Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 857
Delivered on Lord’s-day Evening, DECEMBER 27, 1868, by, the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington.
“Now is our salvation nearer than when we believed.”- Romans 13:11.
BUT what “salvation” is this? The question is important because we very commonly speak of “salvation” as that state of Divine Grace into which everyone that believes in Jesus is introduced when he passes from death unto life, being delivered from the power of darkness and translated into the kingdom of God’s dear Son. This sweet assurance we celebrate in our hymns of praise—
“The moment a sinner believes And trusts in His crucified God, His pardon at once he receives, Redemption in full through His blood.”
Salvation, so far as the forgiveness of sin, the imputation of righteousness, and the eternal safety of the soul are concerned, is given to us the moment that we are brought to trust in Jesus. But the term, “salvation,” here and in some other parts of Scripture signifies that complete deliverance from sin, that glorious perfection which will not be attained by us until the day of the appearing of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Salvation here signifies entire deliverance from indwelling sin, perfect sanctification, and, as I take it, includes the resurrection of the body and the glorification of body and soul with Christ Jesus in the world to come. Salvation here means what many think it always implies, namely, eternal Glory. At this hour our perfect salvation is nearer than when we believed. Observe the date from which the Apostle begins to reckon. He does not say our salvation is nearer than when we were christened—that is a ceremony of which the Apostle never dreamed—a tradition and invention of men which had never crossed his mind!
He does not say your salvation is nearer than when you were confirmed—that also was a thing quite unknown to him. He does not reckon even from our Baptism, as if he were to say, now is your salvation nearer than when you put on Christ openly in Baptism. But he strikes at the vital point—he specifies the true indication of spiritual life, namely, “believe.” What could ever come of all that is before believing?. It is all death! It is not worth reckoning! No matter how studied the ceremony or how garnished with profession, up to the moment a man believes he has no spiritual life—he comes not into the happiness of the living—neither has the Apostle anything to say to him except that he is dead in trespasses and sins!
The moment of faith is the moment from which he dates his spiritual career. It is when we look to Jesus hanging upon the Cross, our Substitute, that life comes to us. As we look we live! We look and are forgiven! We look and are saved— and from that time forward with our faces Zionward we start upon the celestial pilgrimage towards that glorious City whose Builder and Maker is God. Thus it was, then, that the Apostle measured from one fixed point to another fixed point. If you have two shifting points you cannot say that now you are nearer this or that. If the time of our believing was not a fixed and definite moment, but a thing which may be put here or there, we could not reckon from that. And if the time of our emancipation from this body and our complete salvation were unsettled, precarious—a point that moves, a sort of planetary star—we could not say we are getting any nearer to it.
But the Apostle takes a fixed point. There is a man saved. He has believed in Christ. That day he believed in Christ, yes, that very minute, he may not know which minute, but God knows, that very second—at that tick of the clock in which he trusted in Christ he became a new man—old things were passed away and all things became new. Therefore that is a fixed and definite point in that man’s history from which to date. And there is another point, settled by God in the
Divine decree, never to be removed, neither to be ante-dated nor post-dated—a moment when those that believe shall be with Christ where He is and shall be like He and shall behold His Glory forever!
Now, between these two points you and I, if we have believed, are sailing! And this evening at the close of the year it seemed meet for me to haul up the log and just to note where we are on the sea that rolls between these two blessed points and to congratulate my fellow Believers that now—tonight—we are nearer the eternal port by the space of many years than when we first slipped our cable, hauled up the anchor and began to sail towards the haven of everlasting rest. “Now is our salvation nearer than when we believed.”
I have been told—I have not been on the voyage—but I have been told that in going to Australia it has frequently been the custom to toast “Friends behind,” till they get half-way. And then it changes to, “Friends ahead.” “Here’s to the helm, friends behind,” and then near to the port, “Friends ahead.” Well, I am going to say something tonight about things behind, and then we shall congratulate you as we talk of things ahead. “Now is our salvation nearer than when we believed.”