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ACCEPTANCE WITH GOD: THE TENSES OF SALVATION
By Roger Salter
Special to Virtueonline
www.virtueonline.org
May 20, 2014
There is a story about an enthusiastic new convert who boarded a train from London bound for Norwich in East Anglia. Aglow with her new found faith she felt constrained to witness to a rather serious senior gentleman who shared her carriage. She began her evangelistic salvo with the leading question, “Sir”, she inquired, “Are you saved?” The fellow passenger trained his eye keenly upon the interrogator, leaned forward, and replied, “In what sense do you mean, young lady?”, and using his New Testament Greek, which he translated, he spelt out the meaning of the three tenses of salvation to his bewildered traveling companion.
Two observations emerge from this incident. We do not know the state of mind, motive, and attitude of the young lady, but there is a certain approach to personal evangelism that comes over as intrusive, and patronizing in tone, that immediately offends and turns away its target. We may only hope that the female concerned made her approach graciously and courteously. Opportune advances to others are meant to be sincere but not strident on the basis of self-confidence. Additionally, no matter how strong our convictions may be we are always humbled by the fact that there remains much for us to learn in our faith, not only intellectually, but experientially in a deeper way. Whatever we attempt to articulate to others may be understood by them, even though not expressed, far more profoundly than we are aware and to a degree that we have not attained. Verbalization does not necessarily disclose the verities of the heart. The peerless preacher George Whitefield humbly admitted that many of his listeners probably had a closer knowledge of Jesus than himself.
Erudition and eloquence are gifts that may not be matched by an equal possession of grace, and as Wesley said to his lay preachers, he would far prefer grace to gifts, which often become stumbling blocks to their possessors and objects of self-admiration. Gifts may be withdrawn by God for many reasons, but grace, fluctuating in its intensity, nonetheless endures in the elect.
At some stage we will be all shocked by what we did not know and that which we misunderstood. Our eager hands can only clasp so much from the treasure trove of God’s word. Tongues can tell out so much that has scarcely touched our hearts and evangelistic campaigning should never be cocky or trite - or triumphalist. Sometimes we may be hectoring angels sent to test us and prove our spiritual arrogance. People are not pawns on our chess board of churchy success and any evangelistic contact ought to be characterized by respect and care, accompanied by self-abasement and commendation of Christ alone.
All church or parish programs need to be enterprised in the guise (not disguise) of humility and absolute dependence upon God with a strong conviction not only of our general call, but our specific calls to his cause and his conferring upon us the necessary capacities as our needs arise.
The tenses of salvation unravel before us the comprehensiveness of the divine salvation and our constant dependence upon grace, freely given.
The Scottish New testament specialist A.M. Hunter observes, “When Paul thought about Christian salvation, he saw it as a word with three tenses: a past event, a present experience, and a future hope” (The Gospel According to Paul, SCM, London, 2012). No doubt the good bishop on the train to Norwich wished for his compartment companion further travels into the glorious truths of Holy Scripture.
Initially, salvation becomes ours on the basis of the prior choice of God and the redemptive accomplishment of his Son. We are sovereignly called to an awareness of our lost and guilty condition, to confession of sin, and contrition for our offences, and ultimately to confidence in Christ’s suitability to our case. This is soul work on God’s part and ours. His operations are deep (a new creation that enables repentance and faith, for our sinful will, averse towards God, is liberated to love and laud him), our responses are comparatively dim but in due course, by grace, these will deepen and develop. These interior occurrences are evidence of regeneration, and regenerate folk are justified by the Saviour’s blood. These past events, Christ’s atoning work, and our new birth place us forever in the membership of the people of God. To neither did we contribute - to our reconciliation and recovery, nor to our recreation. These are exclusively deeds of divinity through the God-man and the Holy Spirit. No one can argue that there is any delay in our instant instatement in Christ.
As we enter into our experience in Christ and meld with his people, and participate in the corporate life of believers, means of grace become necessary to mark our new identity and sustain us in our new life of holiness and obedience. This new phase of life (discipleship) begins immediately we are conscious of our transition from darkness to light. Our salvation is progressive and in this sense the sacraments, prayer, worship, fellowship, and right living are necessary to our continuance in grace, and God undertakes to preserve us through his ordinances and in orderliness of Christian habit and behaviour. Those who wilfully and deliberately despise his provisions show just cause for suspecting that the initial aspects of a threefold salvation have not occurred. We are responsible to obey and do the will of God as he has revealed it to us, nonetheless, it is grace that is the foundation and active force of our godly living, for it is God who enable us “to will and to do”.
It is the indwelling of Christ that guarantees our future hope and the fulfillment of our salvation, for the divine and irreversible pledge is that where he will be we shall be. Our goal through grace is everlasting life, not simply in the sense of endless existence, but in terms of unending and unfading fellowship with the Three-in-One, blissful beyond imagination and description. The grace that finds us befriends us through life and receives us finally. What God commences he completes. The Lord of grace calls us, continues with us, and brings our deliverance and blessedness to a beautiful consummation.
Our union with him, forged through regeneration, enjoyed and evidenced by faith, and sustained by divine faithfulness and power, is fixed, firm, and forever - through marvelous, immeasurable grace that will lavish unimaginable joy upon us in our eternal and uninterrupted dwelling with God.
No words are adequate to sum up our benefits and privileges in Christ. We need each other to spell them out to each other. Soon, together, we will burst our lungs and exercise our tongues in our exultation in the Lord.
The older Evangelicals used to sum up the tenses of salvation in these words: In and through the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit working harmoniously we are saved from the penalty of sin, the power of sin, and the presence of sin. But there is much more to say - and sing. And this threefold salvation performed by our great Three in One merciful Lord and Savior will fuel our harmonies throughout eternity.
