‘I hope all of us are clear in our minds that salvation is more than the forgiveness of sins. Salvation and forgiveness are not convertible or interchangeable terms. Salvation is bigger than forgiveness. It includes, for example, holiness. So that in verse 9 we are told that ‘God, who saved us’ also, and simultaneously ‘called us with a holy calling.’ So the ‘holy calling’ is an integral part of the plan of salvation. So is the immortality which Paul comes to in the next verse: ‘Christ Jesus brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel.’ So we may say that forgiveness and holiness and immortality are all aspects of our salvation.
Salvation is a good word; it denotes that comprehensive purpose of God by which He justifies, sanctifies, and glorifies His people: first pardoning their offences and accepting them as righteous in His sight; then progressively transforming them by His Spirit into the image of Christ, until finally they become like Christ in heaven, when they see Him as He is, and their bodies are raised incorruptible like Christ’s body of glory. I long to rescue salvation from the narrow concepts to which even Evangelical Christians sometimes reduce it. Let us not minimise the greatness of so great a salvation.’
John Stott in zijn bijbellezing over 2 Timotheüs 1, tijdens de Keswick Convention van 1969.
Fragment komt uit: John Stott, John Stott at Keswick. A Lifetime of Preaching, Authentic Media (2008), p.99-100.
Geen opmerkingen:
Een reactie posten