The Message of the Cross (7) The Way of Human Salvation Prepared before the Ages
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February 02, 2020 |
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 “And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).
You may have met people who wonder why there is no other name that has been given by which we must be saved but that of Jesus Christ. You may even have encountered people who had critical points of view on this. Then, let’s now look into the reasons why only Jesus Christ can be our Savior.
1. The Way of Human Salvation Prepared before the Ages
Without experiencing misfortune and distress, people cannot appreciate happiness. Only when people suffer from grief and affliction can they understand the value of true happiness and be grateful for it from the heart. God placed the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and barred Adam from eating from it so that man would one day come to understand relativity. God also gave Adam freewill by which he could make decisions on his own and eventually Adam ended up forsaking God’s commandment and ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Observing the process in which people today become drenched in sin and evil will help us understand the process in which evil entered Adam. For instance, a child who constantly hits other children was not like that from the start. Of course, he had within him sinful attributes due to the original sin with which he was born. Until he developed that evil habit of hitting other children, however, there was a process in which the child accepted the evil practice. At first, he would have seen people striking others, then repeated it himself once or twice, and become someone who habitually hits other people.
In his freewill, Adam ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil after falling to the serpent’s temptation. As God had warned him, “You will surely die,” the spirit in Adam died. Adam was cut off from communication with God and he became a slave to the enemy devil.
It was done as Romans 6:16 says, “Do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves for obedience, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin resulting in death, or of obedience resulting in righteousness?” At that time, Adam had to relinquish the authority and glory he had been given as the ruler of all creatures to the enemy devil (Genesis 1:28; Luke 4:6).
Since then, in the passing of time, the heart of man has grown more evil. The enemy devil also brings disease, poverty, disaster, tears, grief, and torment, to people and will end up taking them to Hell. Yet, the providence of God lies not in the fall of man into Hell but leading him to experience the relativity in this world, to become well cultivated, and to get qualified to enter Heaven.
As God knew in advance that Adam would eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil from the moment He planned human cultivation, He prepared the path of salvation for the sinful mankind and that path is Jesus Christ. But until the appointed time came, God had hidden the way.
2. The Path of Salvation for Mankind and the Law on the Redemption of the Land
How then could sinful mankind reach salvation? God does and carries everything out in His love and justice. For God does everything within the boundary of the spiritual law and order, His forgiveness and salvation of sinners are also carried out in His perfect justice.
According to the spiritual law that dictates, “The wages of sin is death,” someone had to pay the wages of our sin on our behalf to save all of us, sinners. That is why Jesus, the Son of God, became flesh, came to the earth, and died on the wooden cross to redeem all humans from sins. People who do not believe in this fact, however, always ask, “Why do we receive salvation only when we believe in Jesus Christ?”
Yet, as the Bible tells us in Acts 4:12, “And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men, by which we must be saved,” no one other than Jesus can be the Savior and no one can receive salvation without accepting Him as their Savior.
Then why is Jesus Christ our only Savior? It’s because of spiritual law. All mankind was destined to death because of Adam’s sin according to the spiritual law, “The Wages of Sin Is Death”. When all men became slaves to the enemy devil and Satan, the spiritual law was applied that says “When you present yourselves to someone as slaves for obedience, you are slaves of the one whom you obey.”
According to which provision of the spiritual law can sinful mankind receive forgiveness and salvation? We can find the answer to this question in “The Law of The Redemption of the Land” in the Bible.
Leviticus 25:23-25 says, “The land, moreover, shall not be sold permanently, for the land is Mine…Thus for every piece of your property, you are to provide for the redemption of the land. If a fellow countryman of yours becomes so poor he has to sell part of his property, then his nearest kinsman is to come and buy back what his relative has sold.” This provision of the law was established with regard to transactions involving the land in Israel and it is also applied to man, who is formed of dust of the ground.
God divided and distributed the land of Canaan according to each tribe and family of Israel and since all the land essentially belonged to God, man could not sell it at will. If the owner of the land became poor and was forced to sell the land, his nearest kinsman was to buy back and return the land to the owner. Embedded in this law on the redemption of land is the path of salvation for the sinful mankind. This is because the law on selling and buying back of the land is related directly to man who has been formed of dust of the ground.
In Genesis 3:19, God tells Adam, “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, because from it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” In Genesis 3:23 we read, “Therefore the LORD God sent him out from the Garden of Eden, to cultivate the ground from which he was taken.”
The law on the redemption of the land has a direct relationship with the way in which man, who was taken from the ground and handed over to the hands of the enemy devil, can be returned to God. Just as the land belongs to God, He has stipulated that Adam’s authority, which in essence belongs to Him, could not be “sold permanently.”
This was the law agreed upon both by God and the enemy devil at the time Adam sinned and was turned over to the enemy devil. Thus, even if Adam became a slave to the enemy devil and was forced to relinquish all his authority, at the appearing of an individual who could satisfy the law on the redemption of the land, the enemy devil had to return what was “handed over” to him.
As God knew in advance that Adam would eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, He prepared the Savior who would satisfy all the provisions of the law on the redemption of the land, and that Savior is Jesus Christ. This will be continued in the next issue of Manmin News.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, God prepared Jesus Christ and hid the mystery since before the ages. When the time came, Jesus came to the earth in flesh and fulfilled His duty as the Savior. I pray in the name of the Lord that you will believe Jesus Christ as the Savior, profess your faith in Him, and thereby reach salvation.
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