The Need for Salvation
In order to attain salvation, we must understand our purpose and goal. Our ultimate aim is to arrive at where we, as Christians, are heading. So, where are we going? And why did we, as humanity, need salvation?
Man is a complicated creature, having come through many complicated situations, and now we are in a place where we need to move ahead. We have had quite a difficult past, as humanity, from the creation to the fall, which brought about the need for salvation through incarnation, and then we fast forward to our own needs of the moment.
Let’s step back a bit – the first thing is the creation of man. If we read in Genesis 1:26-29, we find the following:
“Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.’ So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. Then God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’ And God said, ‘See, I have given you every herb that yields seed which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed; to you it shall be for food.’”
God created man in His own image, male and female, and then He blessed them by saying, “Be fruitful and multiply, have dominion over all creation, and I have even given you every thing that yields seed on the earth.” We see many components here – God wants to make man in His own image and likeness. God also wants to bless man, give man dominion over all creatures, and tells man to be fruitful and multiply. So God created us to dominate (in a spiritual way), but not to be dominated. He never wanted us to be dominated by evil and by sin. So that’s why God gave us everything. He created us out of incredible love. He gives us what is most valuable to Himself – His image and likeness. Then He gives us blessing, and then He gives us dominion and instructs us to fill the earth, subdue it, and have dominion over it.
God is not inconsistent. God’s love for man never ceased. From the beginning, we see God’s love, and it has never changed.
Then we come to the next big event – the fall of humanity. It came in a very destructive way, as we read in Romans 5:12, “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned.” It wasn’t as if Adam made a little mistake; it was a huge mistake that had great impact for all humanity. In Romans 5:15, we read, “For if by the one man’s offense many died, much more the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abounded to many.”
And so we find the creation, the fall, and because of the gravity of the fall, the necessity for God to try to visit the scattered flock, to try to heal our broken humanity and to reconcile us with Himself once more. As with the father in the story of the prodigal son, God the Father was waiting for humanity to come back, but because of the gravity of the fall and man’s sin, humanity could not come back. God had to remove that huge barrier. As we said before, His love is entirely consistent, infinite and manifested itself from the beginning until this day.
