The Salvation of God

by J. G. Bellett
The salvation of God surely may be traced all through Scripture, from the earliest, simplest revelation of it in the opening of Genesis to the celebration of it in realms of glory at the close of the Revelation.
It came with the first utterance of God after sin entered this world. The promise of the seed of the woman conveyed it. It was illustrated in patriarchal stories all through Genesis. It was presented in a thousand shadows or symbols in the ordinances of the law. It was echoed in a thousand voices of the prophets. And thus the current of it may be traced all through the ages of the Old Testament, and the line of light that was revealing it then may be seen as spanning, or stretching across, the whole volume.
In due time, in the fullness of time, the New Testament age begins, and then at the very outset the salvation of God appears again. It becomes embodied. The child that was to be born, the Son that was to be given, was given by God the name of JESUS.
If the first divine utterance in the Old Testament bore witness, so does the first divine utterance in the New Testament, "Thou shalt call His name JESUS: for He shall save His people from their sins." The salvation of God was now embodied. It entered unveiled, thereby and therein to accomplish all eternal purposes of grace (Matt. 1).
Not only was salvation thus embodied, but its arrival here was celebrated by the ecstatic joy of heaven, and the full, earnest-hearted welcome of the earth. Angelic hosts in the light and presence of the glory and angels in their individuality tell us of this joy. The vessels anointed by the Holy Spirit proclaim this welcome. Mary rehearses it and so do Zacharias, Simeon and Anna. The shepherds in the fields and the babe in the womb wait in their several ways to greet it and rejoice. (Luke 1 and 2.)
When thus arrived, it is active. What had been ushered forth in the midst of such congratulations could now stir itself and be at its work under its high commission. And this is the life, the ministerial activity of the Lord Jesus. He was dispensing health and salvation all around Him. Every sickness and every disease among the people had to tell that "Jehovah-rophi" was here: Christ the healer. The salvation of God was abroad dispensing itself to the need of a ruined, death-stricken world.
Preached to All Being thus announced and arrived, and having thus dispensed itself in the ministry of Jesus, as we read in the four gospels, it is now the subject of preaching in the Acts of the Apostles. The Jews hear of it first, and then the Gentiles. Peter calls on the Jew to come to it, and goes to the house of the Gentile with words that convey it (Acts 2 and 10). Paul preaches it to the nation of his kindred in the flesh, and then to the ends of the earth on the authority of God by His prophet (Acts 13). When at the very end he leaves Israel in unbelief, under sentence of blindness of eye and hardness of heart, he lets them know that it—the salvation of God—is sent unto the Gentiles and that they would hear it (Acts 28:28). It is as fresh in the day of Acts 28 as it was when first announced in Gen. 3. The Spirit of God was as full of it then as the mouth of the Lord was when He uttered His earliest word in a world where sin had entered.
What a moment in the history of this world when it witnessed the arrival of salvation from heaven to earth. As we have seen, heaven in its hosts and its glory was rejoicing then; earth in its anointed vessels, great and small, was answering it.