Salvation

The essay Thomas Erskine titled “Salvation” was written in 1816 but not published until 1825 when it appeared as the Introductory Essay to Letters of the Samuel Rutherford: Late Professor of Divinity at St. Andrews.

Abstract:

Thomas Erskine’s essay “Salvation” argues that true salvation is not merely pardon from guilt but the healing and restoration of the soul into likeness with God. Drawing an analogy from bodily danger and disease, Erskine distinguishes between external deliverance (judicial acquittal) and internal renewal (spiritual health), insisting that the latter is God’s ultimate aim. He contends that the gospel reveals God’s character—justice and mercy united in Christ’s atoning work—in such a way that faith awakens love for God, and this love alone restores the soul’s health. Salvation, therefore, is the transformation of character produced by believing contemplation of God as revealed in Christ, with pardon serving as a means toward this deeper end rather than the end itself.

To understand the doctrines of the Bible aright, it is of the greatest importance to form just ideas of what is meant by the word “salvation,” as many of the practical errors into which men have fallen on the subject of Christianity have arisen from a misconception of this term: some supposing it to refer merely to the pardon of sin and others to an undefined happiness in a future state.

To assist our inquiries into this most interesting subject, it is of importance to examine the different passages of Scripture in which this term is used and to compare it with other terms which are frequently employed as synonymous with it.

In Scripture, the term salvation, with its grammatical branches, is applied to the bodies as well as to the souls of men. When applied to the body, it varies in its meaning according to the state or condition of those who are the subjects of it. These conditions are chiefly two, namely, first, a state of danger arising from causes external to the body such as shipwreck, war, or famine; and, secondly, a state of danger arising from disease within the body.

First, when the term salvation is applied to persons in a state of danger from external causes, it means an external act, corresponding to the nature of the danger by which the cause of the danger is removed and security restored. Thus, in the description of the shipwreck given in the 27th chapter of the Acts, the word sōzō is used to signify deliverance from the danger of the sea: “And when neither sun nor stars in many days appeared, and no small tempest lay on us, all hope that we should be saved was then taken away.”— “Paul said to the centurion and to the soldiers, Except these abide in the ship, ye cannot be saved.” And in the following chapter, verse 1st, the word translated escaped is derived from the same root. In the Septuagint the same word is applied to those who have escaped from battle. When our Lord, in the agony of his soul, prays that the bitter cup of suffering might pass from him, he uses the same word: “Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour: but for this cause came I unto this hour.” Jude applies it to the deliverance from the land of Egypt: “I will therefore put you in remembrance, though ye once knew this, how that the Lord, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed them that believed not.” In these cases, salvation means simply such a change upon the external circumstances in which the body is placed that danger is removed and safety recovered. No change is produced on the body itself, but only on its situation with regard to other things.

Secondly, when this term is applied to the case of persons laboring under disease, it signifies an internal operation suited also to the evil which it remedies by which the inward principle of the malady is counteracted and the bodily organs restored to healthful exercise. This is the most common use of the word in the New Testament when it refers to the body. In this sense it occurs in most of the narratives of our Lord’s miraculous cures and is rendered in our translation by various English phrases such as “made whole”— “For she said within herself, If I may but touch his garment, I shall be whole. But Jesus turned him about; and when he saw her, he said, Daughter, be of good comfort; thy faith hath made thee whole. And the woman was made whole from that hour.” “And whithersoever he entered, into villages, or cities, or country, they laid the sick in the streets, and be sought him that they might touch if it were but the border of his garment: and as many as touched him were made whole.”— “Healed”— “They also which saw it told them by what means he that was possessed of the devils was healed.”— “He shall do well” “Then said his disciples, Lord, if he sleep, he shall do well.” In these cases salvation does not mean a change upon circumstances external to the body but upon the internal condition of the body itself. The distinction between these two classes of cases is obvious. In both, an external agent is supposed to apply the remedy but the operation of this agent differs according to the nature of the evil. In the first class, it is directed to the external circumstances in which the body is placed—in the second, it is directed to the body itself.

We frequently see these two kinds of salvation conjoined—thus, a man is imprisoned on suspicion of a crime and in consequence of the unhealthiness of the place, is seized with the jail fever—at last he is acquitted, and his liberation is followed by restored health. Here the one salvation is the effect of the other and is indeed the only thing which could make the other valuable. Take another instance: A man loses his health from the use of improper food—a benevolent person, by supplying him with proper food, restores his health. Here, the external evil is unwholesome food, and the internal is disease. There are also two kinds of salvation corresponding to these two evils, the one of which, however, is entirely subservient to the other. The change of food is made simply for the purpose of restoring health, and if this effect does not follow nothing has been accomplished which can properly be called salvation; the whole plan has failed. Salvation then properly refers to the ultimate object in the series. If a man is simply in danger of being lost by shipwreck, his ultimate object is to be safe on dry land, but if the fear of this danger has deprived him of his reason, then the recovery of his mental health becomes the ultimate object and the salvation from shipwreck becomes merely a step to the salvation of his reason. So, if a man has the disease of cancer, he may be delivered from the cancer by the knife, but then the salvation from the cancer is subservient to the salvation of his health, and unless this consequence follows, the object has failed.

The minuteness of these observations may seem tedious, but we have been led to them from the persuasion that a greater attention to the analogy, which subsists between the treatment of the body under danger or disease and the gospel scheme of salvation, would very much increase the accuracy of our ideas on religious subjects. Salvation from bodily disease is frequently expressed by the word “life:” “Jesus saith unto him, Go thy way; thy son liveth. And the man believed the word that Jesus had spoken unto him, and he went his way.”— “And he besought him greatly, saying, My little daughter lieth at the point of death: I pray thee, come and lay thy hands on her, that she may be healed; and she shall live.” In which last instance, “she shall live,” is used as explanatory of “that she may be healed.” Life in these cases evidently signifies the full exercise of the animal faculties and when it follows sickness, is synonymous with a confirmed cure. This same salvation is also expressed by the term “loosing,” or freeing from the bondage of pain: “And ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan hath bound, lo, these eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the sabbath-day?”

We now proceed to consider the import of the term salvation when applied to the soul. Salvation, when applied to the soul, refers also to two kinds of evils, which, though different in their nature, are yet always conjoined—the one being external to the soul, the other internal—the first consisting in the sentence of God against the soul on account of disobedience, the second consisting in the diseased and depraved state of the soul itself. The first of these evils, namely, the sentence of God against the soul on account of disobedience, consists in an eternal exclusion from the family and favor of God. The second evil, namely, the diseased state of the soul itself, consists in that disposition which leads to disobedience. Salvation from the first of these evils may be termed a judicial acquittal. Salvation from the second, a recovery of spiritual health.

In order to understand and adore the wisdom of God in redemption, it is necessary to understand the way in which these two kinds of salvation are connected for they are never disjoined. Now there are two ways in which things may be conjoined, namely, by arbitrary connection, and by natural connection. As an instance of the first, we may take the obligation under which a man lies to take certain oaths when he is entrusted with certain offices under government. There is no natural or necessary connection between these two things, the connection arises out of law or usage: the man may take the oaths without getting the office. As instances of the second, we may take the connection which subsists between a man’s being a father and having a kindness for his children, or between a man’s receiving a favor and feeling gratitude.

It may here be argued with justice that, as God is the God of nature, every connection which he appoints becomes a natural connection. This is not denied, and all that is meant here by natural connection is such a relation between two things that to our minds the existence of the one appears indispensable to the existence of the other, or at least that the existence of the one appears to us in the ordinary course of things to lead to the existence of the other.

Let us now take a short view of the gospel system that we may perceive how the two kinds of salvation therein revealed are connected, that is, how pardon through a Saviour is connected with the recovery of spiritual health and also that we may perceive which of the two is the ultimate object in God’s dealings with men. The Bible informs us that man has fallen from God’s favor and from his own natural happiness by having a will different from God’s will and by acquiring a character and pursuing a conduct opposite to God’s character and conduct. Mere pardon, to a creature in this situation, would be comparatively of small consequence because his unhappiness arose necessarily out of his character, and, therefore, unless his character were changed, his unhappiness remained the same. The enjoyments of God’s family were things contrary to his corrupted taste and choice, and, therefore, his free admission into them could be no blessing to him. In order to his happiness, the restoration of his lost privileges must be accompanied by a restoration of the capacity to enjoy them. For this reason, when God invited his rebellious creatures to return to his favor and family, he did it in such a way that the soul which truly accepted of the invitation imbibed at the same time the principles of a new character.

There is a difference between the body and the mind which should here be taken notice of. The body may be perfectly capable of enjoyment and yet at the same time perfectly miserable in consequence of being precluded from the means of enjoyment. Thus, a man in a perfect state of health may be made unhappy by being fettered in a noisome dungeon where he is debarred from the exercise of those animal faculties the gratification of which constitutes animal enjoyment. But we cannot apply this reasoning to the mind. A perfectly healthful state of mind, according to the appointment of him who changes not, is inseparably connected with mental enjoyment. The happiness of God arises necessarily out of his character, and the mental health of intelligent creatures, which is in fact nothing more nor less than a resemblance to the character of God, must also be inseparably connected with happiness. So that perfect mental health is not simply the capacity for enjoyment, it may perhaps more properly be said to constitute enjoyment itself. The same or similar causes must produce the same or similar effects, and if the character of God is the cause of his happiness, a similar character (with reverence be it spoken) must produce a similar happiness. And this happiness can be produced by no other character for that would be to suppose that opposite causes could produce the same effects.

If this be so, it follows that a restoration to spiritual health or conformity to the divine character is the ultimate object of God in his dealings with the children of men. Whatever else God hath done with regard to men has been subsidiary and with a view to this; even the unspeakable work of Christ and pardon freely offered through his cross have been but means to a farther end, and that end is that the adopted children of the family of God might be conformed to the likeness of their elder brother—that they might resemble him in character and thus enter into his joy. This is spiritual health, and it is acquired by the blessing of God upon the reception and faithful use of the means which he hath appointed and made known to us in the history of his mercy through a Savior. Free offer of pardon through the Son of God is termed salvation just in the same way that a medicine is, in common language, called a cure; that is, they do not strictly constitute salvation—they only produce it. Before entering on the consideration of those passages which confirm this view of the subject, we shall endeavor to make our meaning more distinctly understood. It must be remembered always that the love of God with the whole heart is not only the sum of all that duty which is positively enjoined on us by the divine law under an awful penalty, but also, that it is the only principle which can produce or maintain spiritual health. Our failure, therefore, in obedience to this law of love not only exposes us to the penalty denounced against disobedience but also plants in our souls the seeds of disease.

Let us suppose that the inhabitants of any district were liable to an epidemic disorder which from the partial derangement accompanying it naturally unfitted its victims for the exercise of civil rights and that there were in the neighborhood certain salubrious springs which had the virtue of counteracting the tendency to disease in those who used them, the waters of which were very palatable to those who were in health but very disagreeable to those who were infected. Let us suppose farther that the government, anxious for the well-being of the people, should enact a law, binding every individual to drink these waters at fixed periods under the penalty of forfeiting all civil rights and immunities in case of disobedience; thus adding the sanction of law to the constitution of nature. In these circumstances, it is evident that disobedience would be attended by two distinct consequences: first, by disqualification for holding any office in the state as the legal penalty of disobedience, and, secondly, by a disease (from not using the antidote) which would of itself naturally unfit the subject of it from holding any office even were he not excluded by law and which would also oppose its own cure by producing a strong repugnance to the only medicine which could remove it. Their natural repugnance to the waters would also be strengthened by irritation against the government under whose condemnation they lay and by the persuasion that obedience could now be of no use because the penalty was already incurred. In this supposed case, we see obedience, health, and the enjoyment of civil privileges united both by law and nature on the one side and disobedience, civil disqualifications, and disease as closely united on the other. We see also that this disease can only be removed by a return to obedience and that this obedience can only be produced by some motive powerful enough to overcome the distaste for the remedy. As health and the enjoyment of civil privileges were from the outset inseparably connected in the mind of the government and as the law was made simply for the purpose of giving an additional motive for using the necessary means of preserving health, so if the malady should become generally prevalent (the original connection between health and civil privileges still subsisting and being itself the real ground of the present disqualifications) the views of government would become primarily directed to those means by which the people might be induced to return to the use of that remedy which could alone restore health and fit them for the exercise of those privileges for which they had disqualified themselves both by law and nature. The reason of this is obvious because the removal of the legal disqualifications could be of no possible use whilst the disease continued except in so far as it acted as a motive with the diseased outlaws for applying the remedy both by showing them that the road to preferment was now set open if they were only fit for it and also by manifesting the kindly disposition of government and thus exciting them to gratitude and obedience.

Although it is perhaps impossible to make out a perfect analogy between the things of the visible and invisible worlds, yet there appear to us to be some circumstances in this case which bear very much on the relation which, according to the Bible, subsists between God and man.

The rights and immunities of God’s family consist in possessing the favor of God, in approaching to him at all times as our Father, in enjoying what he enjoys, in rejoicing to see his will accomplished through the wide range of his dominions, and in being ourselves made instruments in accomplishing it.

The only character which is capable of enjoying these privileges or indeed of considering them in the light of privileges must be one which is in some measure conformed to God’s character. This then is spiritual health, which evidently can only be de rived from or maintained by a love, a predominant love to God in his true character. But as man from the constitution of his nature was liable to choose differently from God’s choice and thus to fall into spiritual disease, it pleased the divine wisdom to point out in the form of an express law the only source of spiritual health saying, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart” and to sanction it by the penalty of exclusion in case of disobedience and the promise of divine privileges in case of obedience. Thus, we see here also obedience, spiritual health, and heavenly immunities united by nature as well as by positive law on the one side, and disobedience, spiritual disease, and forfeiture on the other. Man disobeyed the commandment, he loved other things better than God, and thus subjected himself to the legal penalty and at the same time, was affected with that spiritual disease which disqualified him for being a member of God’s family even supposing that there had been no legal exclusion whatever.

When the mercy of God purposed to deliver man from this state of misery into which he had precipitated himself, it became his object to bring him back to spiritual health and thus to make him partake of heavenly happiness. But the source of health still continued the same; an intelligent being could only become like God by loving God in his true character. It became necessary then that some manifestation of the divine holiness and justice should be made so interwoven with motives to gratitude that he who believed the history of it should be constrained to love not only the mercy of God but even that awful and pure sanctity which cannot look upon iniquity.

We naturally esteem and even love perfect justice except in those cases where its condemning sentence falls upon ourselves. At the same time, if justice is compromised even in our own favor our gratitude is necessarily mingled with a degree of contempt or disesteem, so that it is the union of kindness and justice in their highest degrees which alone can attract perfect reverential love.

Now, supposing that such a manifestation of the character of God had been made as that his mercy had seemed to overlook sanctity and throw it into the shade by affixing no stigma to transgression, our love could not have been accompanied by perfect reverence, and moreover, what is principally to be attended to, this love could not have the effect of healing our spiritual disease because not being attracted by the full and true character of God it could not produce in us a resemblance to that true character which is the main object to be accomplished. This supposition is, of course, merely made for the sake of the argument for it is absurd to suppose that God should manifest himself otherwise than in his true character.

A manifestation of unmixed justice in the Divine character must have been still more inefficacious. It could have attracted no love and, of course, no resemblance. It could only have confirmed the sentence of condemnation and thus have strengthened our enmity and despair even whilst it might have compelled our respect.

In order to produce real spiritual health, the Divine manifestation must be such as to excite within our hearts a perfect complacency in all and each of the perfections of God. It must lead us to adopt his loves and hatreds so to speak. It must exhibit sin to us not only as fearful from its consequences but as hateful in itself and revolting to every feeling of affection and gratitude. This manifestation of himself God has made in the gospel of his Son. In that gospel, he makes the fullest and freest offers of pardon and favor, but it is through the blood of atonement. God became man and dwelt amongst us: he took upon himself our nature and the judicial sentence under which we lay on account of transgression. He showed the evil of sin and the power of justice by suffering, the just for the unjust. The infinity of Godhead gave weight and dignity unspeakable to the sacrifice. He showed a love unmeasured in that when the authority of the divine law required full satisfaction, he hesitated not to give himself a ransom for sinners. In this wondrous work, justice magnifies mercy, and mercy magnifies justice. The greatness of the sacrifice demonstrates the extent both of the divine abhorrence for sin and of the divine love for sinners. When we sin against this Savior or forget him, we must feel that it is the basest ingratitude. It is trampling on that blood that was shed for us. The gospel farther assures us that this same God is ever present with these same feelings towards us, with these same feelings towards sin—that he orders every event and appoints every duty—that he offers us his listening ear and his enabling Spirit in all difficulties—and that he points us to a rest beyond the grave where our resemblance to him shall be completed and his joy shall be ours.

In this manifestation of the divine character, the attributes of justice and mercy form a combination so amiable and so resplendent that whilst our affections and esteem are chained to it, our very conception faints under it. We can here love perfect justice because we are not under its condemnation. We can here adore perfect mercy because it is unmixed with weakness or partiality. Sin, even in the abstract, is associated in our minds with sentiments of abhorrence as well as fear and holiness with sentiments of affection as well as hope.

A growing resemblance to the character thus gloriously manifested is the necessary consequence of our love for it. This is a law of our nature. The leading objects of our thoughts and affections constitute the molds, as it were, into which our minds are cast and from which they derive their form and character. This fact ought to make us most watchful over the motions of our hearts for it is only by a constant contemplation of the true character of God and by cherishing and exercising those affections and desires which arise out of this contemplation that the divine image is renewed in our souls. We are not to expect any mechanical or extraneous impression separate from that which the truth makes for it is by the truth alone, known and believed, that the Holy Spirit operates in accomplishing that sanctifying work which is itself salvation. When the soul, therefore, leaving God chooses created things for its chief objects, these things become the molds which impart to it their own fleeting character and imprint on it their own superscription of vanity and death.

When this connection between loving an object and resembling it is considered, we can have no difficulty in discerning why faith in the gospel history is required in order to salvation. We cannot love that which we do not believe, and we cannot resemble that which we do not love. Hence it is that faith becomes a matter of such vital consequence. It is the very foundation of the whole Christian character, the very root of the tree. If salvation had consisted simply in the removal of the judicial penalty denounced against sin—if this had been the sole scope of the work of Christ, it would have been unnecessary to have revealed the gospel history to men or to have required their belief of it because the atonement being made, their belief could neither add to it nor take from it. But when salvation is considered to express the renewed health of the soul and when heaven and hell are considered as the names of opposite characters necessarily connected by the very nature of things with certain happy or miserable consequences, and thus, when the revealed law of God is considered as explaining and declaring the particulars of a constitution which was originally mixed up with the elements of our being rather than as enacting a new one, then we see the importance of faith because it is the only medium through which the perfections of the divine character can possibly make any impression on our minds, and unless our minds be so impressed as to excite our love, we cannot become like God or, in other words, our spiritual health cannot be restored nor improved. We are not called upon to believe anything for the mere sake of believing it any more than we are called on to take a medicine for the mere sake of taking it. We are called on to believe the truth on account of the healing influence that it has upon the mind as we are called on to take a medicine on account of its influence on our bodily health.

It follows from this that what is called doctrinal instruction when properly applied is really the most practical. No one would be considered as a practical physician who merely recommended his patients to be in good health and painted the advantages of a good appetite, of bodily ease and vigor, whilst at the same time he did not apply the remedies which might lead to these effects. So likewise, he is not a practical teacher of religion who contents himself with exhorting his hearers to be in spiritual health and to exhibit in their lives and conversations those Christian virtues which are the symptoms of spiritual health whilst he does not anxiously and constantly at the same time inculcate upon them that view of the divine character in Jesus Christ which contains in itself means of powerful operation to renew and purify the mind and which God himself has revealed as the appointed medicine for healing the diseases of the soul and restoring it to health and vigor. It is possible that a physician, either of souls or of bodies, may be so engrossed with the beauty of his theory that he may forget that application of it from which it derives its sole importance, but this error is not greater than the error of those who should dream of restoring health without the application of any means or by such as are contrary to the obvious principles of the science which they profess.

Besides, although we can form a very accurate notion of what bodily health is, it is impossible for us to do this with regard to spiritual health without comprehending according to the measure of our capacities the state and character of that Eternal Mind who is the pattern as he is the source of all spiritual perfection. And this view cannot be taken without entering into and understanding the dealings of God with men in the mission of Jesus Christ which is represented in the Bible as by far the most striking and important manifestation of the divine character with which the world has been favored. So that it is a delusion to call upon men or direct them to acquire spiritual health unless at the same time the nature of this health is shown to them by delineating the purposes of the life and death of Him in whom alone we can find the brightness of the Father’s glory and the express image of his person.

Neither mental nor bodily health can be gained without the use of the appropriate means. The means of bodily health are to be discovered by human experiment and science, but the means of spiritual health are contained in the gospel. Thus, the mercy of God in Christ and his holy abhorrence of sin manifested in perfect concord with mercy constitute the spiritual medicine, and the object and result of its application is salvation or healing.

But, although this renewal of spiritual health in man be the great object of the gospel, yet in itself it affords no ground of confidence before God; that is, it is no foundation on which we can rest our hope for pardon or acceptance with him both because it is imperfect in itself and because, even if it were perfect, it could not atone for past transgression. The only confidence which it is calculated to give is analogous to that confidence which a man feels when he finds his bodily health improving by the use of a particular regimen: he is satisfied of the advantage of the system, and he perseveres in it with alacrity. The ground of our hope before God continues the same, and this ground is the sacrifice of Christ for the sins of the world. The mercy and the justice manifested in this fact are and continue forever to be the only food which can confirm and increase that spiritual health which they first gave. The moment that the soul begins to feed on any other food than this, the moment that it takes anything else for its chief joy, or hope, or confidence—that very moment the health of the soul declines, the disease of sin gathers strength, and disorders the whole frame of the soul; withdraws the affections and faculties from the pursuit of those things which are eternal and points them to passing shadows; relaxes all the energies of the spiritual life; displaces true joy, and hope, and peace, and substitutes in their room a joy that inebriates, and a hope that dies, and a peace that blindfolds, whilst it conducts to ruin. He who withdraws from the sacrifice of Christ and places confidence in the spiritual health to which he has already attained is like the man who would refuse his necessary food and dream of supporting his life out of that stock of life which he had already enjoyed.

“My beloved brethren,” says the Apostle, “be ye steadfast, immoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know, that your labour in the Lord is not in vain.” This work consists in living under an ever-present sense of what God hath done for sinners in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Faith means the conviction of the reality of things which we do not see. Now, in order that this conviction be of any use to us, it must be present with us. A man cannot be said to be under a conviction unless it is upon his mind. If a man is convinced that particular precautions are necessary for his health, he will take these precautions, but as soon as he forgets the necessity, his precautions vanish. Thus, forgetfulness comes often to the same thing as an opposite conviction. The belief of the morning, if it be confined to the morning, will do us no good through the day. He that believes is saved, not he who has believed. The sole object of Christian belief is to produce the Christian character, and unless this is done, nothing is done. Good bodily health has a value in itself independently of the good digestion and good nourishment which produced it; so also, spiritual health has a value in itself independently of the correct belief which produced it. In both cases, the effects are the objects of ultimate importance, but then they cannot exist without their causes, and when the causes cease to operate, the effects must also cease. To resemble God is the great matter, but we cannot resemble him without loving him, and we cannot love him in his true character without believing in his true character.

T. E.

Edinburgh, January 1825.