“When Christ died, He died for you
individually just as much as if you’d been the only person in the world.”
— C.S. Lewis (1898–1963)
Just as God is not just many
things, but is basically characterised somehow in everything (even evil is a
response to God and to what God does and has done) there are a plethora of
nuances to the subject of salvation. Jesus Christ has saved the entire world,
but just as much he has saved you and I from a death that was ordained from our
birth in the mortal body; we experience death just once, because when we are
saved by grace through faith we gain confidence in the fact that we are kept in
God by true allegiance to the Messiah—by having understood a little of what has
been done for us, personally; a thing so magnificent that it has been done
without any hint of God ever rescinding or revising it.
Having been saved, no eternal harm
comes our way; only access to the completeness of God’s love.
Having been saved to enjoy
fellowship within Christian community, we can just as much say we have been
saved, individually, without condition to exist within community. But, in
knowing that, we should also know that very many blessings of salvation become
extant in relationship with others. God speaks through others.
Credence for Life and the Father’s Love
Just as much we are saved
individually as we are saved corporately—God’s entire creation; humankind.
If we have been saved,
backtracking a little, we have been created, and all have been created.
Credence for life cohabits with our salvation and both point to the Father’s
love. The Father loves us, individually, so much—and we will never comprehend
this—the full-term pregnant breadth of this knowledge—that he did not spare the
closest part of himself to reach in to the deepest part of every one of our
lives.
The Father reaches in, today, for
you, for me, expensively, for all eternity.
We were created out of the Father’s
love, and just as much we were created to be saved; to be one with God. These
two concepts—creation and salvation—co-exist and have an essential unity. Both
are borne on the wings of the Father’s love; a love so perfect, so divine, it
sweeps every portion of incomplete love down a river of oblivion never to be
known again.
***
As each of us was born special to the
Father, having been created and moulded in the womb, each of us the Father
desires to save. The Father’s desire is so intense he gave his Son as an
eternal sacrifice that every created one would have a path back to God.
© 2013 S. J. Wickham.
No comments:
Post a Comment