The Nature Of Salvation

It’s vacation time, and you’ve decided to go on a hiking trip through a large national forest.  Many miles into your hike, your GPS goes out and it isn’t long before you realize you’re lost.  Then to make matters worse, you slip while walking along a hillside and take a nasty fall – breaking your leg. 

After serveral days of calling out and hoping for someone to find you, things get only worse.  Your leg is swollen and causing terrible pain, and you’re running low on supplies.  The reality that you are not going to get out of this on your own starts to set in.  If someone doesn’t come along, things are going to get really bad.

You run out of food and water.  Days pass and you drift in and out of consciousness.  You’re running a fever, and your throat is too dry to call out any more.  In your more lucid moments, you realize that you are dying.  This is the end.

Somewhere in a half-dream you hear someone talking to you.  Water is gently being poured down your dry throat.  You feel a new pain in your leg as someone sets the bone and wraps it in a splint.  You realize that at this moment you’ve been saved.  You are not going to die alone and lost in a forest.  And with that thought, you drift back to sleep.

You awaken to find yourself still lying on the forest floor, covered in a blanket.  The smell of food and fire stir new feelings of hunger.  Your leg is throbbing, but the fever is gone.  You manage to sit up, and you see your savior for the first time.  It’s a young man – a fellow hiker – stirring a pot of stew over a campfire.

“Ah, you’re up,” he says. “Feeling better?”

You nod.

“Stew’s ready.  Looks like you could use it.”  He hands you a bowl and you greedily dig in. “Not so fast,” he says. “You haven’t eaten in a while and you need to take it slow.”

The next few days bring major improvement for you.  Under his care, you regain your strength, and he fashions a crutch so that you can walk.

“It’s time to get going,” he says.  “I know the way out of here… just follow me and you’ll be fine.”

***

And this, my friends, is the nature of salvation from God.  You become saved the moment Jesus enters your life as your personal Lord and Savior.  But you can’t stay lost in the woods.  To get out of the mess you’re in, you need to follow Jesus sincerely and whole-heartedly.  If you’re that injured hiker, what if you said “no, I’m just going to stay right here” when you savior said “follow me – I know the way out”?  Your salvation starts to fall into jeopardy.  You may be feeling good again, but you’re still lost in the forest, you still have a broken leg, and you simply are not going to make it out on your own.  You need him to get you out of there.  It may take some effort on your part, but if you follow him, you will make it home.

Turn to me and be saved, all you ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is no other. – Isaiah 45:22