Salvation is to be proclaimed, not offered, as emancipation was proclaimed over and over again to assure that the news reached everyone as much as possible. Welcoming it allows its impact on us today while still in this body. Salvation occurred at the cross. It manifests in our heart at the time of welcoming our first hearing of it. It will be made much clearer when we find ourselves resurrected with a new body.
Like the impact of one welcoming the news of emancipation, knowing that the highest authority of the land will not hold it against him, a slave hearing of the legality surrounding his emancipation is to be moved to the mindset of a freeman, even if his slavemaster ignores his rights and still tries to keep him in bondage. Fear of the slavemaster and uncertainty about what “living free” entails, however, can cause a slave to be sitting on the border line especially if he never dreamed of freedom or that he has accepted his slave lifestyle to be all that he can ever have.
What will grant the slave courage is seeing his friends living a “free” life despite them knowing that extremists can get offended and murder them or cause them to suffer.
Salvation is to be proclaimed like the rain falling on the righteous and the unrighteous, the sun rising on the just and the unjust. The dream of salvation is one that God puts in the heart of a man. When he hears that his dream has been fulfilled by God in Christ, his heart responds in great joy despite the fact that he’s still living in a body causing him physical pain, an old mindset that seeks to drag him back daily toward the tasks of a slave.
When we proclaim salvation, the good news, we’re saying what took place and how it took place and why it took place. Some will be happy to hear, some will be unmoved at hearing it. It’s up to God to cause the preparing of the soil, the seeding, the growing of the seed, the producing of the seed, and the harvesting of the seed. It’s all God from beginning to end.
You can’t believe one thing that was never in your heart to expect in one form or another. Dreams and hopes are the preparing of mankind’s heart toward receiving, toward welcoming what is to come.
“God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.” (2 Corinthians 5:19)
“But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us, not by the righteous deeds we had done, but according to His mercy, through the washing of new birth and renewal by the Holy Spirit. This is the Spirit He poured out on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior” (Titus 3:5)
“He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.” (1 John 2:2)
“We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world.” (John 4:42)
“And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world.” (1 John 4:14)
“Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.” (Mark 16:15)
“…will be condemned” refers to self-condemnation, someone fearing being freed, someone rejecting something good not because they have tested it but because of the giver, someone rejecting the messenger despite the benefits the message offer in this lifetime and the one to come.
Proclaim the gospel, the message of reconciliation and behold its effect as God causes it to grow in the hearts of those who were to welcome it as they had thirsted for it.
Do not offer, but proclaim, for it already took place at the cross and out of the grave. If it’s proclaimed, then we have assurance that even the aborted is saved, even the unlearned is saved, even those on death row like those who were on the cross alongside of Christ are saved by God in Christ.
When someone welcomes the gospel, it is to our benefit knowing that we’ve just stumbled onto a sibling in Christ someone who has been made to be willing to shoulder the burdens of the cross along with us for the sake of Christ, to the glory of God, the glory of the Church, the body of Christ.
“Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!”
Jesus is the well of the living water, the Holy Spirit. 