01.05. How Shall We Escape, If We Neglect So Great Salvation?
How Shall We Escape, If We Neglect So Great Salvation?
How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation? — Heb 2:3. THE FIFTH GREAT QUESTION of the Bible is found in a book written toward the close of the years in which the Holy Spirit guided faithful men in writing down the Word of God. The plan of salvation is finished; the gospel message is complete; atonement has been made for our sins, and the Lord has returned to Heaven. The offer of salvation is now made to all men. There is a way of escape from judgment and from hell. It is after this completion of God’s final gospel handiwork that the vital question is asked: "How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation?"
All the previous questions have had a sure and certain answer: "Am I my brother’s keeper?" — "If a man die, shall he live again?" — "What shall I do then with Jesus which is called Christ?" — "What must I do to be saved?" But this final and fifth question has no answer. I cannot find an answer. It is not answerable. When God has done His best and we spurn it, refuse it, pass it by, there is no other way, no other hope, no other recourse, no other appeal. THE TERRIBLE ALTERNATIVE OF TURNING AWAY FROM "SO GREAT SALVATION" This question of Heb 2:3 is like the question raised in that awesome and terrible seal described in the sixth chapter of the Revelation of John. "And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon become as blood; and the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind. And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places. And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains; And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb: For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?" (Rev 6:12-17). Having spurned the overtures of grace, having done despite to the blood of the covenant, having refused the proffered mercies of the love of Jesus, where could there be further hope? In the awful hour of judgment and condemnation, who shall be able to stand? At the turn of this century, the only connection between the island of Galveston and the mainland of Texas was an iron bridge. On a fateful day in 1900, the United States government sent warning after warning to the citizens of the city that a terrible hurricane was coming their way, and that they should escape for their lives. Over that iron causeway to the mainland went trains and trolleys and vehicles to safety; but the citizens of the city looked at the blue of the sky and the quiet of the sea and, heedless of the terrible warnings, in a false peace went to bed and to sleep. In the dark and terror of that frightful night, the gentle breeze turned into a wind, and the wind turned into a hurricane, and the hurricane turned into a torrential rain, and the torrential rain turned into a tidal wave, and the tidal wave went over the island, destroying the bridge like a match stem. When the one way of hope and escape is spurned, there remains no other avenue of salvation. Nothing remains but judgment and death. The author of Hebrews, who voiced this soul-searching question, has described the terrible alternative of turning away from Christ in Heb 10:26-31 : "If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God. Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much more severely do you think a man deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God under foot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified him, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace? For we know him who said, "It is mine to avenge; I will repay," and again, "The Lord will judge his people."It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God."
American people pride themselves on their realism. They like to "face the facts." In all of the relationships of life, they choose to "put all the cards on the table." They say to the preacher and to the doctor, "Tell it to me straight; no beating around the bush." Let us then look straight and openly into the face of the facts of the brief life we possess in this world. If we lived forever, then there would be an abundance of time to settle this matter of salvation. If we were promised a second chance in the world to come, then it would not greatly matter what choice we made in this life. If, when we could finally repent and turn and be saved, we could undo and recall and remake all we had done in the days of our rebellion and rejection, then we could still have hope of nullifying any wrong decision made in former years. But the eternal fact of time and life and experience is this: when we have sinned away our day of grace, we find no place for repentance though we seek it carefully with tears. "Lest there be . . . any person, as Esau, who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright. For ye know how that afterward, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected: for he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears" (Heb 12:16-17). When we sell our birthright for a mess of pottage, there is no possibility that afterward we shall inherit the blessing. No day passed can ever be recalled; no deed done can ever be undone; no life born can ever be unborn; no human power can turn back the shadow on the dial. It is indeed a dark, stark tragedy of which Edward Fitzgerald writes in his translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam: The moving finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on. Nor all your piety nor wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a line, Nor all your tears wash out a word of it. Our helplessness to change the past is only exceeded by our helplessness to change the future beyond the grave. When death comes, character is forever fixed; eternity is forever settled. As we die, so shall we be forever and ever. "As the tree falls, so shall it lie" (Ecc 11:3). "It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment" (Heb 9:27).
Men are dying every day with the desperate cry on their lips, "I must live, I must live; I cannot die." To sleep in youth is to sleep in a siege, to sleep in age is to sleep during an attack. The advance of the enemy, death, is inexorable. He assails alike the prince in his palace and the peasant in his cottage, and he comes to you, to me, to us all. Who is able to keep us from the abyss of the grave and the judgment of perdition? Where is such deliverance to be found? THE ONLY TRUE SAVIOUR As a youth, reading ancient history, I frequently came across the word, "soter," after the names of the conquering princes. There would be Seleusius "Soter," Philadelphius "Soter," Ptolemy "Soter," Demetrius "Soter." When I began my study in Greek, the meaning of the word became apparent. The word, "soter," is the Greek word for "saviour." These men, each in his turn, presented themselves as "saviours" of the people. Riding war-horses, advancing to battle in iron chariots, commanding legions and armies, they arrogated to themselves the title of "saviour." But their deliverance was always cheap and unrewarding and disappointing. However the war or the battle raged or the government was changed, men still died in their sins, and the awful enemy of death wasted the population without hope, without promise, without light beyond the grave. But this man, Christ Jesus, the God-Man, offers to this world a real and everlasting deliverance. It is called by the author of Hebrews "so great salvation." Christ saves from sin and hell. The love and adoration and worship we owe to Christ as "Saviour" is the natural response of the human soul to the gospel message of Jesus. England’s regard for the Iron Duke Wellington knew no bounds when he saved his people from the ravages of Napoleon. Our regard for Winston Churchill hardly knows any limit. He stood alone against the whole world threatened or conquered by Hitler. Our gratitude to the man who could find a deliverance from dreaded cancer would rise beyond what tongue could tell or song could sing. What shall we say, then, of this Man of God, this Man of sorrows, this Man of the cross, this Man of the resurrection, this Man of coming triumph, who is able to save us from judgment and death?
"Man of Sorrows," what a name For the Son of God who came Ruined sinners to reclaim!
Hallelujah! What a Saviour!
Bearing shame and scoffing rude, In my place condemned He stood, Sealed my pardon with His blood;
Hallelujah! What a Saviour!
Lifted up was He to die, "It is finished" was His cry:
Now in heaven, exalted high.
Hallelujah! What a Saviour! When He comes our glorious king, All His ransomed home to bring, Then anew this song we’ll sing, Hallelujah! What a Saviour!
He is able to save to the uttermost them who come unto God by Him. "Wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them" (Heb 7:25). He has begotten us who were in the bonds of death to a living hope through His own resurrection from the dead. He has brought to us an inheritance, incorruptible and undefiled and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for us who are kept by the power of God unto this bountiful and ultimate deliverance. It is truly "so great salvation." It is mediated through the love and mercy of Jesus without money, without price, without merit, without any ableness of our own. We receive it through faith and trust and committal of our lives to Him. The feeblest, the humblest, the poorest may come, as well as the richest and the wisest and the greatest. The cost is nothing to us; it is ours for the asking because it was purchased by the blood of the crucified One, even our Lord and Saviour, Christ Jesus. A youth, who one time was pointed to Christ as the way of salvation, asked the preacher, "Is it that easy?" The preacher replied, "Easy for you, but not for Him." To create man was a display of the omnipotent power of God. God did it without struggle, without labor, by fiat. But to redeem the man, even the omnipotent arm of the Almighty was impotent without vicarious suffering. God Himself took upon Himself the sins of the man He had made and offered expiation for our guilt on the tree. Our Saviour was the Lamb slain from before the foundation of the world. He is the Lamb upon whom God hath laid the iniquities of us all. He is the suffering Servant, wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities, by whose stripes we are healed. He is the sacrificial Lamb of God, oppressed, afflicted, brought to the slaughter, taken from prison and from judgment, and cut off out of the land of the living. It pleased the Lord to bruise Him, to put Him to grief, to make His soul an offering for sin. THE DAY OF THE CROSS — THE DAY OF SALVATION This is Friday, the day of the Cross. The solemnity and the deep seriousness of this vast throng of people filling this great theater is in itself a deep, unspoken recognition of the price and penalty our Saviour bore to deliver us from so great sin and death through so great salvation. The three crosses on that day of long, long ago were raised on the Hill of a Skull just outside the Damascus gate of the city of Jerusalem. The one hanging on the central cross is God manifest in the flesh. From nine o’clock in the morning until noon, He suffers and prays: "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do." In the agonies of death He speaks words of salvation to the thief crucified by His side: "Today shalt thou be with me in paradise." He turns to His mother and commends her to the apostle John: "Woman, behold thy son; son, behold thy mother." From twelve o’clock noon until three o’clock in the afternoon, darkness covers the face of the earth. He cries in loneliness: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Burning with fever, He exclaims: "I thirst." He utters the final cry of victory: "It is finished!" He bows His head and dismisses His spirit: "Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit." Before sundown the soldiers break the legs of the first and the third to hasten their death; but the figure on the middle cross is so certainly dead that they break not his legs, but a soldier takes his spear and thrusts it into his heart. When he draws out the iron head of the long shaft, there follows it the fountain of blood and of water for cleansing, for healing, for saving. "That He might taste death for every man" — this "so great salvation."
Count Zinzendorf, a rich, brilliant, carefree young prince, walking through the Dusseldorf art gallery, came upon an Ecce Homo, a picture of the suffering Christ. Transfixed, he gazed upon the crucified Son of God. The inscription beneath the picture fastened upon the young man’s soul like a burning fire of God’s Word in the heart of the ancient prophet:
Hoc feci pro te Quid facis pro me. This have I done for thee;
What hast thou done for me?
He turned from the gallery a new man, a regenerated man, a saved man, God’s man. The young count founded the new missionary endeavor that has swept through the civilization of modern times. Our one hope lies in the Saviour who died for our sins on the Cross. There is no other way. How shall we escape if we turn aside from God’s one provision for our salvation?
There is no other plan; there is no other hope; there is no other Gospel.
What can wash away my sins?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
What can make me whole again?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus. Who can stand by me and deliver me in the awful and ultimate day of the dissolution of this world? Who can be my advocate and deliverer in the great judgment day of God? Who can save me in this life, save me in death, save me in the life that is to come, if I turn away from Jesus? "How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation?" It is the unanswerable question. To turn from Christ is to die forever and ever and ever. God help us to lift up our eyes with the look of faith to Him who alone can redeem us from "so great death" through "so great salvation."