Salvation Series 3, Who?

After knowing what and why salvation is, who then can take us to it? Can we do it on our own?

In Gen. 2:16-17, it says, “And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” Subsequent events show that Adam & Eve violated this command. Their strategy to be “like him” by their “own works” was not the plan of God. To have “knowledge of “good and evil“ has to be “given” to them and not for them to get it by themselves nor decide or define for themselves what is “good or evil“. Only God defines “good or evil“. Furthermore, this knowledge has to be written, not in “tables of stone” but in the “fleshly tables” of their heart and mind. (2 Cor. 3:3).

No one else can save us but Jesus. Notice, Acts 4:11-12 “He is the STONE WHICH WAS REJECTED by you, THE BUILDERS, but WHICH BECAME THE CHIEF CORNER stone. And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved.”

That Jesus is the “only way” (John 14:6) has been established even before the foundation of the world as in, “….the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.“(Rev. 13:8). This lamb was identified for us by God the Father himself through the testimony of John, “The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world”(John 1:29). See also, John 1:36 “And looking upon Jesus as he walked, he saith, Behold the Lamb of God!” Moreover, God the Father himself anointed Jesus coming out of water baptism from the Jordan river, baptizing him with the Holy Spirit signified by a dove dwelling on Jesus (Lu.3:22); the first historic in-dwelling of the Holy Spirit in man that empowered this man to overcome the Devil/Satan when he tempted man-Jesus. There is no other “perfect lamb” for sacrifice and “sweet savor” to God.

Jesus has been planned to be the Passover Lamb (I Cor. 5:7) who sacrificed his blood (died) for the remission (by his substitutionary death) of the sins of mankind (Matt. 26:28). God the Father can only count the death of this specific man-Jesus (anthropos) towards the death of mankind (I Cor. 15:3; 2 Cor. 5:21;Isa.53:6;Gal. 1:4; I Pet.2:24). And rightly so, since he is the Logos Creator in John 1:1 who voluntarily followed the Father to be incarnated; the same Creator God(Elohim) in Genesis 1, the YHVH Elohim/Lord God in Gen. 2, the El Shaddai (God Almighty) in Gen. 17:1-2 and the YHVH Elohim/ Lord God who is “one/echad” in Deut. 6:4. There is no one like him; he is “above all gods”(Ps. 95:3; Ps. 135:5).

The actual and proximate Creator God, the Lamb, is Jesus. He and the Father are “separate”, distinct and unique yet “one”, as we will be “one” with him and the Father. Notice the following:

I Cor 8:6 New Living Translation
“But we know that there is only one God, the Father, who created everything, and we live for him. And there is only one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom God made everything and through whom we have been given”.

“There is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Messiah Yeshua” (1 Tim 2:5).

Notice, “I will proclaim the LORD’s decree: He said to me, “You are my son; today I have become your father“(Ps.2:7). Not yesterday or tomorrow but “today“, meaning after the “river Jordan“ water baptism. GOD was not introduced as the “Father” and Jesus as the “Son” until after Jesus came out of the water and was “confirmed“ by the Father himself, as in, “this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased” (Matt.3:17;Mk.1:11); he identified Jesus himself. When there is a “son”, then there is a “Father”.

Consider also:
“And the Father who sent me has himself testified concerning me. You have never heard his voice nor seen his form”(John 5:37).

From Jesus himself is his own testimony that no one has seen nor heard the Father referred to in the New Testament. Conversely, all the time from Genesis on, the specific “elohim“ had to be YHVH ELOHIM, the LOGOS according to John, who incarnated to man-Jesus (anthropos-Jesus to Paul), the Messiah Passover.

The Father is higher in hierarchy than Jesus; not equal; Father gives power to Jesus and he who gives is greater than the receiver ; the one who subjected everything has to be higher than the other. As Jesus being head of church is higher in hierarchy than anyone of us, though being “parts of his body”.

At the end, the Son of God will be “subject” to the Father as in, “when He (Jesus) delivers up the kingdom to the God and Father,… then the Son Himself also will be subjected to the One who subjected all things to Him, that God may be all in all” (1 Corinthians 15.24-28).

Paul also emphasized this in Ephesians 4:6 “…one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all.” The Father is over all Supreme.

And, to differentiate the two (although “one” as members of the body/church of Jesus is “one”), he wrote in Ephesians 6:23 “Peace be to the brethren, and love with faith, from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”

To sum it up, Jesus is the only “way, the truth and the life“(John 14:16). He is the “who” will save us. Continue with Salvation Series 4, HOW?

Original post: October 4, 2015
Revised and posted:February 20, 2017