Forgiveness not the End; then saved through His Life

God showed me something really neat in Romans 5 yesterday morning.

⁹Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him! ¹⁰For if, when we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!

There are two things happening here, reconciliation and salvation. They are indeed different and unique experiences from one another. In the past I've always seen them as one. But now, mostly because of this life I live in the Body of Christ, I see them as distinct.

First there is the reconciliation, a returning to the God, brought on by the shed blood of Christ. Without the sacrifice of Christ I would not be justified before Him. I would still be alienated and apart from Him. But with one great and sweeping move of God's love, a door is opened for me to move to Him. But this is not salvation. It is merely reconciliation. I am not saved until I completely enter into His life. That's why it says I will be "saved through his life." Blood produces the reconciliation. But His Life brings about salvation.

It's clear here that being reconciled is not the end but only the means to the end. Christ came that we might have Life and have it abundantly! He did not come just so that I would have my sins forgiven. In fact, such a great sacrifice would be a shame if there was not more than simply a forgiveness of sins. You can wipe away my sins, and you can make me white as snow, but there still must be a replacement of that sad life I just escaped. That replacement is God's very aim. He wants us to have LIFE! He wants us to be saved through Him. "...how much more shall we be saved?"  

In my experience, sadly, many Christians have only known remission of sins, but not salvation to life. I was certainly one of them, that is until I heard the Gospel. The Gospel, I tell you, is the good news that there is Life right here on planet earth and that Life is not in going to church on Sundays, but going into the hearts of brothers and sisters who dwell in unity. I get to live everyday with close brothers and sisters who are all going after the same thing, that is, salvation through Christ's Life. It's an ongoing process in some respects. But it's a real one none-the-less. Christ has indeed inherited His people; He is risen and returned to the Earth, where His new Body is a Body of lovely and real relationships, where joy and honesty, peace and compassion, happiness and sorrow, and every other emotion known to man, is wrapped up in our daily affairs with one another. This wrapping is the Glory of God revealed in the Truth of Christ right here in our midst.

I, for the first time, am being saved through His Life, through this Life. Tomorrow I will be saved again. And so it will be the day after that. In fact, everyday I choose to live life for the love of those around me, giving all I can of it away, that's a day I will be saved through His Life once again. I thank God for the Blood of Christ, for that sacrifice of atonement and the forgiveness of my sins. But I shout from the mountaintops about something even greater... that now, having been reconciled, we can in fact be saved through His Life!