John says, "The Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the world." This statement from the Word of God clearly indicates that, in God’s perception, every single member of the human race is lost and in need of saving. No one is excepted. All are lost, the "good" as well as the "bad."

If the Father sent the Son to be everyone’s Savior, then the "good" are not good enough to escape a totally lost condition, and the "bad" are not too bad to be saved. That "good" people need the death of the Son of God to get them into Heaven comes as a shock to those who think of themselves as good. That the death of God’s Son could avail for "bad" people seems equally shocking.

The word "saved" is an offense to many people, and yet, it is one of God’s favorite words. Actually the Greek verb "sozo," means "to deliver." Like most words, it is a generic term until given a technical meaning by its context. It is used in the Bible to denote several types of deliverance. The most important type is deliverance from condemnation, and that is the deliverance, or salvation with which this article deals. If one is saved from all possible condemnation, one can never again be lost, for one can never again be condemned. Put another way, if God could ever condemn the believer for even one sin, that would prove that he had never been delivered from condemnation. A person who has not been placed beyond the reach of condemnation is unsaved, according to God’s Word.

Religion cannot save from condemnation! A whole lot of religion would not save a person any more than a little would have. Recently I heard a woman complaining that her church never got anyone completely saved. She was right, for her church offers its constituents a river of fire to purge their sins after they have died, even if they have been very religious up until death.

When God created Adam, He created him perfect. Adam had no sinful nature to compel him, coerce him, or even entice him to do wrong. As a perfect human being, he had no sinful habits, no sinful appetites, no sinful inclinations to produce wrong behavior. But he did have human volition...the limited power of choice. He could have continued to obey God; he chose to disobey. All sin is mortal! On man’s scale of criminality, Adam’s sin would have ranked near the bottom. He simply ate a piece of forbidden fruit. But God had told him that the day that he ate of this fruit he would die. The fruit was not poison, but sin brings death. Adam didn’t die physically for many years, but he died spiritually the instant that he disobeyed God. He was as dead after one "little" sin as he would have been after one big one.

He wasn’t any more dead when be had committed his first thousand sins; he wouldn’t have been more dead after a million. Sin is sin, and sin brings death. Adam sinned and Adam died, and with him the whole of the human race of which he is the federal head. You and I were in his loins sharing his culpability.

Adam didn’t need a whole lot of sins to bring on spiritual death...just one. Since Adam was all of the human race there was, when he sinned...the race sinned. You and I sinned. Adam became a sinner because he sinned. You and I sin because we are sinners by nature, sinners by conception and birth. The fact that all people are born sinners, and therefore sin, explains the torment that is human history. As I write these words, the news media is informing us that there are forty wars going on in the world right now. If it takes a minimum of two nations to fight a war, does this mean that at least eighty of the two hundred and seventy-three nations of the world are locked in combat? Even if some of the wars are civil wars, this much conflict demonstrates that there is something radically wrong with the human race. In this "most enlightened century" four hundred million people have died violent deaths. The second "War to end all wars" took from fifty to eighty million lives, depending on which chronicler is counting. The "peace" that ensued has taken more millions of lives than the war did! Mental health institutions, because they cannot accommodate the flood of people requiring their services, are graduating clients in three weeks that ought to be locked up for a lifetime. Child abuse is widespread, divorce rampant, teen age pregnancy prolific, and sexually transmitted diseases epidemic. Our streets and even our homes are no longer safe. The womb, designed to nurture and protect, has become a place of danger, dismemberment, and death. Public schools attack "knowledge, religion, and morality," the very things they were invented to promote. A doctor can grow rich by taking more lives than a thousand other doctors will ever save. Food exporting nations become starving countries because outside forces with foreign philosophies force "improved economic policies" on them. Parents kill children and children kill parents. Prisons overflow. All of this cruelty, brutality, and bloodshed flow from one sin, the first sin of Adam, the first sin of the human race...your first sin and mine. Surely the debacle that is human history, written in blood and tears, built of broken dreams held together with heartache, bears witness to the Bible’s claim that earth needs a Heaven-sent Savior. But supposing there were no wars, no prison-camps, no venereal disease, no mental illness. Would man not need a Savior? Not everyone enslaves, tortures, kills his fellow man. Not everyone soils himself by engaging in sex outside of marriage. Not everyone commits crimes punishable by society. Yet everyone is lost. Equally lost. The moral person is as Hell-bent and as Hell-deserving as the immoral person. When God describes the righteousness that He has a right to require of man, all stand condemned. None but Christ has ever satisfied the Law’s requirement to love God perfectly and our neighbor as we already do ourselves.

If this world were characterized by morality instead of immorality and peace instead of war, if our pantries were full and our streets safe we would be no less lost and in need of a Savior. The Law of the Lord shows us what God has a right to require of the flesh--absolute perfection. The Law never marked on a curve. It never approved of anything less than constant, complete obedience. It never accepted "trying." It couldn’t. A law that departed from the principle of Justice once would be an imperfect law, an unjust law. Mercy is not the business of Divine Law. Unadulterated Justice is! Uncompromised Justice is the business of Divine Law. One sin unpunished and the Law itself would become a sinner. A god who could overlook the demands of Justice regarding the least of all sins just once in all of Eternity would be an unjust god!

Adam is living proof of this. Or perhaps we should say dying proof. One sin and live Adam became dead Adam. Spiritually dead. 100% lost. Not bent out of shape and in need of a little straightening. Not spiritually sick and in need of healing. Totally dead, as regards his standing before God, and in need of life. Hell-bound! And Hell-deserving! Only God dying for Adam could rectify his ruin, so great was that ruin. Adam, with just one sin credited to his account, desperately needed a Savior. All the religion in the Universe couldn’t put fallen Adam one inch closer to His Creator. A thousand lifetimes of "being good" could not reduce his lostness by an ounce. Apart from Calvary Adam was without hope and, apart from Calvary, so are you and I.

God is no respecter of persons. Law is no respecter of persons. Justice is no respecter of persons. If it were possible for you to be good for one million years and then you sinned one little sin, Justice would not care about the million years--it would only care about the sin. A million years of doing good is not the concern of Justice. Sin is! Justice has to be satisfied or it would not be Just. If the justice of God would fail just one time, God Himself would become a sinner.

The good news is that while Justice is no respecter of persons, neither is Grace. Justice having been satisfied at Calvary, Grace is free to save and to bless. If we may be allowed to use the language of accommodation, God searched the Universe for a way to save totally lost and completely ruined sinners and found only one--Grace. Grace is God doing all of the saving while you and I do only all the being saved. Grace is all that God is free to do for us because of the death of His Son on the cross of Calvary.

That all of fallen Adam’s fallen progeny need a Savior is the clear and consistent teaching of Scripture. Until we bow to the truthfulness of God’s Word we will never be saved. After all, why would you or I trust a Savior we didn’t believe that we need? Only when we see our need of salvation will we come "hat in hand" to Calvary where an infinitely loving God answered fully to every demand of Justice, dying in our place, answering to our sin, providing all of the salvation that we could ever need.