The Divine Ideal of Salvation

1 Peter i. 5

Kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation. — 1 Peter i. 5.

THERE is a picture here which is somewhat obscured in our Authorised Version by the use of the expression “l{:ept.” What that picture is will be plain to you, if I note that it is the same word which the Apostle Paul uses, when he is talking about the Governor under King Aretas who guarded the city of the Damascenes. It is the same word which the same apostle employs, with the same emblematical reference as here, when he speaks of the “peace of God” as guarding our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. That is to say, we are to think of some little undefended, nnwalled village, which is made safe because a strong force is thrown into it. Peter thinks that every Christian man has enemies that he cannot beat back alone, and he thinks that every Christian man may have round him a ring of defence against which all enemies will break and foam themselves away like waves against a lighthouse.

That is the first point. Another that is very familiar to you all, is the close connection of the words of my text with those preceding them — “an inheritance reserved in heaven for you who are kept” or guarded. That is to say, that the one Divine Power is working on both sides of the curtain, preserving the inheritance for the heirs, preserving the heirs for the inheritance. It will not fail them, they will not miss it. But the threefold aspect of this double guarding by the power of God is our theme in this sermon. By, Through, Unto — these are the three aspects under which Peter describes the guarding which is the security of every Christian. He deals with its efficient cause or origin — “by the power of God.” He deals with its condition — ‘’through faith.” He deals with its ultimate end — ‘’unto salvation.” Now, if we begin at the end we shall be going logically.

I. Unto Salvation.

I ask you Christian men and women, and others besides, to consider — the one for the deepening of their faith, and the other for still more important reasons — I ask you to consider what the guarding is for. It is “unto salvation.” That was a new word and a new thought to Peter’s readers, and just because it was new and strange they could not fully work themselves into it, nor understand the sweep and the depth of it. Nor do any of us understand the sweep and the depth of it. You think that you know all about it, you have heard of it till you are weary, and, as on a worn sixpence, all the lettering is off it. But I wish to bring back some of the morning freshness to that great thought that rose upon the darkened world, in the early days of Christianity.

A bit of seaweed as long as it is in the ocean has the wavelets expanding its delicate fronds and brightening its sober colouring. Lift it out and it is dim and dry. In like manner you have to take these commonplace Christian ideas, and plunge them into the ocean of meditation, so to speak, and they will open out into all their pristine beauty, and be filled with new power. Now, what does the New Testament mean by this word that is so stale to us? What the New Testament means is, first of all, making safe, and then making whole. It regards the previous condition of humanity under a double aspect. Men and women are sufi’ering from disease, culminating in death — that is the diagnosis of humanity (very unfashionable to-day) which underlies the Christian conception of salvation — that men and women are in awful peril, and are drawing nigh to the gates of death, and that this salvation comes in to dissipate the danger and to root out the disease.

Do you accept in reality that view of humanity, and that view of yourselves which makes the message that you are safe a “gospel “? But there is another point to take into account. On the one hand, and negatively, this notion of salvation, in its Christian fulness and depth, means the deliverance from all sorts of evils, whether of sin or of sorrow; and on the other hand, and positively, it means the investing with all sorts of good, whether moral or material.

But that completeness of making safe and making whole is not all that lies in the word. Some think of salvation just as barring the gates of hell, enabling them to escape the consequences of their sins. But that is not the New Testament idea. We must be delivered from the danger, indeed, but we must also be invested with all the good. And, if you notice, the apostle, writing in my text, means by this salvation, which is the ultimate end of the Divine dealings, precisely the same thing as he meant a moment before by an “inheritance incorruptible and undefiled.” By both salvation and inheritance he meant the same thing, and what was that? Possession of God. That is salvation, and that is the inheritance; and nobody understands the magnificent possibilities that lie in the initial Christian salvation unless, far beyond any escape from penal consequences, he lias risen to the conception that the essence of salvation is the possession of God. Yon may call that mysticism, but if your Christianity has not that element of mysticism in it, it has not got beyond the initial stage.

But notice still further that, in our text, the apostle is speaking about this great inheritance of salvation as a thing in the future. That, of course, I do not need to elaborate, but I do wish to draw your attention to the fact that, a verse or two afterwards, he regards it as being consequent upon the act of faith. He says, “Believing ye rejoice, receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls.” So there is the salvation away ahead, beyond, to which all the operations of the Divine providence and of the Divine grace are conducting men. Ay, but the end of the rope is in my hand here, however far ofi may be the balloon, and the germ of that perfection in the heavens must be here to-day, in the experiences of earth. There is nothing else that corresponds to the facts of the Christian life here below, except that full future deliverance from all evil, and that entire investiture with all the good in God, that a human soul, capable of indefinite expansion, can gather into itself. There is nothing else that will correspond to the facts of the Christian life here except that.

If you look at a row of houses put up in some growing suburb, you will find often, that at the end of the row, so far as it has gone already, there are protruding bricks. What do they mean? They mean that there is another house coming, and the facts of the Christian life here on earth, its greatness and its smallness, its failures and its successes, its moments of elevation and its moments of depression, all proclaim with one voice that this is not the adequate manifestation of the power that may be ours; that that which has been able to do so much, must be able to do infinitely more when it needs. The new moon with ragged edge, beautiful even in its imperfection, prophesies the placid completeness of the silver round, by every inequality on the line of present vision, and perfect future salvation is the only thing that corresponds to the present lives of Christian men. Yes, and it is the only thing that corresponds to the energies that have been brought into play in order to produce these lives. Entire deliverance from all evil, and investiture with all good is the end for which Jesus Christ came, and lived, and died. He is not going to be baulked of the travail of His soul. Nothing else than that completing gift to all that believe on Him would be an adequate motive for Him to suffer, an adequate reward for Him who has suffered. Such complete salvation is the end of all God’s discipline of us here, and nothing less would be an adequate explanation of His providence to us upon earth. God is not going to be guilty of an undivine disproportion of means to an end; and the means that He has set in motion are, the Incarnation and sacrifice of Jesus Christ, the fatherliness of His providence and of His deahngs with us, His guidance and His guardianship. They lead unto salvation.

II. By the Power of God.

So much, then, for the first part of our propositions. What we are guarded for leads next to what we are guarded ^j/ — “by the power of God.” Now I am inclined to believe that there is another picture suggested there, and, if you will allow me a single expository remark, I will show cause for my belief: “Kept by the power of God.” If we render quite literally, we shall say “Kept in the power of God.” Though the ‘’ by “is a perfectly legitimate explanation of the apostle’s meaning, do not you see how much more beauty and picturesque force is given, if we say ‘’ kept or guarded in the power of God,” as if it were round about us, and we were there in the midst? “The name of the Lord is a strong tower, the righteous runneth into it and is safe.” “He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High “— and that does not mean the secret place that belongs to the Most High, but the secret place that the Most High constitutes —” He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the sluulow “— yes, of coarse he will; if he is close in, he is sure to be below the shadow — ^’of the Almighty.” Similarly, taking the same metaphor as is in my text, “The angel of the Lord” (not the angels), “the angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear Him, and they are kept in the power.”

When an army is marching through an enemy’s country, they put the women and children and invalids in the centre, and then they are safe; and that is where you and I will be safe — inserted into God, if I may venture upon such a phrase. It is not too strong a phrase; it is not half so strong as the Master’s ^’ Abide in Me and I in you, for apart from Me ye “— not merely “can do,” but “ye — ar nothing.”

Christ for us is the truth, the reception of which begins salvation. We have all to begin with looking upon that Saviour as the sacrifice for our sins, and that is introductory to our being able to comprehend Him as the indwelling Power of our lives, and as the Refuge in whom we have to abide. So, although it is, of course, true that the power of God is the instrument whereby we are kept, it is also true that the means whereby that power of God exercises its guarding influence is by bringing us within itself, and keeping Himself round us. For, let us never forget that the power of God guards the Christian by means of the imparted Spirit of God, and, only in the degree in which we receive into ourselves that Divine influence, will it avail to preserve ns from the evils that are without. The communication of strength to us to keep ourselves is the way by which the power of God keeps us, and, whilst for all strength to guard ourselves, we must ever be looking to Him, and drawing it from Him, that is not all we have to do, but rather we have to remember the command, “Keep yourselves in the love of God,” as well as to fall back upon the blessed words, “Guarded by the power of God.”

III. Through Faith.

And now, lastly, we have to consider, besides what we are guarded “for,” and what we are guarded “by,” what we are guarded “through.” “Through faith “; there you come to another word that has been so worn by use, that people have no definite notion attached to it. It would freshen many stale ideas if, instead of “Kept by the power of God through faith’’ we said,” Kept by the power of God through trustP That is the exact rendering of the New Testament idea. Some people say this teaching, that a man is saved by “faith,” is a very immoral thing. Well, if salvation were a thing to be handed out over a counter to any person, irrespective altogether of what that person was — if it could be given as a medal is given to a child, then the criticism might be true; or, if the New Testament teaching were, that salvation was the result of evangelical belief, then the criticism would have a great deal of force in it, but neither of these two things is true. Faith is not belief, if, by belief you mean saying, “Yes, I assent and consent to this or that of thirty-nine articles or thirty-nine thousand “; but faith is an act of the whole moral nature of a man, and there is Will in it, which there never ought to be in acts of belief You ought not to believe intellectually as you choose. You must exercise faith by choosing. And, therefore, a broad distinction, which nobody can get over, lies between the mere acceptance of a creed, and the act of trust, in which the soul and the affections are brought into play quite as much as the understanding.

But there is another thing to be said, and that is, that faith which is the condition of salvation, has for its object, not a doctrine, but a person. You believe doctrines — you trust people, and you may believe Jesus Christ to all eternity, and it will bring you no salvation, but if you believe on Him, then you “rejoice with joy and gladness.”

And there is yet another thing to be said on that. As faith, which is the condition of salvation, is not merely an act of the will, so trust, reposing upon a person and grappling him to one’s heart, must also have in it an inseparable element of self-abandonment. You put a seed into your gardens in the spring weather, and, after a little while, one little radicle strikes downward, and another little outgrowth comes upward; the one is the root, and the other the stem of the future plant, but they both come out of that seed. Faith strikes upward, self-distrust strikes downward. No man ever comes to Jesus Christ, until he has been very near Despair, and has looked into its eyeballs. So the thing which is the condition ot salvation is trust — trust in a person, accompanied with absolute self-distrust and abandonment.

That is the condition, and there is nothing arbitrary about the condition. If God could have saved the world without “faith,” He would have done it long since, and it is not of mere arbitrariness, but by the very necessities of the case, that salvation comes through faith and through nothing besides. Is it arbitrary that, if yon do not take your medicine, yon will not be cured? Is it arbitrary that, if yon do not pull the trigger, the pistol will not go off? No more is it arbitrary that, without faith, no man shall see salvation. When Jesus Christ was here upon earth and visited a certain city, we read that “He could there do no mighty work because of their unbelief” Ah! Omnipotence may be hampered, and the Almighty arm may not have elbow-room to do its work because of our unbelief; and I am sure that, amongst us, there are some people who have thus thwarted and hampered the Omnipotent Power.

If we will do as this man Peter did, cry, “Lord, save me, I perish,” the saving hand will come out. Would it have been arbitrary, had Peter been drowned, if he had not put out his hand to Christ? And that is all that you and I have to do, but we have to do it. Salvation here and hereafter is God’s gift. It cannot be given without faith, but it is given to every man that exercises faith.