 Welcome to Foundations of Faith. Today I want to talk to you about salvation. What does it mean for you and I to be saved? Or what does it mean when Christians talk about salvation? Perhaps you are a new believer and you've just recently come into a relationship with God through Jesus Christ and you've heard people tell you that now you're, quote, saved. What does salvation mean? And what are we saved from and why do we need to be saved? Well, another word that can be used for saved is to be reconciled to God. Another word that we could use is to be rescued or to take things that were broken and to redeem them, to revalue them and bring them back to their original place and position. That's what we mean by salvation. The reason why salvation is so vital and so important for all of us to understand is because all of us have been born into a world of sin. When God originally created the heavens and the earth and he created man and he placed mankind, Adam and Eve, in the Garden of Eden, he gave them two trees. One was a tree of life. The other was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God said you can have fruit of any of the trees in the garden. Just don't eat the tree. Eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If you do that, on the day that you eat it, you will die. Well, Adam and Eve were deceived by the devil. They came in the form of a serpent. And when they ate the fruit, their eyes were opened. They realized that they were naked. They were filled with shame. And they were separated from the presence of God, ultimately removed from the Garden of Eden. Well, what is that a picture of? It's a picture of the reality that from the very beginning humanity was created very good. We were created in order to live forever. And we were created to live forever in the presence of God in relationship with God. But not because of God's decisions, but because of our own rebellion and our sin, our forefather's sin against God's design and his word. By eating the fruit and being tempted, mankind fell and we fell into sin. And that sin was not just external. That sin extended to all of creation, but it began in the human heart. And from generation to generation, we've passed down that spiritual genetic dysfunction into every human being. We're born into this world selfish. We're born into this world self-serving. We're born into this world cut off from the life of God, spiritually dead, deserving of judgment and destined for hell. That's what we mean about being saved because the love of God did not leave us in that position, even though if God wanted to, he would have been just and he would have been fair in doing that. But John 3.16, which is the most basic and most common Bible verse known to any of us, says it all. It says that God so loved the world. The fallen world, full of sinners just like you and I. And he loved us so much that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever should believe in him would not perish, but have everlasting life. See, God could have left us in our sin, but he sent Jesus, who was fully God, into humanity to take on flesh, walk as a man just like you and I do. But he did it sinlessly. He's the only human being who never deserved to face death. Romans tells us this. It says that the wages of sin is death. That's what we deserve is death, spiritual death, physical death. But Jesus came into this world, never sinned, but instead went to the cross and he bore on his body the penalty for our sins and the sins of the whole world. And the reason why he did it is because of God's love. Jesus came to save us. He said that in John 3.17, I did not come into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world. That's what it means to be saved. Jesus comes to save us from our self. Jesus comes to save us from our sin. Jesus comes to save us from hell. Jesus comes to save us from the judgments that we deserved. And how he does it is he takes our place as our substitute and our perfect sacrifice on the cross. When Jesus died and said it is finished, he meant the bill has been paid. And what that means is any of us, doesn't matter how sinful we are, how sinful we've been in our lives, we can all be rescued. We can all be reconciled to God. We can all be redeemed or brought back to our original value, reconciled into our relationship with God. Not by our best efforts, but by the grace of God, the free gift of God that was offered through Jesus Christ. Just like John 3.16 says, And when we do believe and when we receive this free gift of salvation, our sins are completely forgiven. The Holy Spirit comes and takes up residency in our heart and gives us a new heart. And we're reconciled back in the relationship with God. We're no longer slaves. We're called sons and daughters of God. We're no longer destined for hell, but our names are written in the Lamb's Book of Life. Heaven becomes our home and we will not die spiritually even though we may die physically. Our bodies will one day be saved themselves when Jesus comes back and our bodies are resurrected. And in all of this, what we see is the grace and the goodness of God to not leave us in the state of shattered sin, but to reconcile and restore us back to what his kind intentions always were, which is for you and I to live with God in His presence forever and ever in perfect relationship. That's what it means for you and I to be saved.