God‘s salvation is fantastic. It is wonderful in its comprehensive goal. God has promised marvelous blessings for today and tomorrow. We have peace with God through Jesus Christ. Now we are sons of God and it does not yet appear what we shall be. However, it has not always been easy to know how much the salvation is “now” and how much shall be hereafter. Nor have all Christians agreed on what God has done for our salvation in the past or will do in the future.

Salvation: Actual or Possible?

By “past” we may mean the salvation accomplished at Calvary. For all evangelical Christia ns the most important act of God was “that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself” (II Cor. 5:19). Did Christ’s atoning work actually save His elect, or did it only make possible salvation? The God who saves has in Christ provided the actual atonement for His own. The sheep not only hear His voice and follow Him. He has laid down His life for them and therefore their fate is settled. He gives them eternal life and they s hall never perish (John 10)!

Running through Scripture is the clear message that the God who saves actually saves. I know no easy way of reconciling this fact with the equally obvious gospel offer of salvation to all. The older Arminians thought that they had the answer when they reduced the atonement to a possible salvation. This meant that election became an open option rather than a fixed purpose of God to save His own. And Jesus became a Redeemer who was “trying to save.”

The salvation accomplished for us in the past events of Christ’s death and resurrection has meaning only in the light of a deeper, more mysterious, “past.” The question may be put in various ways. Are we saved by the nature of God or by His redemptive will? Is His grace sovereign, His love effectual? Does God only wish to save, or does He actually save? Is the redeemed people of God gathered by man or by God?

Barth‘s Confusions

No theologian in recent times has been more deeply aware of these questions than has Karl Barth. He did not wish to solve the issue as either Calvin or Arminius did. Both in the literature about Barth and in positions (often without this name) reflecting his position, one finds in Reformed circles great sympathy for his idea.

Barth wanted a God who really saves. But to know what God is doing in Christ we cannot go to various Biblical truths. Rather we must come t o know t he saving God only from Christ. The Christ event reveals a gracious God who is redemptively gracious to all. God is effectually reconciled to all men in Christ. But what of “election”? In answering this question Barth reveals a consistent universalism. Basically for him election is not the choice of some people, but t he choice of the human race in Christ.

Barth knows full well that he has radically departed from Calvin. He also recognizes various kinds of elections and rejections in the Bible. There is the “elect” community (the church) and the “rejected” community (Israel). There are elect individuals and rejected individuals. But in both cases both elect and rejected are elected in Christ. The only difference is that the “elect” know their election and the rejected do not know that they too are elected in Christ.

What Bible and Creed Teach

Barth thus had his own paradoxical way of dealing with the discrepancy between his “universal election” and empirical reality. But in the Bible the God who saves carries out his election effectively. Thus the Canons of Dort correctly reach a coordination between elect and true believers. The atonement by the Son and the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit extend to all the elect. The God who actually saves brings the elect unto a saving faith. Those whom He predestinated He also called (Rom. 8:30).

God Also Sanctifies

Does the God who saves always ~lso sanctify His own? In some circles it has become popular to speak of the church as the body of the forgiven ones. And such they are. But they must be and are also the changed ones. The Heidelberg Catechism says “Because Christ, having redeemed by His blood, also renews us by His Holy Spirit after His own image” (L.D. 32). And in the Canons of Dort we find one of the marks of election and salvation as deliverance from the dominion and slavery of sin (5th Head of Doctrine, Art. 1). (Also rejection of errors p. 5 quoting I John 3:24.)

Imperfect Saints

The Reformed Creeds, however, hasten to add great restrictions on the extent of God’s saving work in the Christian here and now. Having established Calvin’s principle that God justifies no one whom He does not also sanctify, they hasten to portray the Christian as still very imperfect. This is as the old communion form suggests, “that it might not discourage the contrite hearts of the faithful as if no one might come but he who is without sin.” In fact, the Calvinistic liturgies often speak of Christians as “miserable sinners.”

Has this often repeated teaching of the miserable Christian led to a negative attitude and even to a deliberate “imperfectionism”? The Creeds nowhere teach that a Christian is totally depraved. Quite the opposite! It is just the Calvinist who requires a third mark in true believers. He knows a God who renders our will “good, obedient, and pliable, Who actuates and strengthens it, that like a good tree, it may bring forth the fruits of good action” (Canons of Dort III–IV Art. 11). And Art. 14 not only speaks of the beginning of the work of grace in us, but of perfecting it by the hearing and reading of His Word.

A Future Perfection

God, however, does not perfect our salvation in this life. He does do great things for His saints. He wants us to reach for the stars, i.e. to have the highest of goals. But we should know how far we are from them! Perhaps, the higher we reach the more we will realize how high the goal really is.

The same kind of questioning mind which wonders why God does not save everybody must also be puzzled by the imperfection of His saving work in this life. Why so late? Why so little? Why still so lit. tie wisdom, so little faith , so little change? Why so little victory over foes within and without. Undoubtedly, God has His own reasons for applying His salvation as He pleases.

He wants us to look to Him for help. But He also wants us to know that He can and will do great things. He can and does make saints out of sinners. His saving, sanctifying work is often much more wonderful than we realize. Have we forgotten what He began to work with?

A Complete Salvation

The God who saves not only wants to “save our soul.” No one can overestimate what this must mean. Indeed our whole salvation may be expressed as the gift of eternal life. But the God who saves certainly saves our whole self, body and soul. And in saving people, He extends the blessings of His redeeming work to every relationship of our life.

Let me use one illustration of how Christ not only gives personal joy and peace by renewing us spiritually, but also reaches out into our environment. I believe that God in saving Christian men and women also saves the home. Our good old form for marriage has a most profound insight into the blessing of the Christian home. It is an instrument for the glory of God. The Kingdom of God comes into the world through it. In it the Covenant is realized and extended. And what a daring thing follows when Christian marriage is called the foundation of a Christian society. No, it will not be heaven on earth. Nor will it be hell on earth. But, marvel of marvels, it will afford a “foretaste of the eternal home.” This is only one example of what we mean by holding that God not only forgives us and changes our persons, but also saves our environment.

The God who saves builds His kingdom here and now in this world. For His own mysterious reasons the world seems to be experiencing a withdrawal of His grace. Where once he kept the feet from falling, the tears from flowing, now there is nothing but stumbling and grief and the sad collapse of Christian structures.

Still the God who saves will continue to see His children through. They will be preserved by His power and persevere by His grace. We do not know why His people must suffer so much. The time has come to look for a better, i.e. a heavenly country. In a very real sense we are saved in hope. Someday the God who spared not His Son but delivered Him up for us all, will freely give us all things. He who has loved us and forgiven us and already changed us will one day perfect the work He has begun. And in that place where no sin or evil, no tear, or temptation shall enter we shall know fully what it means that God is the God who saves.