Hebrews (Program #9) – The Captain of Salvation (1)

God’s goal is not to bring us to heaven. The goal of God’s salvation is to bring us into the very glory which in Christ has been sown into us at the time of our regeneration. Christ is many things to His saved ones. We may appreciate Him as our Savior and our Redeemer or may be even as our friend. But Hebrews unveils Him as the Captain of our Salvation. We’ll see Him as the fighting captain in today’s life study of the Bible.

Logically, we think that for salvation you need a savior or a redeemer but why do we need a captain for our salvation?

We need to make it emphatically clear that we surely need Christ as the Savior and we absolutely need Christ as the Redeemer. There’s no way to be saved without this personal Savior, the God-man. And we surely need Him as the Redeemer who bought us back with His precious blood and has brought us back to God that we may enjoy God as everything to us in Christ as the Spirit. Regrettably, many believers have a shallow even elementary concept of salvation. If we understand salvation merely as a rescue from hell to heaven then we don’t really need a captain. We just need a savior and a redeemer, one who allegedly who brings us out of the likelihood of going to hell and brings us to heaven. However, the goal of God’s salvation is not heaven. We are told in the book of Hebrews that God is bringing many sons into glory. For this we need a captain. Why? Because there are forces both human and satanic that resist this kind of progress in God’s salvation. The Lord has come into us, Colossians 1:27 says “…Christ in you, the hope of glory.” Deep within our regenerated spirit we have Christ, the life-giving spirit, as the hope of glory. But there is a lot of resistance to this glory saturating and permeating our entire being. The self resists, the flesh resists, things like sin and death in us resist, human opinion resists, our old man,  our oldness resists, religion is a resistance, the world is a resistance, culture is a resistance… The enemy Himself resists our progress; He wants to keep God’s children in an infantile state so they are no threat to him. Because of all of this resistance and opposition, there is a fight concerning our being brought into glory. Because of the fight, there is a captain. A captain, Christ was revealed to Joshua chapter 5 before the children of Israel entered into the good land, the leader so called Joshua, needed to see who the real commander was – that is Christ Himself. Now if we have some understanding of God’s goal to bring is unto glory and some recognition of the fact there is resistance, we will appreciate Christ as our fighting captain. I am happy to testify that my Christ is my captain of salvation. And over the years, He has been fighting in me even fighting against me in order to bring this brother of His more and more into the glory of God. This is a wonderful, a thrilling, an inspiring aspect of Christ. So let’s listen for more of this Christ.

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