Who Are We Saved From?

If you have been a Christian for a long time, people may ask you what are you saved from. One will answer, "God saved me from my sins." Another will say, "God saved me from an eternity in a place called Hell."

Are those responses correct? Yes. The Bible does tells us that Jesus came to save us from our sins, and bridge the gap between man and God. We are always aware of what we are saved from.

Unfortunately, we apt to forget who we are saved from. The Bible tells us:

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:6-8).

We, who are in Christ, were weak. We could nothing for ourselves. We cannot save ourselves. In the sovereign, predetermined plan for God, He sent Jesus to die in our place. God shows us His love by allowing Christ to die for sinners. Not righteous people, but for sinners.

Christians have a tendency to stop after verse 8 because it is simple and beautiful. For some Christians the next verse is scary and even hard to swallow:

Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God (Romans 5:9).

Christians are justified, which means the sinner is declared righteous, because of the shed blood of Jesus. That is not the scary part. The scary part is that God saved us from God Himself. Jesus took the punishment for our sins which was not the punishment inflicted on Him by the Roman government nor the Jews. It was the punishment of God's wrath in our place for our sins.

This is not divine child abuse, as some atheists call it. This is a loving Father, who took His Son, who willfully knew what the plan was, to provide a way for us to be right with Him. The Bible says:

For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit (1 Peter 3:18).

A note on this verse in the Gospel Transformation Bible says:

Jesus paid the penalty for sins (penal) as a substitute in our place (substitutionary) to undo the effects of our sin and restore us to God (atonement, literally “at-one-ment”). This is precisely what we find in this verse: Christ “suffered once for sins [penal], the righteous for the unrighteous [substitutionary], that he might bring us to God [atonement].”

Steven Lawson said, "We are saved from God's wrath by God's grace. Only God can save us from Himself." That is the gospel. We are saved from hell and our sins, but we are also saved from God himself.