Judgment day: What are we saved from?

On this day, what is it we are saved from?  Sometimes it is stated that 'we are saved from our sins' but while there is a truth to that, it is not our sins we are saved from.   Deliverance from sin is certainly a desirable thing.  But sin itself, has consequence.  As John the Baptist once preached, “Brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” (Matthew 3:7), we need to know what it is we are to be fleeing!

We are in enmity to God for our sin, and that enmity is the key matter.   Romans 5:9 states, "More then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him."  Yet this does not really tell us what we are delivered from, other than say it is wrath we are saved from. 

Wrath is anger in another word. 

To read another passage, 1 Thessalonians 1:10, "and to wait for His Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead, even Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come." we learn that wrath is yet to come.  So even the immediate consequence of our sin is not what we are saved from, for there appears a wrath to come. 

We find the answer to the question, "What is it we are saved from?" when we change the subject ever so slightly.  The better question then is to ask, "Whose wrath is it we are saved from?"  Now we are getting to the meat of the matter!  The wrath to come is that holy anger a just God would be expected to have toward those who do not measure up.  Those who have not been 'holy as He is holy' (Leviticus 11:44, 1 Peter 1:15-16), and as a result of their sin (your sin, dear reader!) immediate consequences are not the issue at all.  In fact, one might make a case that immediate consequences are a divine blessing, for they make us to more readily see our sin for what it is, if we are honest with ourselves.

No, we are saved from the wrath of Almighty God Himself, as a right consequence of our sinfulness.  Not only do we not measure up, we rebel against our creator daily.  It is only the very mercy of God at all that I can live long enough to write this, or that you are able to read it. 

So the next time you think about Christian salvation, think of it in context of deliverance - not from our sin, but from the just and holy judgment of them - Salvation is possible all because Jesus the Christ, the seed of Abraham, lived a perfectly holy and sinless life and was willing to take your punishment on the cross.

Beloved - Please call upon Christ to save you if you do not have such hope!