The “Much More” of Your Salvation

     If I asked you what the Lord Jesus has done to save you, almost instinctively you would say, “He died to save me.”

  That is the natural answer. Notice carefully, however, what Paul says in Romans 5:10. Through the death of Jesus we indeed “were reconciled to God”; and yet, “much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.”

  It is true that the death of Jesus saves us from the punitive consequence of sin and restores us to a true relationship with God after we were born spiritually dead, alienated from the life of God. Yet the very purpose of that new relationship is to enable us thereafter to “be saved by His life,” and this is the “much more” of our salvation.

  Have you been reconciled to God by Christ’s death? I hope you can say, “Yes, I can think back to the day when the Holy Spirit convicted me of the fact that I was a guilty sinner, and convinced me that the precious blood of Christ cleanses us from all sin. I remember the day when I deliberately received Him as my personal Redeemer and put my trust in Him.”

  If you truly have been reconciled to God, then a perfectly logical question to ask would be, Are you being saved by Christ’s life? The question is important because this is the “much more” of your salvation. If your Christian experience is limited only to being reconciled to God by the death of Christ, yet you are not being saved by the present reality of His Life, then you are obviously missing the “much more” of your salvation. In fact, you are missing the whole purpose for which Christ died. You are cheating Him of that for which His blood was shed.

  Reconciled to God by Christ’s death … and saved by His Life—the one is a crisis of the moment; the other is the process of a lifetime and on into eternity. The crisis precipitates the process. The crisis, if it is valid, should be followed by the process.

  Reconciled to God by Christ’s death, and being saved by His Life—the crisis involves an initial act of faith that accepts Christ for what He did; the process involves an attitude of faith that continues to enjoy all that Christ is. For He not only died for what you have done; He rose again from the dead to take the place of what you are, which He does by His Holy Spirit indwelling you.

  This is the gospel, the whole of it. Anything less than this falls short of the gospel as revealed in the Word of God.

For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.      ROMANS 5:10

- Major Ian Thomas