SALVATION
God’s message of eternal salvation in Scripture is so clear and simple that a child can understand all one needs to know in order to be saved. Christ has accomplished the work of redemption on man’s behalf, and His finished work has been extended to man as a “gift.” Unredeemed man can do no more than simply receive (or reject) God’s gift of redemption through His Son. “Jesus paid it all,” and God is satisfied with the price which His Son has paid. As in the words of Jonah immediately before being delivered from the place of death, “Salvation is of the Lord” (Jonah 2:9). “Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures” (I Cor. 15:3b). This is the gospel of the grace of God, the good news, which unsaved man is to hear. The completeness of the work of salvation through Divine action and the total inability of unredeemed man to act in this realm is seen time after time in Scripture. And the beginning point, allowing a person to come into a correct and proper understanding of salvation by grace, has been placed by God at the very beginning of His Word, in the opening verses of Genesis.
To understand the matter as God Himself has revealed it in His Word, one must begin at this point in Scripture and move progressively forward in the Word, viewing different facets of the subject in the order and after the manner in which God revealed them.
