WHAT IS THE MEANING OF SALVATION?
Part Three
The wisdom of God ordained before the world began has been reserved to every believer since that time before the world was. Our efforts to establish wisdom apart from God are futile, but with God the wisdom given to us is more rich than we can imagine. As it is revealed to us we find things that we did not anticipate, grace and mercy that we may not have thought possible in our experience. It is true that the scriptures can be revealed to us by the Holy Spirit and His personal revelation of His Kingdom to us. Apart from God we find things that do not satisfy and lead to futility, vanity, and hopelessness. At best the things known of the realm into which we were born are only fleeting and temporary. The princes of this world thought that they would solve a problem by crucifying the LORD Jesus, calming the people and satisfying themselves so that the peace the world gives would return to them. The Romans were represented by Pilate and he thought with some misgiving that the political prince of the Jews would be satisfied. Herod as it turns out barely knew of its consequence at the time and the crucifixion of Jesus had no impact upon him in any positive way. The religious rulers only experienced a temporary calming of the threat to their authority. The people who cried out to Pilate to crucify Jesus found no respite from things as they were. All who were alive at the time of the crucifixion of Jesus were blinded to that which occurred as to its significance. To those who were closest to Jesus the circumstances were overwhelming and the cruelty of the sentence rent their hearts. Even the arrest of Jesus was with signification lost on the disciples at the time, though Jesus plainly told them about it before He was betrayed and arrested.
The crucifixion of our LORD Jesus Christ, our Salvation to us, unveiled a mystery, a profound spiritual truth. He is Salvation. Our eyes were not opened to see and our ears did not hear what things He is and what things He did until it was time. The confrontation with the powers, principalities, and the evil of the dark world system was carried out in the Person, Jesus Christ in spite of those around Him. He accomplished that which He was born to do in spite of the professed help of Peter that was of no avail, the sleepy disciples that were barely cognizant of the sweating of blood of Jesus as Jesus the man was being crushed during the prayer in the Garden. The body of Jesus reacted to the coming confrontation and the ensuing pain so profoundly that he experienced waves of fear and all kinds of doubt in his body that man experiences and more than one human might be able to endure and live during that time Jesus presented Himself to the Father in prayer. That part of us that senses we are being stalked, anticipates trouble, knows that incredible evil is about us, and knows something is horribly wrong that is alarmed and reacts through the five senses was part of Jesus. Yet Jesus withstood that part of Him that we have as our natural state of being. The body of Jesus was held in obedience to the Father by His dwelling in His Spirit. The fear that the body experiences was not lessened by His body having some supernatural attribute because it did not and Jesus was tested all the more because He knew all that was to come in a short time. No doubt the Enemy of our souls smelled fear emanating from the body of Christ and lunged with force and menacing threats at our LORD Jesus as He prayed in the Garden, held back only by the will of God. Jesus found refuge in the Father to Whom He prayed that night in the Garden.