Saved By His Life

“For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.” —Romans 5:10

It is not the entire verse I am thinking of tonight so much as the last four words, “Saved by his life.” What are we to understand by this expression? Certainly the verse itself and the entire context makes it very plain that it is through the death of Christ our sins are put away. It is His precious atoning blood that cleanses us from all sin, thus purging our guilty consciences. It is through the work of His Cross that we have peace with God and yet there the apostle declares, “We shall be saved by his life.”

Let us first consider what these words do not mean. “Saved by his life” does not imply that salvation comes through seeking to imitate the beautiful holy life of our blessed Lord. Let me say it seriously, earnestly, following Jesus will not save anyone. Often the Christians are earnestly exhorted to begin the Christian life by taking up their cross and endeavoring to follow Jesus in order that they might be saved. But this is a travesty of the Gospel. No one was ever saved by imitating the life of Jesus or attempting to do so. His was an absolutely holy life. There was not one thought or act that did not have the Father’s approbation. He said with truth, “I do always those things which please Him.” And the Father Himself declared, “This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased.” If salvation comes through imitating Him in His holy ways here on Earth, then you and I are as good as lost eternally even now. For it is utterly impossible that a sinful man or woman should follow in the steps of the sinless Saviour. And yet the apostle Peter tells us, “He hath left us an example that we should follow his steps.” But he is speaking to Christians, not to those who are seeking salvation. We who are saved are now born again and indwelt by the Holy Spirit. With His gracious aid we are enabled, at least in some measure, to imitate the example of our blessed Saviour. But the holiest Christian would be the last man on Earth to insist that he was saved by following in the steps of Jesus.

Then again, “saved by his life” does not mean that we are saved through the wonderful life that our Lord lived, as though that life were acceptable as an atonement for our sinful evil lives. The life of the Lord Jesus on Earth apart from His death would never have saved one poor sinner. He came into the world for the express purpose of laying down His life a ransom for many. As the God-appointed pascal Lamb, He must be the unblemished one. His holy and righteous life proved Him to be the fit substitute for sinful men. But that life had to be given up in death ere our guilt could be atoned for and our iniquities blotted out. The natural heart rebels at the doctrine of the blood, but the Bible bears consistent witness from the offering of Abel’s lamb at the Gate of Eden to the song of the redeemed in the book of Revelation that salvation is not by the life of Jesus, but by the shedding of His precious blood. This comes out in vivid contrast, if we consider the well-known words of the founder of a very popular religious system today. She has written: “The material blood of Jesus was no more able to cleanse from sin when it was shed upon the accursed tree than when it was flowing in His veins as He went about daily doing His Father’s business.” But our Saviour Himself, when He instituted the Last Supper said, as He gave the cup to His disciples, “This cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you for the remission of sins.” It is impossible to reconcile these two statements. The one denies the cleansing efficacy of the shed blood. The other declares that blood was shed for the express purpose of the remission of sins. Whatever “saved by his life” means, it cannot mean that it is His life on Earth rather than His death that makes it possible for guilty sinners to be justified by a holy God.

Before attempting to show what the words actually do mean, let me point out what to many will be familiar truth already. Salvation is presented in the New Testament in a threefold way: All who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ are saved from the guilt of sin and from the judgment due to sin. This salvation is complete and eternal from the moment we believe. To it the apostle refers when he says, “By grace are ye saved through faith and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not of works, lest any man should boast.” And again he tells us “Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost. Many other passages emphasize the same wondrous fact that we are already saved if we put our trust in the Lord Jesus Christ.

But this is not all there is to salvation. Having been saved from the guilt of sin, we who are Christians are now being saved daily, hourly, momentarily from the power of sin through the intercession of the risen Christ, and the work of the indwelling Holy Spirit. And by and by, when we are gathered home with the Lord, we shall be saved from the presence of sin, when we are fully conformed to the image of God’s beloved Son. Now it is to these second and third aspects of salvation that the words of the text apply. We who have already been reconciled to God by the death of His Son shall be saved by His life. That is, His resurrection life. He who died for us on the cross to settle the sin question, now lives in glory to complete in us the work which His grace has begun. It is as the Risen One, He says, “Because I live, ye shall live also.”

It is right here that many need help. Often in speaking with exercised souls urging immediate trust in Christ and confession of Him as Saviour, one is met by the anxious reply, “I would like to come to Christ, but I am afraid I can never hold out. I might become a Christian tonight and afterwards bring such disgrace on the name of the Lord by lapsing into sin that I am afraid to venture. It is not that I do not trust Christ, but the fact is, I do not trust myself. I know my own propensities and proclivities so well; I am so conscious of sinful habits that dominate and control my life that even though intellectually convinced that Jesus is the only Saviour, I do not dare trust myself to Him and confess Him openly for fear I could not hold out. I feel it would be better never to have made a profession than to disgrace it all by failure afterwards.”

My dear troubled one, let me now seek as God by His Spirit will enable, to bring before you the encouragement that lies in the four words of my brief text. We are “saved by his life.” You are not asked to trust Christ in order that your sins up to the time of your conversion may be put away, and then that you should be left on your own resources to do your best to live a Christian life with possibly failure in prospect eventually, but the Spirit of God would have you see that He who loved you enough to die for you on the cross now lives to sustain and maintain all who believe in Him, in order that they may walk as He walked and glorify God in their daily lives. He is not less interested in us after having died for us, but now in heaven, He is daily saving His people from their sins, keeping them by His mighty power. In the epistle to the Hebrews, we read, “Wherefore He is able to save to the utmost all those who come to God through faith by Him, seeing He ever liveth to make intercession for them.” What a glorious truth is here revealed. As our High Priest, with God, He ever gives us a perfect representation before the throne of God in heaven. He makes constant intercession for us, presenting His own excellencies on our behalf. And He sits there enthroned as a reservoir of all that we need for our pilgrim path, bidding us come boldly to a throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace for seasonable help. All that we need in the conflict with sin to enable us to come out victoriously, He waits to supply. We have only to draw by faith upon His infinite resources. But more than this, by the Spirit, He now indwells all believers. “If any man have not the spirit of Christ he is none of his.” The indwelling Spirit is the Spirit of power, and of holiness, and as we walk in the Spirit, we are definitely promised that we shall not fulfill the lusts of the flesh.

“Ah,” exclaims someone, “I begin to see now, I think, what it means to be saved by His life. But even though there are infinite resources in Christ of which I may avail myself, is there not still danger that I may fail to do this and hence may break down completely after all and so my last end be worse than the beginning?”

Unquestionably we are all liable to failure. But let us remember that failure does not involve separation from Christ. In respect to this, also, we shall be saved by His life, for it is written, “My little children, these things write I unto you that ye sin not, but if any man sin we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, and He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.” Christians are not perfect people. We still have within us the old nature even though we have been born again. The Lord Jesus says, “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the spirit is spirit.” No amount of Christian nurture will change flesh into spirit. “The carnal mind is not subject to the law of God neither indeed can be.” If we are looking for improvements in ourselves after conversion, we shall be disappointed. We need to recognize that in us, that is in our flesh, dwells no good thing. The Word of God like a mirror exposes us to ourselves. It tells us what the works of the flesh are, and against these we need to be continually on our guard.

I ran across an illustration the other day that I think pictures this admirably. An elderly gentleman who was very near-sighted prided himself on his ability as an art critic. On one occasion he was accompanying some friends through a large gallery and was seeking to display his real or fancied knowledge of pictures to these friends. He had left his glasses at home and was not able to see things very clearly. Standing before a large frame, began to point out the inartistic features of the picture there revealed. “The frame,” he said, “was altogether out of keeping with the subject and as for the subject itself, (it was that of a man) it was altogether too homely, in fact too ugly ever to make a good picture. It was a great mistake for any artist to choose so homely a subject for a picture if he expected it to be a masterpiece.” The old gentleman was going on like this when his wife managed to get near enough to interrupt. She exclaimed, “My dear, you are looking into a mirror,” and he was quite taken back to realize he had been criticizing his own face.

Now the Word of God is such a mirror. It does not hide our deformities. It shows us up just as we are. But we are not to be occupied with our old selves. The Spirit of God would turn us away from self altogether to occupation with the risen Christ, and as we are taken up with Him, we are kept from sin. It is when we get our eyes off Christ and become self-occupied or taken up with the world around us that we fail. And who of us does not so fail? We all have to confess our failures from day to day, but our ever-living Saviour is not only our High Priest to minister all needed grace and help, but even when we fail to avail ourselves of that as we should, He is our advocate still and the moment we fail, He takes up our case with the Father. Mark, it does not say, “if any man confess his sin, we have an advocate,” but rather “if any man sin, we have an advocate.” The moment we fail, He is in the Father’s presence about us, and as a result of His gracious advocacy, the Spirit continues His work in our hearts bringing us to repentance and confession, and “if we confess our sins He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” And so, “we shall be saved by his life.”

Then when, at the last our time of toiling and fighting here on Earth shall come to an end, and our Lord will receive us to Himself, He, the ever-living One, will save us completely from the very presence of sin so that we shall never be so much as tempted again for all eternity, but will be preserved inviolate in holiness before the face of God our Father. Thus in the fullest possible sense, we shall be forever “saved by his life.”

What encouragement then this should give to the anxious trembling sinner who is alarmed as he thinks of judgment ahead; he yearns for forgiveness and justification but he fears he will never be able to glorify God in his life afterward. The same one who loved you enough to die for you and now bids you trust Him as your Saviour, is the One who lives in the glory to guide, and has declared, “His sheep will never perish.” Trust Him then, I beseech you, tonight, and having been reconciled to God by the death of His Son, you shall know the blessedness of being “saved by his life.