Christians Need to Be Saved
“If while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son” (Rom. 5:10). This is the message of salvation for sinners. The next words of this verse are very significant: “Much more.” The apostle has just been speaking of salvation for sinners, and now he is to tell us something “much more.” This word should prepare us for some amazing revelation of his grace. “Much more, being reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.”
Do Christians, then, need salvation? Indeed they do, and the Word of God suggests here that a good name for that salvation which reconciled Christian needs is “the much more salvation,” and this is just another way of saying “the Victorious Life.”
God has granted that life to every Christian. But not every Christian is enjoying it. For the Christian has the terrible power of choosing to walk after the flesh and not after the Spirit. God’s plan is that the Christian life should be a moment by moment miracle life, just as the new birth is a miracle. “If we live by the Spirit, by the Spirit let us also walk” (Gal. 5:25). Being born again, and “walking,” are two distinct things. When a Christian learns that God intends him to walk by faith, letting Christ do it all, just as he has believed that Christ has done it all in the matter of saving him from the penalty of his sins, then the Christian is ready to enter into the fulness of the Spirit, which is the Victorious Life.
And when he does enter by faith for the first time into this complete victory, which has been his privilege all along in Christ, there is such a marked change that it is natural for a Christian to think of it as a “second blessing.” There is that perfectly clear distinction between being born again, and “walking” or living moment by moment after the new birth has taken place. The man who has been born again is in a place to take hold of the much-more salvation for Christians as he could not do in his unregenerate state.