morning is found in Hebrews chapter 2, verses 1 through 4. But as we have done in the past, I suggest that you include the first verse of the first chapter and the first phrase or clause of the second verse.

God who at sundry times and in divers manners speak in times past unto the fathers by the prophets hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son. Therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at any time we should let them slip.

For if the word spoken by angels was steadfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompense of reward, how shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation, which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord?

If there were room, I would suggest that you title the outline that you have in your hands, so great salvation, for all that we shall consider this morning is included in this great salvation. Attached with this definition of his grace is also the warning.

God has spoken in past by prophets, but now he has spoken by his Son. We ought to give the more earnest heed, for how shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation? You will understand, of course, that I am referring to those areas of truth which might well and properly be included under the general heading of sanctification.

But viewing them in the light of this fourth verse and understanding that Hebrews is written to Christians, I believe it is eminently right and proper that this title should prevail. We, therefore, will call this so great salvation.

The Holy Spirit Presents Christ to the Sinner

The first that I would have you consider is titled,. A. The Holy Spirit presents Christ to the sinner. The Holy Spirit presents Christ to the sinner. This we must understand. It is the work of God to present him.

Just as heaven was cleft asunder and the angel swept across the plains of Bethlehem and sang to the relief of the earth's misery, unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior who is Christ the Lord.

So we should understand that it is God who presents to us the testimony concerning his Son. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth on him should not perish but have everlasting life.

God as Father purposed our salvation before the foundation of the world. God as Son provided our salvation in the fullness of time. God as Holy Spirit waits now to perfect in the believer all that the Father purposed and all that the Son provided.

We therefore view this great salvation in this light. It is the work of the Holy Spirit to present Christ to the sinner. The first phase of this operation is the awakening of the sinner. That which we would title number one, awakening of the sinner, is a work which only he can perform.

Awakening the Sinner to Danger

You can beg your children to repent. You can entreat your neighbors to repent. You can command those dear to you to repent, but you cannot awaken them. This is that work which he does. I believe we find it referred to in Romans 8, 13 and 14, where he is described as the spirit of bondage again to fear.

God in his holiness, God in his righteousness, God in his sovereignty, God in his justice, reveals something of that which has caused men to fall upon their faces in terror and awakens the sinner to his jeopardy, awakens him to his danger.

Now I believe that if you have unsaved loved ones, you may have been praying in error if the content of your prayer has been, Lord, save my son, my daughter, my neighbors, my friend, my employer, my employees.

Lord, save is the wrong place to begin. All of this is salvation, but we must begin at the beginning. And therefore our prayer ought to be, O God, slay, slay my sinner friends, slay them, awaken them to their danger.

And this is the first phase of divine operation. When God in his sovereignty and in his power and in his love pierces through the skin of self-righteousness and complacency that the sinner has placed over his conscience and causes him to know that he stands in the place of danger.

The awakening of the sinner is the first gracious act of the Holy Spirit in presenting Christ to the sinner. Number two, it is conviction. Awakening simply alerts the conscience to the reception of further light and further truth.

Conviction Through the Law

That word which previously fell as seed upon the pavement now falls upon ground that's been pierced and broken and the seed finds lodgment. But we must understand that God has given in this wonderful book, the Bible, a class of scriptures which are designed to correspond to each phase of the divine operation.

When a hundred years ago, earnest scholars decreed that the law had no relationship to the preaching of the gospel, they deprived the Holy Ghost in the areas where their mood prevailed of the only instrument with which he'd ever armed himself to prepare sinners for grace.

Now the gospel is essentially this, Christ died for our sins according to the scripture. But there is nothing in this truth or statement that produces conviction of sin. It was the law that God intended to be the instrument of preparation, for by the law is the knowledge of sin.

The law was given that sin might acquire the character of transgression. The law was given that every mouth might be stopped and all the world might become guilty before God. And it is an awareness of guilt that stops the mouth.

Therefore, there is the proper use of the law. Wesley, in writing of this to his young preacher, said, let your content of your message be in the beginning of your ministry, ninety percent law and ten percent grace.

And as the Spirit of God uses the law content to affect its appointed operation, it will gradually be changed until ultimately it will be ninety percent grace and ten percent law. But we have now had in our land for the last fifty years a message which is emphatically and almost universally one hundred percent grace.

And the consequence of that is we have gospel hardened a generation of sinners that have learned how to be saved before they've ever seen themselves, before they've ever seen their sin, before there's ever been a lancing of the heart and a piercing of the spirit, a dividing asunder of soul and spirit, that the enormity of the crime of sin could appear to their smitten eyes.

And so by every means of communication possible, we have told them that Christ saves sinners, but we have not used the word that allows God to bring them to the awareness of their sin. And so they've said, well, if you ever find a sinner, this is good.

But as for me, it doesn't apply. And therefore, we must understand that the spirit of God is the one of whom the Lord Jesus said, when he has come, he will convict the world of sin, of righteousness and of judgment.

But he also said we were laborers together with him. We therefore need give ourselves to the word in order that we may understand how to cooperate with the Holy Ghost in placing the lancet of truth, the scalpel of truth into the hands of the heavenly surgeon to do the work in the hearts of sinners.

Repentance and Saving Faith

The third phase of operation following hard upon this of conviction is that of repentance. For in conviction, it is revealed that the sinner is a monster who has revolted against the just and holy sovereign, one who has the right to reign and the right to rule and the character to accompany his right.

But in the place of acknowledging the right and sovereignty of God, the sinner has, as Isaiah said, turned to his own way and has installed himself as sovereign in his life and ruler upon the throne of his heart and made himself God.

And this is the reason why God holds sin to be a crime, punishable by eternal separation from his presence, because it is essentially self-idolatry. It is turning to one's own way in the sense of holding that one is adequate to choose how to be happy, how to govern his life, how to please himself.

And so as the Spirit of God convicts the sinner of this crime of treason against God, so he produces in his heart a revulsion in regard to this crime. And this revulsion, this repudiation, this abnegation of the right to rule is covered by the theological term repentance.

For it means a change of mind, a change of intention and direction, and it indicates that there has been a permanent setting aside of this principle of self-rule in the place of the acknowledgement of the only true and proper sovereign, Jesus Christ our Lord.

The following upon repentance, there is the next phase of divine operation, wherein the Spirit of God enables the sinner to savingly believe. And so we will call number four, saving faith. There is, of course, another quality of faith in exercise before this.

Faith in the credibility of the Scripture, faith in the truth of the Word, faith in the assertions of the truth concerning one's own heart. There is an exercise of faith preceding this. But up until this point, there is not faith to savingly relate one to a man who lived and died two thousand years previously.

And this is the word that we hear today from the throats of men on every hand, that Jesus Christ is irrelevant. How can a man who lived and died so long ago have any significance in the life of a twentieth-century citizen?

It is the Spirit of God that bridges this impossible gap and enables the smitten, repentant sinner to see that Jesus Christ was on the cross as his representative, as his personal substitute. It is a faith that is quickened by God in the heart, resting upon the Word, that enables one to reach across two thousand years and savingly embrace the Son of God.

This faith, I say, is more than a crediting of the statements of the Word to be true. It is that, but it's infinitely more than that. It is more than faith in the substantial propriety, rightness, and ability of the plan of salvation to affect salvation.

It is that. It's more than that. This faith is a personal reception of Jesus Christ as the living God who died and rose from the dead. And it is quickened by the Holy Ghost, and it results in the incoming of God in life.

Justification and Regeneration

This we have in number 5A. First, it is justification. Number 5A is justification. It has reference to the legal transaction that takes place in heaven. It has reference to that work which is done at the moment of saving faith, wherein all of a sinner's crimes are counted to Jesus Christ.

We have said that it is faith that Jesus died as the sinner in his place instead. And on the basis of this faith being exercised, God the Holy Ghost witnesses to the heart that all of past sins were counted to Christ.

And the other side of this blessed truth of justification is that the righteousness of Jesus Christ was counted to the repentant sinner. So upon the exercise of faith, there is justification. The sinner's crimes are counted to Christ, and the purity and righteousness of Christ are counted to the believer.

Glorious indeed it is that we are justified by faith, justified by grace, justified through faith in his blood. Justification. It was this note and truth that became the watchword, yea, the very leverage of the Protestant Reformation under Martin Luther.

As he announced to a world that was weary in its chains of penance and ceremony, that justification came through faith in the finished work of God's Son. But justification takes place in the legal department.

Justification takes place in heaven. And so 5B is regeneration. It is that work of the Spirit of God wherein he unites himself to the believer. And this one is now said to be born again. He has been converted.

He has been made partaker of life, for life is not in a plan or a scripture or a decision, but life is in a person. And he that hath the Son hath life. And thus it is that at this moment of saving faith, two glorious things take place.

One in heaven affecting the legal standing, the other in the heart uniting one to God wherein he becomes a partaker of life. And thus we find that here we have the loss, the message that characterized the Wesleyan movement.

For 100 or 200 years after Luther, the world had lost sight of all the dynamic of justification by faith. It was John Wesley that was wonderfully born again. As an Anglican missionary listening to Pastor Burkhart at Aldersgate Street read Luther's introduction to the book of Romans, John Wesley said his heart was strangely warm.

And so that great movement in England was marked by the emphasis of the truth that the moment you are born again of the Spirit of God, you are regenerated by the Spirit. And you know this by that which we have called number six, the witness of the Spirit to regeneration.

The Witness of the Spirit and Adoption

No one in this universe has the right to tell a soul they're saved, but the God who saves them. And so it is as the Spirit presents the Lord Jesus to the sinner, awakening him, convicting him, bringing him to repentance, quickening faith, regenerating him.

He also is the Spirit of adoption bearing witness with our spirit that we are the children of God. Incalculable is the harm that's been done by a good, well-meaning people such as myself as 14 years of my ministry was characterized by this, assuming the prerogative of the Holy Ghost of telling people they were born of God.

Let me say it again. No one in the universe has the right to tell a soul they're born of God, but the God who gives them life. And they need not be told, for when they've been made partakers of his life, which is in his Son, he tells them.

And they know. We find this given not only in Romans 8, 15 and 16. We've not received the spirit of bondage again to fear, but the spirit of adoption whereby we cry, Abba, Father. It is found also in Galatians 4, 4 to 6, wherein we read, In the fullness of time God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that they might receive the adoption of sons.

And since they are sons, God has sent forth the spirit of his Son into their hearts, whereby they cry, Abba, Father. And again, we find this given to us in John's epistle. And hereby we know that we know him by his spirit which he has given us.

And in 1 John 5, 10, He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness within himself. We tell sinners how holy God is. Try by the law to get them to see how sinful they are. We tell them what God has done to redeem them.

And then we turn and tell them what they must do to partake of his redemption. But having done that, we have exhausted all that we can do in their behalf. It is then the Spirit of God that must do the rest.

And oh, how vitally important it is that we should allow him to exercise his sovereign prerogative as spirit of adoption and never assume to ourselves the right to tell us all that they've been born of God.

For if that initial consciousness of participation in his life comes from us, and even should it be that they are forgiven and his child, we have done them the irreparable damage, at least damage beyond calculation, of depriving them of knowing the Lord for themselves on that initial step into the Christian life.

And so I entreat you to understand this. But we turn now to that which we call the Christ presents the Holy Spirit to the believer. The Spirit presents Christ to the sinner, and Christ presents the Holy Spirit to the believer.

Temptation and the Possibility of Failure

Having given you the title, we shall proceed with that first item, number seven. This we call, for want of a better name, temptation and the possibility of failure. I do not say the inevitability. Never should we ever think of sin as inevitable.

I say temptation, inevitable temptation, and the possibility of sin and disobedience. I am confident that if I speak to those that have walked long in the way, you will remember that when first you came to know the Lord and were certain of pardon, that you purposed in your heart never to have anything to do with sin thereafter, that there was a holy abhorrence that was given.

And you will remember the shock, the chagrin, the humiliation, the grief, even some of us the despair, when after you'd come to peace in Christ, you discovered that you were still capable of sin. And I will remind you also of the fact that you had perhaps thought that in becoming a Christian, the battle with sin was over, for certainly you'd hated it.

And yet now, a child of God forgiven, having testified that you've been washed in his blood and born of his spirit, you have come into temptation. May I submit to you that you were incapable of being tempted like this before you were born of God.

Because previously to that time, your will was set to please yourself. It may have been alternatives as to how you would please yourself that were somewhat frustrating, but it was impossible for the sinner to have temptation.

He could know the frustration between that which his society said he should do and that which he wanted to do, but he couldn't be tempted because temptation is a proposition presented to a repentant mind to rebel against the will of God, take matters in his own hands, and choose to please himself contrary to the commitment of his heart and the intelligence of his mind.

And this couldn't happen until after one had truly repented and committed his will to God. And so we discover that early after we're born again, there is this temptation and the possibility of sin and a failure.

And undoubtedly, it's been your experience. It need not have been, for the scripture says, God is faithful who will not suffer you to be tempted above what you are able, but will with the temptation make a way of escape that you may be able to bear it.

I did not say you had to sin. I did say you would be tempted to sin. And I also say the probability is that you did. May I even go further and say confidently that I am certain that you did. What is the result then?

What is the result? Well, number eight tells us what it is. It is brokenness, confession, and cleansing. Now, it isn't as though you passed number seven and were past it, but this is something that will accompany you as long as you live.

For the last step that you take, you may be a hundred years old in your hospital room, having walked faithfully with the Lord for those hundred years. And the nurse doesn't respond to the button that you pushed as quickly as you want.

And there's the possibility that you can become incensed, impatient, angry. And even there, just one foot out of heaven, one step from the threshold, have grieved the Spirit of God. So let us not think that number seven is something that happens to you and then is finished.

But as long as you live, you will be subject to temptation and the possibility of sin. There never will come a time in your life, a time in your experience, when you are beyond the possibility of sin and of temptation.

Never will there come such a time or hour. I'm not saying that. I'm saying that you encounter it here. You will continue to encounter it thereafter. But this is God's provision. Number eight is brokenness.

Brokenness, Confession, and Cleansing

The Scripture says, If we judge ourselves, we should not be judged. For when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world. When you see someone that names the name of Christ, that continuously and persistently lives in sin, knowingly disobeying the clear word of God, you have only one of two alternatives.

Either the one is mentally incompetent and incapable of seeing the significance of moral requirement upon them, or else they are obviously not born of God. For whosoever is born of God does not habitually keep on practicing sin, for his seed remaineth in him, and he cannot continue to sin because he is born of God.

In this is manifest the children of God and the children of the devil. Oh, it is easy for one to take profession. It is easy for one to learn Scripture verses. It is easy for one to accept the terminology and the verbiage of the church, and yet to have an impenitent, unconverted heart.

But we're talking of the child of God who hates sin, and has no intention of practicing it or continuing in it, and is appalled when tempted and grieved beyond words when failing, and knows nothing so much as desire to be cleansed from it.

And so we come then to this matter of brokenness. It is the word of God that he said was to cleanse us. Now you're clean through the word. It is acquaintance with the word. The word is the labor to the soul.

It is to be viewed for two purposes. First, to show us wherein we've grieved God, and secondly, to make show us the provision for cleansing. And so it is acquaintance with God's word, with God's standard, with God's intention that reveals to you that word, thought, attitude, or act is grieving to the Holy Ghost.

If you've been born of God, there's no issue in regard to whether or not you're going to continue. You settle this in repentance. Now it's a matter simply of dealing with the matter in the prescribed way.

This is brokenness, judging yourself, forsaking the sin, and then confession. Confession inevitably has to be twofold. First, it has to be toward God. For all sin, every sin is primarily toward God. David had sinned against Bathsheba, Uriah, against his family, against the nation, but when he came in the penitential psalm, he was smitten through with the revelation of the enormity of his guilt, and he cried out, against thee and thee only have I sinned and done this evil in thy sight.

And all sin must inevitably be seen as against God. And so the brokenness must be not because of the danger in which it places you, but because of the fact that it is to impugn the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord, who loved us and gave himself for us and shed his blood on our behalf.

We ought not to primarily break before God because we stand in jeopardy, though certainly we do, for God is righteous and holy, and he's too holy to look upon sin, and he has no respect of persons, and he will deal with it as it's a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God, said the writer of Hebrews.

But that is not the primary motivation for brokenness, the danger in which it's placed you. It is because of what it has done to God, because of the impugning of his name and his reputation. The specific, the positive commandment was, whether you eat or whether you drink, do all in the name, on account of the glory of Jesus Christ.

Whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name or on account of the reputation of Christ. And therefore, every sin is against the glory of God and against the name and reputation of Christ. And it is so to be viewed.

And in the light of this, therefore, we understand that brokenness is based upon the fact that we've grieved him whose name is holy, and confession must be to him. Confession is specific. God said that when we confess, we are to say with.

The use of the word has determined this. The choice of words that God used to employ this truth tells us that to confess means to call it by name, to say with God what he says. And therefore, confession is not complete until one has said what God says.

But remember, sin does two things. It not only puts a roof over us that separates us from God, but it puts walls around us that separate us from each other. And when this is done, though not all sin does this, because there are those which are primarily toward him.

But when this is done, then there ought to be a dealing. If it is the church, then it is before the church. If it's a family, it's before the family. If it's an individual, it's to the individual. And the consequence of this is that we are to recognize that God is going to determine how far this is to be done.

But brokenness, true brokenness, does not hesitate when God asks. It is prepared to meet his terms. So then there is brokenness, confession, and cleansing. His word says the blood of Jesus Christ, his son, cleanseth us from all sin.

This must go on as long as there's failure or disobedience. If at the last step of your life, having lived and taught for years, you are brought to the place of disobedience, then you must return to this which we've called number eight.

Identification with Christ

But quickly go on with me to number nine, identification with Christ. This carries us to the book of Romans. In Romans chapter five, we see Christ dying for us. In Romans chapter six, we see Christ dying as us.

And in Romans chapter eight, we see Christ living in us. And it is here at this sixth chapter that the matter of identification is found. Christ dying as us. Christ died not only for you, but he died as you.

He was there as your representative, accepted by the Father, now accepted by you. The day Jesus Christ died, you died believing her. It's already settled. Historically, it's fixed. This is the day you died.

Some of you have been in agony, even anguish, because you've been trying to establish another day of death. You've been trying to feel dead. You've been trying, as it were, to slay yourselves. And you failed of it.

Oh, that you can see that the day that he died, you died knowing this, that our old man is crucified with Christ, recognizing that he was not simply there for himself performing an act which you could view, but he was there as you doing what you ought to have done.

And God accepted the death of Christ as your death. And you have died. And therefore, you're no longer under the tyranny of yourself, your disposition, your traits, and habits, and the world with all of its tempting power.

Reckon yourself to be dead indeed under sin is the emancipation proclamation of the believer. And so here at this ninth step, we come to this phase of truth, identification with Christ. We have three enemies, the flesh, the world, and the devil.

So our identification is complete with Christ. We read in Romans 6, 6, we are crucified with him. In Romans 6, 4, we are buried with him. In Ephesians 2, 5, we are quickened with him. In Ephesians 2, 5, we are raised with him.

And in Ephesians 2, 6, we are seated together in the heavenlies in Christ. See it now, our identification in every phase of his work. Crucified with him gives us victory over ourselves. Buried with him gives us victory over the world.

And seated with him gives us victory over principalities and over powers. And thus we said, abide in me. Live in me, crucified with me, to have victory over yourself. Live in me, buried with me, to have victory over the world.

Live in me, seated with me, to have victory over principalities and over powers. Oh, how great is this salvation and how infinitely dangerous is its neglect. For when God has provided victory over the world, the flesh, and the devil, you are certainly placing yourself in hourly jeopardy to spurn or to neglect so great salvation.

Presenting the Body as a Living Sacrifice

But we find that identification, as complete as it is, is not the end. For number 10, we will now call presenting your body a living sacrifice. Presentation of your body. Well, we find that at Romans 12, 1, you are past Romans 6.

This is a simple thing, but one we must understand. Romans 12 follows Romans 6. And Romans 12, 1 says, present your body a living sacrifice. How many there are that have sought to obey Romans 12, 1 and 2 that have failed to obey Romans 6 and consequently have never seen any result from their submission to Romans 12, 1 and 2?

It behooves you, therefore, to recognize that you can't present your body a living sacrifice until you've presented yourself to the cross. And therefore, there must be, as Paul said, this dual understanding.

I am crucified with Christ, Romans 6. Christ liveth in me the presenting of your body as we find it in Romans 12, 1 and 2. He asks you to take your place on the cross with Him, union with Him in His death.

Then He asks you to present your whole body and all of its functions. He asks you to give Him your brain so that living in you, He can use your brain to think His thoughts and get them into the world.

He asks you to present your eyes, your ears, your hands, your feet, your heart, your lips. That He might again fill you with Himself and live through your body, His own life. Reginald Wallace said, the greatest day of my Christian life was the day I discovered I couldn't live it and God didn't intend me to.

And then and then alone was I willing to invite the Lord Jesus to live in me His own life. And this I submit to you must follow, first presenting yourself to the cross and then presenting your body to the Lord.

Receiving Faith and the Fullness of the Spirit

We find that following this you come to that eleventh point and this is receiving faith. You remember that when John the Baptist began his ministry he said, repent and be baptized for there's one coming after me who's preferred before me.

He it is that will baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire. There is a verse that's caused confusion in some minds. It says, by one spirit are we baptized into one body. And that verse might well be placed alongside of A in your outline.

For you have seen the process of the Spirit of God baptizing you into the body of Christ. But what our Lord said, what John said of him and what he said of himself was not that by the Spirit you'd be put into the body, that is clear.

But it says, repent for there's one coming after me preferred before me. He it is that baptizeth you with the Spirit and with fire. And so at the very outset of the preaching John the Baptist said, the purpose for repentance is not to escape the fire that will burn up the chaff, nor to go into heaven.

The purpose for repentance is to know God, to know him by his indwelling presence, to know him in his fullness. This is the end of God's grace and how great has been our harm to the cause of Christ by implying that salvation stopped with point 5A and allowing people to be content there with a sense of forgiveness and assurance of pardon and failing to exhort them to go on under maturity and not to neglect so great salvation.

For that salvation includes a faith that reaches out to receive the fullness of Christ. You find that presented to you in Ephesians 3, verses 14 to 21, and I quote from the 16th verse wherein we read that Christ may take up his lasting dwelling place in your heart through faith.

You were born of the Spirit, but you were not born full of the Spirit or filled with the Spirit. You were born of the Spirit, but it remained for you to understand that there's preparation. I've used the analogy, when a child is born into the wealthy home, the father establishes a trust of several millions of dollars.

But hear me, the father doesn't convert the money into dollar bills and stuff them into the cradle. He has it on call for the son as the child can mature and profitably use that which has been given to him.

And so when you were born of God, all that God prepared for them that loved him was yours, but God didn't smother you with blessing. He waited for you to obey him and to walk in the light and to step into truth and to reach in faith.

And there's conditions in a trust, and likewise there's conditions in your receiving that which God has prepared for them that love him. And so we understand there's receiving faith that reaches out to take the promise of the Father, which is the fullness of the Holy Spirit.

And thus, there again, the just shall live by faith, they shall live by faith. And there is that faith which he quickens to your heart that will enable you to embrace the cross and all that it will do to slay and present your body and all that it means in abandoning right to him, and faith that reaches out to receive the fullness of the Holy Spirit.