When I came to faith in Jesus, the Christ, I was told Jesus died for me, as an individual, by name. If this is true then it makes my salvation personal.
But, I protested*. If this is a ‘personal’ act then it means Jesus dies for each of us individually in that eye blink of dying. Anything else makes it corporate rather than individual. (Doesnt it?)
So I got thinking and asking questions, “Surely Jesus dies for all on the cross?” In that one moment of ‘it is finishedness’ the job is done for everyone, everywhere, for all time?” Which raises the question: Does this ‘universal’ act mean that everyone is now in receipt of salvation?
If it does, then surely everyone is now forgiven and we can all pack our bags and with for th bus to heaven to stop and pick us up! (And I’ve become a universalist - a term I’d never heard of in the seventies!
One of the first principles I learned was, “If in doubt, turn to your Bible.” So I found myself turning to Ephesians 2. 13: “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.
The second principle I was given told me to seek the opinion of many ‘witnesses’ in the word of God and so I pottered through and found Romans 5.8, which reiterates the Ephesians passage: “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
Two verses from the same pen (the Apostle Paul) tell me Jesus died for me and for all who were ‘far off’. Paul is consistent but nowhere was my name found. In fact though I was ‘far off’ from God and was (and still am I’m afraid) ‘a sinner’, so too was pretty much the whole of creation!
I turned to John 3.16 and pondered the words, “God so loved the world that He gave His only Son that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.”
For me these were essential and important words.
Jesus dies for all upon the cross but the universal b comes personal in the act of us acknowledging this as something that is true and has meaning for us at an individual level. It is our acceptance of this death; this life given up for me that makes it personal - it makes this act of salvation mine. Not in the taking of it but in the acknowledgment of the giving.
My moment of salvation truly is ‘personal’ for in that moment of acceptance God and I do business together and the contract, offered and accepted, is made real by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit as a seal upon the transaction. Jesus truly has died for me, once and for all, upon the cross so that I might become reconciled to God (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit).
And that has to be worth a ‘hallelujah’ I reckon.
My salvation is personal (although from God’s side the offer was of course always on the table). But I don’t have to claim the clever multiple yet isolated from the rest death that I was presented with all those years back (and yet, do believe that Jesus dies for each person, by name and known to God on the cross still). That said, the joy of our salvation is found in the simplicity. After all, what’s the point of constructing clever packages of stuff to make sense of what is simply sensible in the first place (once we get past the concept of God getting involved with us and considering us worth the shedding of blood of an innocent man that is)?
I like to think of Jesus having turned up at the bus depot and us, accepting His death on the cross for us, taking from his hands a ticket with the word ‘justified’ written in it (Justified means ‘not guilty’ by the way). Having this ticket in our possession causes us to ask the really important question: “Now I have this, how do I live out my days until I board the bus?”
And this is where the question of how we live out our faith come in.
Why not stop and think about what you’ve just read - go get a cup of tea and then read the next bit. I’m going to do the same (it’s exactly 4:00 am in my reality as I write this and I need a brew before we continue).
* I’ ve always been one for a bit of a protest. “Why” and “How” are rarely far away from me,
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