Salvation Past, Present and Future

Romans 10:17 tells us plainly, So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.

And that’s never changed. And God himself, who He is and His character, never changes, as we see in Malachi 3:6, Hebrews 13:8 and many other places.

What has changed through the ages is not the nature of salvation, or the requirement of faith, but God’s Word that faith’s based on.

That Word has been an unfolding, progressive revelation through the ages, and that’s what we’re going to explore.

To understand anything, we always need to define the terms, and that’s especially true of salvation. Failing to define terms properly is one of the quickest ways to confusion and deception.

When we speak of Past, Present and Future, we’re using the apostle Paul’s definitions of time and the ages: “Time Past”, “But Now” and “Ages to Come”.

“Time Past” and “Times Past” are used many times throughout Scripture to define previous ages, but the reference we’re using is Ephesians 2:11-12.

The term “But Now” is also used many times throughout Scripture to define the current age, but Paul uses the term 26 times throughout his epistles, making a definite distinction between the ages that are past and today.

“Ages to Come” is used in Ephesians 2:7 to describe the future, after the current age that consumes most of Paul’s writings has ended.

We have a slideshow below this recording to help us see salvation through these ages.

Then we need to define three foundational words: salvation, grace, and faith.

These words are often used, but not always understood.

Firstly, Salvation.

We can’t be just “saved”; salvation means being saved from something specific.

It implies danger, judgment, or destruction from which a person needs to be rescued. Salvation can refer to help, safety, rescue, victory or deliverance, and it can be personal deliverance, national deliverance, or spiritual deliverance.

Scripture makes it clear that what we need saving from is sin—its penalty, its power, and ultimately its presence.

Now, before we can understand salvation, we must understand sin. According to 1 John 3:4, “sin is the transgression of the law.” Sin is rebellion against God’s righteous standard. Deuteronomy 32:4 declares that God is “a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he,” and 1 John 3:5 reminds us that “In Him is no sin.”

God is perfectly righteous, and anything that falls short of His glory is unrighteous. Romans 3:10 states,

There is none righteous, no, not one.

Paul quotes Psalm 14:1 to show where this truth is written: “They are corrupt… there is none that doeth good.”

By looking at God’s standard—the Law—we quickly see that we don’t measure up. In fact, we can’t ever measure up.

From the beginning, God gave commands to mankind. Adam, the first man, was created in God’s image. That’s in Genesis 1:27. He was not God, nor would he ever become God, but he bore God’s likeness. God gave Adam a simple command in Genesis 2:16–17: he could freely eat of every tree except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If he ate of it, he would surely die.

Adam disobeyed.

Eve was deceived, but Adam sinned deliberately. They both knowingly changed the focus of their faith, the words they heard, from God’s Word to the words of God’s enemy. They did not believe God!

This act brought sin into Adam, Eve, and all humanity that would descend from Adam’s seed would inherit this new nature of Adam, which we see in Genesis 3.

Man’s image changed. The image of God in man was marred by sin. God is righteous, but man became unrighteous. Sinful. God is life, but man became subject to death, just as Genesis 2:17 warned.

In Adam all die. Genesis 5:3 shows Adam passing his fallen likeness to his son. It refers to Adam’s son as: “a son in his own likeness, after his image.”

Romans 5:12 explains the universal effect of Adam’s sin,

By one man sin entered the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.

Romans 3:23 confirms,

For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.

Jeremiah 17:9 shockingly describes the human heart as “deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.”

After the fall, God continued giving commands..

Deuteronomy 12:32 instructs Israel under the Law:

What thing soever I command you, observe to do it: thou shalt not add thereto, nor diminish from it.

These commands were rejected by man, showing this nature of sin man now possessed.

When man rejects God’s commands, he sins by turning his faith away from what God says to something else: false gods, feelings, the words of other humans or themselves and their own wisdom. Sin is unrighteousness—rebellion against God. It is our nature, and it affects every part of our lives.

The penalty for sin is death.

Romans 6:23 states plainly,

For the wages of sin is death.

1 Corinthians 15:22 adds,

As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.

Hebrews 9:27 warns,

It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment. Every person will die physically because of sin, and after death, every thought, word, and deed will be judged by God’s righteous standard.

So obviously, if we’re to stand in judgment after our natural death, we’re fully aware of who, what and where we are, so this completely rules out an end to our existence when we die in the body.

Our soul and spirit continue after the body dies.

Romans 2:8–9 describes the outcome: eternal life for those who obey truth, and indignation, wrath, tribulation, and anguish for those who do evil. The righteous receive eternal life; the wicked receive eternal punishment. But Romans 3:10 and 3:23 show that none are righteous. All are headed for judgment.

Someone might ask how we can make such a harsh and absolute statement. How can we know that we’re not good enough to get into heaven?

Well, the answer is simple: by comparing ourselves to God’s Law. Exodus 20:16 forbids lying. If we’ve ever lied, even a little “white lie”, Revelation 21:8 warns of judgment, and Proverbs 6:16–17 says God hates a lying tongue.

Exodus 20:15 forbids stealing. Even a small theft makes us a thief, and 1 Corinthians 6:10 says thieves will not inherit God’s kingdom. Exodus 20:14 forbids adultery, and Jesus says in Matthew 5:28 that lust is adultery of the heart. Have you ever looked upon a person with lust?

If so, even a fleeting thought, then Jesus says you’ve committed adultery in your heart. The only difference between the internal desire and the action is a given opportunity.

Exodus 20:17 forbids coveting: have you ever desired what belongs to someone elss, which. reveals the evil desires of the heart described in Ephesians 2:1–3.

James 2:10 declares that breaking even one point of the Law makes us guilty of all.

Romans 1:18 says God’s wrath is revealed against all ungodliness. Romans 3:9–11 confirms none are righteous.

Romans 6:23 warns again that the wages of sin is death.

2 Thessalonians 1:9 describes everlasting destruction, and Mark 9:44 describes hell as a place “where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.”

It’s only when we come to grips with our true condition before a holy God that we begin to understand our desperate need for salvation. Humanity doesn’t primarily need rescue from natural disasters, thieves, murderers, poverty, sickness, or any of the troubles that plague our earthly lives. As serious as those things are, they’re not our greatest danger. What we need salvation from above all else is the eternal condition of death — the righteous judgment of God against sin.

Until a person sees this clearly, salvation seems optional or just helpful. But once we see our guilt before God, the question becomes unavoidable: Is there a remedy?

Thank God that the answer is yes.

Because of His mercy and grace, there truly is a remedy for our condition.

Those who are found unrighteous and guilty will face the wrath of God, while those who are righteous will be granted eternal life and peace, and yet we’ve already established that all of us are sinners. None are righteous. None can stand before God on the basis of their own goodness.

We’re all in need of a way to escape unrighteousness,  the sin that’s in us — and that escape cannot come from our own efforts.

We’re utterly incapable of earning righteousness by our own works. We need a Saviour, or else we’ll face punishment for our sin.

God, in His perfect justice and righteousness, cannot overlook sin. He can’t pretend it doesn’t exist, as we can, nor can He simply sweep it aside. Sin must be punished. As we’ve already seen, on the day of God’s judgment — which every person will face — those who’re found guilty will face His wrath, resulting in eternal death and torment. Those who are righteous will receive eternal life and peace. Salvation, therefore, is nothing less than being saved from the wrath of God.

So then, this raises a profound question: How can God save the humanity He loves so dearly from the sin that eternally separates them from Him?

This question lies at the heart of the entire Bible. Scripture is the record of God’s purpose and plan to save mankind from His righteous and just wrath.

How could the unrighteous be made righteous? How could sinners be justified before a holy God? This question has troubled countless people throughout history.

The book of Job, widely believed to be the oldest in the Bible, records this struggle.

In Job 9:2, Job asks, “How should a man be just with God?” Job openly admits he does not know the mechanism — the “how” — of salvation. He knows God’s righteous, and man’s sinful, but he can’t see how a perfectly righteous God could justify a completely unrighteous man. In Job 9:20, he confesses, “If I justify myself, mine own mouth shall condemn me…” He knows self-justification is impossible.

Bildad, one of Job’s mates, echoes the same question in Job 25:4: “How then can man be justified with God…?”

The patriarchs understood the problem, but not the solution.

Yet Job also expresses remarkable faith.

In what must be one of the greatest statements in the Old Testament of the Bible, Job 19:25–27, Job says,

For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth:

And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God:

Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another; though my reins [his physical organs] be consumed within me.

Even though he doesn’t know how God will redeem him, he believes God will redeem him. Job’s faith rested on God’s character, not on an understanding of God’s method. This is what faith looked like before Israel, before the Law, before the cross, and before Paul’s revelation. It was faith in God’s word based on His character, without knowing His method.

Paul later answers Job’s question in Romans and Galatians.

Job wasn’t alone.

King David also wrestled with this dilemma. In Psalm 143:2 he says, Enter not into judgment with thy servant: for in thy sight shall no man living be justified.

David knows that if God marks iniquities, no one can stand. He knows God’s righteous and man’s sinful. He knows justification is impossible on human terms. Like Job, he doesn’t know how God could justify a sinner.

This same struggle reappeared centuries later in the life of Martin Luther.

Luther’s crisis centred on the question: “How can God be righteous and still save me?” When he read Romans 1:17 — “the righteousness of God is revealed…” — he initially hated the phrase. He thought it meant that God judges sinners by their righteousness, and he knew he could never meet that standard. He wrote, “I hated the righteous God who punishes sinners.” Luther felt exactly what Job and David felt: God is righteous, I am not, so how can God justify me without violating His own righteousness?

Luther’s breakthrough came when he realised that “the righteousness of God” Paul spoke of in Romans 1:17 is not the righteousness God demands from man, but the righteousness God gives to man by faith. He called it “alien righteousness” — a righteousness outside of us, given to us. This is Paul’s answer to Job, David, and Luther.

Job asked, “How can a man be just with God?” David said, “No man living shall be justified.” Luther asked, “How can God be righteous and still save me?” Paul answers in Romans 3:26:

God is just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.

This life is brief, yet our eternal destiny hangs on what we do in this short span. Once we depart this life, it is too late. We stand or fall based on what was true before that final dying moment.

Should we continue living seemingly good lives, knowing we’ll still be found guilty by God? Or should we seek salvation from the wrath to come and seek the righteousness that leads to eternal life?

Because of God’s love and His unwillingness that we should face eternal damnation, He provided a way of salvation through Jesus Christ. In John 14:6, Jesus says,

I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.

Knowing we’re sinners and none are righteous, God sent Jesus Christ to take our place in death. On the cross, the wrath and judgment of God were poured out on His perfect Son, who did not deserve death. He was sinless. 2 Corinthians 5:21 declares,

For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.

Now, because of Christ,  Romans 3:21–22 shows that righteousness is available apart from the Law.

Even though we didn’t deserve rescue, God showed His love by Christ dying for us, which we see in Romans 5:8. No descendant of Adam could pay the price for humanity, because all are sinners.

So here we have the masterstroke of God’s wisdom and power. Here’s where the unfathomable, manifold wisdom of God is displayed, causing all who see it to collapse in awe of Him. Here’s where God’s heart, His love, His mercy and grace and His great power are revealed.

God’s creation, the universe, from the submicroscopic to the vastness of space, has revealed His existence and His power to man since the beginning, but nothing reveals God to us more than what comes next.

The Divine Incarnation!

Jesus is both God and man.

Colossians 2:9 explains it,

For in him [Christ] dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.

Only a true man could represent us, obey for us, die for us, and sympathise with our weakness, but only God could bear infinite wrath, provide perfect righteousness, forgive sins, and offer eternal salvation.

John 1:1–3 shows the Word was God, and John 1:14 shows the Word became flesh. His deity was never compromised. In Christ, God was made flesh. None of His work would be sufficient, and our gospel would be in vain, if we don’t correctly identify who Jesus Christ is, fully man and fully God.

The second word we must understand is grace.

Grace is what someone does for our benefit that we don’t deserve. Grace has three elements:

1) We did not do the work.

2) We benefit from it.

3) We do not deserve it.

Romans 11:6 shows grace cannot be mixed with works.

Titus 2:11 shows grace brings salvation. Grace is not obligation or duty; it is undeserved favour. Romans 3:10 shows that none are righteous, so grace is our only hope.

The greatest example of grace is the preaching of the cross — the gospel of the grace of God. Christ did everything that we could not do. He did it for our eternal benefit, and this gift is offered freely to every sinner who believes. Romans 3:23–26 and Romans 4:5 show that God justifies the ungodly by faith.

Salvation is by grace through faith, exactly as Ephesians 2:8–9 declares. This means that salvation today is offered to all of undeserving humanity — to every man, woman, and child who can’t do, and will never be able to do, enough good works to earn God’s favour. This includes both you and me.

Salvation’s not a reward for the righteous; it is a rescue for the guilty. It is not a wage earned by human effort; it is a gift given freely by God’s grace.

Having defined salvation as God’s gracious gift, and grace as the source of it, we now turn to the third key word in this great equation: faith.

We’ve got to define faith because faith is the method, the means, the channel through which we receive God’s grace‑gift of salvation. If salvation is the gift, and grace is the source, then faith is the way that gift is received. Without faith, the gift is offered but remains unopened.

So what is faith, and how do we get it?

To answer this, we return to the famous passage we quoted earlier, Ephesians 2:8–9:

For 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.

This verse is often misunderstood because many people misidentify the “gift of God.”

Some assume the gift must be faith itself; after all, the gift is “not of works,” and no one can boast of it.

Romans 3:27 says,

Where is boasting then? It is excluded… by the law of faith.

So the reasoning goes: if boasting is excluded, and faith is involved, then faith must be the gift.

But this reasoning begins with a mistake.

It assumes faith is a kind of work — something we’ve got to produce or perform. If faith were a work, then boasting would definitely be possible because it would be by our own efforts.

But Scripture never describes faith as a work. In fact, the opposite of faith is not works at all — the opposite of faith is doubt.

Jesus makes this clear in Mark 11:23 when He describes the believer as one who “shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe.”

Faith and doubt are opposites.

Faith is believing God; doubt is not believing Him.

Faith is not a work; it’s trust, but that faith, that trust, must be based on something.

Today, many people have faith and trust in words spoken through social media, news channels or the words that some human tells them. Many trust the words spoken by friends or family without ever trying to determine if those words are actually the truth.

But real, true faith is the heart’s response to God’s Word.

This is why Romans 10:17 is so important:

“So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.”

Faith doesn’t come from human effort, and it doesn’t come from religious ritual or from emotional experience or feelings. Faith comes from hearing God speak through His Word.

This means our first challenge is to establish that the Bible we hold in our hands — or read on our devices — truly is God’s Word.

If we don’t believe the Bible is truly God’s Word, then faith will never come from hearing it. But once a person proves for themselves that Scripture is indeed God’s completed revelation to humanity, then hearing God’s Word becomes a living experience. The Bible becomes more than ink on paper; it becomes the voice of God speaking personally to the reader. And as we listen, faith grows — exactly as Romans 10:17 promises.

Now, if faith is not the opposite of works, then what is?

Scripture tells us plainly: the opposite of works is grace.

Works are what we do for ourselves; grace is what someone else does for us.

Romans 11:6 states this clearly:

“..if by grace, then is it no more of works: otherwise grace is no more grace..”

Grace and works cannot mix.

As a side note, grace and wrath can’t mix either. God can’t bring grace to all and wrath at the same time.

If salvation is by grace, it can’t be by works. If salvation is by works, it can’t be by grace.

So is grace the gift of God in Ephesians 2:8?

Grace is indeed given by God — Ephesians 3:7 and 4:7 say so — but Paul speaks of many gifts: salvation, justification, righteousness, sanctification, glory, and eternal life. These are all aspects of the one great gift God gives, and Paul describes this gift repeatedly in Romans.

Romans 5:15 speaks of “the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ.” Romans 5:17 speaks of “the gift of righteousness.” Romans 6:23 declares, “the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

So what is the gift in Ephesians 2:8–9?

The verse itself tells us:

For by grace are ye SAVED through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God.

Do you see it?

By grace you are saved!

The gift is salvation! Salvation includes imputed righteousness, justification, sanctification, glory, and eternal life. Salvation is the gift. Grace is the source. Faith is the channel.

We can summarise it this way:

– Saved — the gift. Salvation itself is the gift God gives.

– By Grace — the source. Grace is where salvation comes from. It’s the origin, the cause, the fountainhead.

– Through Faith — the channel. Faith is how that grace is received.

Faith is not a work, and it’s not the gift.

Faith is the means by which we receive the gift. Faith comes by hearing the Word of God, as Romans 10:17 declares, and hearing the gospel of salvation produces trust in Christ. Ephesians 1:13 explains this beautifully:

In whom ye [that’s you and me] also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise.

So salvation is not of ourselves — it’s of God. Salvation is not of works; it’s by grace. Salvation is not earned — it’s received. We can’t boast in our salvation because we did nothing to achieve it, work for it, or deserve it. Salvation is received by faith; we simply believe the gospel, and God saves us.

As 2 Corinthians 9:15 says,

Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift.

This brings us back to the title of this article: Salvation past, present and future.

What’s changed down through the ages?

As we’ve already said, Paul divides history into three great periods: “Time Past”, “But Now”, and “Ages to Come”, and throughout those ages, salvation’s always been and always will be by grace through faith. Faith has always only ever been the channel to God’s blessings, including salvation.

What has changed and will change throughout those ages is the knowledge available to humanity through God’s progressive revelation. What God has told man, through His Word, to trust in for salvation has changed.

That is the question we now explore.

God Himself, His character, and who He is never change, as we’ve already pointed out.

We see that from many Scriptures, such as Malachi 3:6, Hebrews 13:8 and James 1:17.

But what does change is the words that God’s spoken to man, what was revealed to man.

Hebrews 1:1-2 confirms this saying,

GOD, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets,

Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds;

We see that God has throughout every age selected a man or men, and given them His Word, which they then communicate throughout the world that they live in at that time.

You and I living today are blessed beyond description because we have what no other people living in past dispensations had: the entire record of God speaking to mankind, or at least the entire record that God wants us to have.

This entire record includes a whole section of the Bible through which God reveals the dispensation of grace and the Body of Christ. That last and final revelation was given to one of God’s enemies whom He saved and charged with this revelation that had previously been kept secret, hidden in God since before the foundation of the world.

That man was Saul of Tarsus, who became Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles. Paul left us with thirteen extraordinary epistles from Romans to Philemon. The epistles that Paul wrote make up around 6–7% of the whole Bible and around 25–26% of the New Testament.

No other age, even the time when Jesus walked the earth in His earthly ministry, ever had this complete record of God’s revelation to man.

God has only ever revealed His plan and purpose to mankind through His word, and that word has been given to man in what’s known as “progressive revelation” and, as Hebrews states, was given at sundry times, or many different times, and in diverse manners or in many different and various ways. But to whomever it was given, and the way in which it was delivered, never changed the fact that it was God’s Word, God speaking to man, and that was always the only requirement that God ever made of man: he was to believe in that Word. Man was to have faith in it.

After the fall of man, God spoke to Adam and, by default, to every man and every spiritual being, and what He said was recorded, obviously by Adam, right down to today to be found in Genesis 3:15. He spoke of a Redeemer who would one day come, and those words were to form the foundation of faith in God’s salvation throughout time. This verse is “The First Gospel.”

It predicts a long hostility between Satan and the woman, who represents all mankind, and between Satan’s seed (his agents) and her Seed (the Messiah, the Christ). The woman’s Seed would crush the Devil’s head in utter defeat. This was administered at the resurrection when the seed of the woman, Christ, triumphed over the Devil. Satan, in turn, would bruise the seed’s heel, and this speaks of the seed, Christ, suffering and His physical death, but not defeat. Christ did suffer on the cross and died, but He arose from the dead, victorious over sin, hell, and Satan.

This simple but all-powerful Word spoken by God was the source of faith unto salvation.

God spoke to and revealed things to Noah that He didn’t reveal to Adam.

In Genesis 6 and 7, we see the account of Noah, and we also see the catastrophic fact that Noah was the only one in the world to be found righteous. Throughout history, it’s only ever been a small remnant who believe God and His Word.

In Genesis 7:5 we see,

And Noah did according unto all that the LORD commanded him.

This is Noah responding in faith to what God said to him, and as a result of that faith, becoming righteous, as we read in Hebrews 11:7  By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house; by the which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith.

God revealed things to Abraham that weren’t revealed to Noah.

God told the world, through His words to Abraham, how He would raise a great nation from Abraham, and that nation would be the light of God to the world.

In Genesis 22:18, God speaking to Abraham, we see,

And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed…

This is the foundational prophecy that the Redeemer — the One who would bring salvation to all nations — would come through Abraham’s seed.

Paul later identifies this “seed” promised to Abraham as Christ Himself in Galatians 3:16, but this wasn’t known to the people of Abraham’s day. Their faith was founded solely on the Word God gave to Abraham, of a redeemer, which again was preserved throughout history right up until today.

In the same way, Moses was given instruction and commands never before revealed. He was given the law, and we see that that law could never be fully obeyed by fallen man. What it did was reveal God’s standard of righteousness and how man could never meet that standard. It would take a sinless man in the future to fulfil that law. But, along with the law, God also gave, through Moses, a sacrificial system designed to atone for the breaking of the law. This was also, of course, a shadow and a type of the coming ultimate sacrifice by the cross.

All God’s words that were spoken to humanity through Moses were the basis of faith at that time.

The prophets then spoke the words God gave them, revealing future events that God had purposed, and they also gave warnings of the consequences of rejecting God and His Word.

These prophets’ words were then the foundation of faith.

When Jesus came, He spoke words that were not new; they’d been spoken throughout past ages, but His words summarised all those past words and showed how they were all fulfilled in Him.

The twelve Jewish apostles continued speaking the words Jesus had spoken.

These were the words of God, and mankind was expected to believe them. Most did not!

Then the apostle Paul was raised up by the resurrected Jesus Christ Himself and spoke new words that God gave to him,  words that had never before been spoken to man, either by God Himself or the prophets. They were a mystery kept secret, hidden in God since before the world began, as Ephesians 3:9 and Colossians 1:26 tell us.

These words told of a new dispensation, one that would be ushered into the world as an intermission to God’s prophetic timeline that He spoke of in everything before then.

The reason was the rejection of God’s great and glorious promises to the nation that came from Abraham, the nation of Israel.

These words given by Christ to Paul are now, today, the words that form the foundation of our faith.

The great difference between these words for us today and the words of the past is that the words of the past required an action to take place if those words were believed. For example, Noah believed, so he built an ark.

Building the ark was Noah’s obedience, not his works for salvation. His salvation came from His faith in what God said to him.

Today, no action, no ritual, no ongoing sacrifices, no works of any kind are required for salvation; only faith, only the belief in what God has told us.

The apostle John spoke things relating to the time when humanity’s rejection of God would finally be dealt with in judgement. John didn’t speak new things; he, just like Jesus, spoke words that had all been spoken before, but he summarised and contained those words into one book, the Book of Revelation.

The entire purpose of God’s book is to communicate Salvation to mankind: what it is, why we need it, how it’s given and how it can be received.

It’s a serious mistake to think that there’re different ways men are saved in the Bible.

A common mistake is the false idea that Israel was saved by works, but the church is saved by grace. In other words, there are two ways of salvation in the Bible.

This is not so!

There’s always only ever been one way men are saved: by God, by grace, through faith.

No matter the age or time, whether male or female, Jew or Gentile, young or old, man can only be saved by God’s grace through faith- faith that God could and would make a way to be saved.

Today we’re commanded in 2 Timothy 2:15 to rightly divide the Word of truth, which is understanding the differences between the mystery dispensation of grace that we live in today, which was never made known until the apostle Paul, and the law and prophecy that were made known and spoken of by God through the prophets.

Truly, there are different gospels in the Bible.

Truly, Israel and the Church, the mystery body of Christ, are not the same.

Truly, works were required under the law, but are not required under grace.

Truly, the mystery of Christ and salvation was hidden from ages and generations past until revealed to the apostle Paul.

However, and here’s the point, there was never a time when salvation from sin could be given to anyone apart from God’s grace, to men who did not have faith, and without Christ’s blood through His death, burial, and resurrection (even if it was in future and even if it wasn’t then known).

It was always and only ever through faith in what God said at the time that righteousness was imputed to man, bringing salvation from sin.

– God is the only one who can save.

– The only way he can save is by his grace.

– His grace can only be merited by Christ and his work by the cross.

– Salvation is always available to all, but only given to those who believe. By faith.

What God has told men to believe and do has changed, but the way God saves sinners has not.

The full understanding of salvation is displayed to us today in Paul’s epistles.

Getting this right guards against many errors, including the error that says men could be saved by works at one time in history and by grace at another time. This is simply not true.

Works could not ever save anyone!

All the righteous works of human history put together couldn’t save a single man from a single sin.

Even under the law, when works were required of covenant Israel, the law was never intended to bring salvation, but condemnation. It only gave the knowledge of sin, as we see in Romans 3:20.

It’s wrong to think that Israel was saved by works, but the church is saved by grace. Israel was required to do works because their covenant demanded it, and their faith was based on that covenant that God Himself gave them.

The law was supposed to send Israel begging to God for his mercy and grace, and men of faith did just that, as we see many times, such as in Habakkuk 2:4 and Psalm 51:1.

The law made men guilty, not righteous, as Romans 3:10 says.

Studying the Bible with the understanding of these different dispensations through which God has interacted with man rightly divides the revelations God’s given to man.

Nobody could ever do that until this dispensation, where the complete word of God is now available. Understanding those dispensations doesn’t divide the one way of salvation, which is through the gracious work of Christ to all men.

How God saves is the same: the cross of Jesus Christ.

The message God gives for men to believe, to base their faith on,  is what differs.

Today, the gospel of Grace is a message, an offer, but in this dispensation of grace, the gospel is also the means.

No one before the revelation of the mystery of Christ understood how God could save all men. Now we know how he can, by God’s grace alone, in Christ alone, by faith alone.

See the slide display under this recording to see, visually, how God spoke His message of salvation to the ages.

May God bless you, and may you hear the message that brings faith to believe in God’s amazing grace and His salvation.