“BELOVED, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of ‘the common salvation,’ it was needful for me to write unto you, and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.” (Jude 22Mercy unto you, and peace, and love, be multiplied. (Jude 2).)
God’s salvation is for lost man, but the difficulty lies in this, that man will not believe or own he is lost. The great effort of the day is to improve man; to gild, varnish, and dress him up, so as to make him appear what he is not.
Now God proposes not to mend or improve man, but to save him. A man overboard, struggling with the waves, and unable to swim a stroke, needs a lifeboat. A culprit in prison, under sentence of death for murder, needs not to be told to amend his ways; he wants pardon. A house is on fire, the inmates are well aware of their condition; who would be guilty of the idle mockery of telling them to sit down and weep over the state they are in? Their pressing need is deliverance. A man has lost his way in a dense forest; I meet him, beg him to sit down and listen to an essay on self-culture: what will such an one say? Will he not exclaim in his distress, “I am lost I pray tell me how I can find my way out of this terrible forest?”
And you too are as surely lost: whether you are noble or pauper, rich or poor, learned or ignorant, old, middle-aged, or young, you have not to go to hell to be lost; you are born lost, and are therefore in need of salvation, and God has provided it for you.
In Matt. 18, where children are the subject, the Lord says He “is come to save that which was lost;” but in Luke 19, where a man is the subject, He says that He “is come to seek and to save that which was lost.” Whether man or child, both are alike lost, the only sad difference being, that man is not only lost, but GUILTY.
Now, as we are all in the same condition, we need a salvation that suits itself to all, and such you will find God has provided in the gospel.
If you will turn to the Scripture given at the head of this paper, you will find three words, “the common salvation,” which shows that Christ’s death is not for a class, but for all. “We thus judge that if one died for all, then were all dead.” To say that His death is only for a few, is to say that only a few were dead, and is to be guilty of a very grave error indeed. Scripture says, “By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men.”
When the blessed Lord came into the world, He found all lying under the penalty of death, and in grace He went into death for all; and Scripture goes on to say that “He died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him who died for them, and rose again.” (Rom. 5:1212Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned: (Romans 5:12); 2 Cor. 5:14, 1514For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead: 15And that he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again. (2 Corinthians 5:14‑15).)
Here we have a class of persons who, raised from among the mass of the lost and dead, have got life through faith in His name. The common salvation makes known the will of God and the work of Christ; God as a Savior, who will have all men to be saved, and the “Man Christ Jesus,” who gave Himself a ransom for all. Thus I am taught that the will of God and the work of Christ are co-extensive, that they cover the same area, that the remedy is equal to the ruin.
The common salvation of God is free to the needy and helpless; as free as the air we breathe, the water we drink, or the sun that shines upon us. Have you found out that you are lost? Have you confessed it to God? Have you accepted His remedy? Do you ask what it is? It is Jesus. “Neither is there salvation in any other; for there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved.” Have you taken Him into your arms by faith, like dear Simeon of old, saying, “Mine eyes have seen thy salvation”?
Have you welcomed Him to your heart and home, and heard Him say, “This day is salvation come to this house”? Have you ever allowed Him to take a seat alongside of you, and to say to your soul, “I am thy salvation”? If not, “believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house.” (Acts 16:3131And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house. (Acts 16:31).)
May “the common salvation” of God be yours, consciously, confessedly, and everlastingly.
“Salvation! oh, salvation!
Endearing, precious sound;
Shout, shout the word ‘salvation’
To earth’s remotest bound.
Salvation for the guilty,
Salvation for the lost,
Salvation for the wretched,
The sad and sorrow-tossed.”