Jesus Saves - What Are We Saved From?

I remember seeing the car sticker in the 1970s, 'Jesus Saves.' I hadn't the faintest idea what it meant or what Jesus saved people from. All the time Christians talk about being saved. What does it mean? Saved from what?

We are saved from sin. In order to fully understand the meaning of this we need to appreciate how sinful we are and why it really matters. Nobody's perfect. We have all broken God's laws. Our sin has taken away the close fellowship we ought to have had as human beings with God. Genesis 3:1-13. Adam and Eve walked closely with God in the Garden of Eden. Once the serpent had tempted them to eat the forbidden fruit, they needed to hide from God as they heard him walking through the garden. Sinful man can not come into the presence of God. He must always be hiding from God. When Moses went up Mount Zion to be given the ten commandments the Lord told everyone to keep away from the mountain. Any human or animal that touched the mountain would have to be stoned. Exodus 19:10-17. God can not walk with humanity any more. He can not perform miracles. He has hidden his face. No one can call on him anymore. Isaiah 64:1-7.

The devil has full reign over the world because of sin. He has dominion over nature itself. When Adam and Eve sinned, God told them, 'Cursed is the ground because of you. With pain you will bear children.' Genesis 3:13-19. The whole of creation is corrupted and is groaning in suffering while it waits for Jesus to come to reign and to sort everything out. Romans 8:18-25. The devil has dominion over the human race. He has blinded the hearts of men so that they can not see the light of the good news of Jesus. Our minds are darkened and we simply don't know right from wrong and simply don't understand God. 2Corinthians 4:1-4. We are living in the domain of darkness and hostile in our minds to God. Colossians 1:13-23. We are snared by the devil, being held captive to do his will. 2Timothy 2:24-26. We can't reform ourselves and turn over a new leaf even if we try. We are bound to destructive habits that we can't control. How many times has someone committed a crime and said, 'I don't know why I did that. I don't know what came over me.' We may even sometimes realise that the things we are doing are wrong but we do the things that we don't want to do. It is no longer us doing them but the sin living inside us. We are slaves to sin. Romans 7:14-25. We are ensnared by the devil and captive to his will. 2Timothy 2:24-26. We don't just sin of our own free choice, we have the spirit of disobedience at work within us and are in bondage to evil desires that we can't control. Ephesians 2:1-3.

Jesus comes to set us free from the power of sin. Christianity is not a religion of confessing your sins, receiving forgiveness and then trying as hard as possible to change yourself. God has delivered us from the domain of darkness into the kingdom of his Son. Jesus restores us and sets us free from spiritual blindness, hostility to God and evil desires. When we were dead in our sins, he made us alive together with Christ. We do good and our lives change but it is through  God's power and grace working in us. Ephesians 2:4-10. We could never please God by trying to follow his commands ourselves. It is through faith in Jesus and what he did on the cross that we are saved from sin. Romans 3:21-24. When Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, the serpent told them, 'You will not surely die.' Genesis 3:1-5. They didn't die physically but they died spiritually. So did the whole human race. Romans 5:12-14. Jesus is the second Adam. When Jesus died on the cross and rose from the dead, he brought us back to life again. Romans 5:15-19. We now have peace with God and can stand before him by his grace. He doesn't just expect us to sort ourselves out. He changes us.  He has poured his love out into our hearts by his Holy Spirit. Romans 5:1-5. We can approach God with confidence. Hebrews 4:14-16. If we believe in Jesus and love one another, our hearts do not condemn us. We can come to him in prayer and receive whatever we ask. 1John 3:13-24. We live in him and we know that he lives in us by the Holy Spirit inside us. He chose us before the creation of the world, that he would forgive us our sins and that we would be spotless and blameless before him and that we would be adopted as his children. Ephesians 1:3-14.

The gospel is the power of God, for all who believe, to make us righteous by faith in Jesus Christ. Romans 1:16,17. God doesn't just change us, he gives us a new heart. If anyone is in Christ, they are a new creation. The old has gone, the new has come. 2Corinthians 5:14-21. He made Jesus, who knew no sin, to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become righteous. We have been crucified with Christ. The old sinful person has gone and Christ is living in us by the power of his Spirit. 2Peter 1:1-11. We are partakers of the divine nature. God changes us to become more like him. We become godly and kind as his Spirit is living in us and transforms us. Galatians 5:16-25. If we live by the Spirit we are set free from all the evil desires that used to control us and given new godly desires. Trying to improve ourselves is like trying to ride a bicycle up a very steep hill. Christianity is like a motorbike. Titus 3:5-7. We are not saved by our efforts to improve ourselves but are washed of our sins by Christ's blood and regenerated by the power of the Holy Spirit living inside us. God puts his laws into our minds and writes them on our hearts. Jeremiah 31:31-34.

There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ. The Holy Spirit has set us free from the law of sin that kept us bound to evil desires. Romans 8:1-11. The natural person has their mind set on evil desires and is hostile to God. They can't obey God's law even if they try. The Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living inside us. 1John 5:1-5. Those who believe in Jesus have overcome the world, its thinking, its systems and its desires. We need to come out of the darkness and into the light, where we will walk in close fellowship with God. We need to admit that we are sinners or his word has no place in our lives. But if we come to him, we walk in the light and the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin. 1John 1:5-10.

Adam's sin didn't just result in spiritual death, it brought physical death into the world. We weren't meant to die, we were meant to live forever. Jesus gives this back to us. If we believe in him, we have eternal life. 1John 5:13. Sinful human beings can't come into the presence of God after they die. John 3:16-21. If we don't believe in him we will go to Hell. We are condemned already. But God and the Christian are inseparable friends. Romans 8:35-39. What will separate us from God? Trouble can't, death can't, the future can't, the powers and evil forces of this dark world can't. We rest eternally in him. We are friends forever.