| “ Therefore he is able to save completely those who come to God through him…” |
| —Hebrews 7:25a |
Let’s say we’re falling off a cliff and someone reaches out to stop our fall and saves us partially. Or, more germane to my previous profession as a fire protection engineer, let’s say we’re in a smoke-filled room and a firefighter in self-contained breathing apparatus just pulls us part of the way out of the room full of toxic gases.
You see, no one wants to be partially saved. When we are in mortal danger, we want to be fully, completely, and totally saved.
The writer to the Hebrew Christians wanted to make certain that they—and we—understood the full scope of our salvation. This prompted him to write these words, speaking of the Lord Jesus Christ, found in Hebrews 7:25:
Therefore he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them.
The King James Version uses the more colorful phrase: “saved to the uttermost.” I really like that phrase.
In our sin—the sin we inherited from Adam and the sin we have committed throughout our lives—we are utterly, totally, and completely lost. Left to our own devices, we have absolutely no hope of being saved from sin’s penalty of eternal suffering. How wonderful that Jesus completely reverses our condition. Through His own death and resurrection, we are now “saved to the uttermost.”
Whereas we were utterly lost, now we are utterly saved. In this truth resides the source of our greatest joy. As John Newton wrote in his famous hymn:
Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.
As we begin a new day, let’s rejoice that, though mired in the depths of sin, we have now been “saved to the uttermost” through the blessed Lord Jesus Christ.
Based on a blog originally posted on Monday, May 2, 2016
