Church of the Holy City

Salvation to the Ends of the Earth

Salvation to the Ends of the Earth
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
January 23, 2011

Isaiah 49:1-7 John 1:29-42 Psalm 40

Our Bible readings this morning concern the salvation of the human race by the Lord Jesus Christ. In Isaiah we heard a prophesy about the coming of Jesus and His salvation. There we read,
It is too small a thing for you to be my servant
to restore the tribes of Jacob
and bring back those of Israel I have kept
I will also make you a light to the Gentiles,
that you may bring my salvation to the ends of the earth (49:6).
This phrase is said by God Himself, who, in Isaiah is called, “the Redeemer and Holy One of Israel.” And in John, we find that our Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel is none other than Jesus Christ Himself. When John sees Jesus, he cries out, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” Only our Redeemer can do this, so Jesus is one and the same with the Old Testament Jehovah, the Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel. We have the testimony of Luke to this effect. The angel Gabriel says to Mary that her child will be, “the Holy One”–the same wording that Isaiah uses to talk about Jehovah. From the Isaiah passage, and from John’s exclamation, we see that with the coming of Jesus Christ, salvation extends to everyone. In Isaiah our Redeemer brings salvation to the ends of the earth. And John says that Jesus takes away the sin of the whole world.
It is through the Divine Human Jesus Christ that salvation comes to the human race. What this means is that Jehovah, the God we read about in the Old Testament, took on a human body for the sake of salvation. Swedenborg testifies to this when he writes, “The Lord from eternity, or Jehovah, took on the human to save men” (L 31). Jesus tells us that He is the one who brings us salvation. He calls Himself the true shepherd, who gives us all eternal life,
Anyone who does not enter the sheep pen by the gate, but climbs in by some other way, is a thief and a robber. 2 The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. . . . 7 Therefore Jesus said again, “Very truly I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. . . . 9 I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. They will come in and go out, and find pasture. . . . I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full (John 10:1-2, 7, 9, 10).
It is the recognition of this saving power of Jesus that causes Simon to be renamed Peter, which in Greek means “rock.” In John, we heard about Jesus renaming Simon “Peter” but John leaves out why. Matthew fills in the details. When Jesus asks the disciples who He is, Peter says, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16). Jesus responds immediately,
“Blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church” (Matthew 16:17-18).
It was not on Peter himself that Jesus would build the church on, but rather the church is built on the recognition that Jesus is the Messiah. And it was Peter’s recognition of this truth that caused Jesus to call him the rock.
Jehovah God took on the human in Mary to bring salvation to the whole human race. This is because God loves us with an unlimited love. And like all lovers, God wishes to give us all the happiness we can bear. And heavenly happiness is the same thing as salvation. Swedenborg describes the nature of God’s saving love for the whole human race,
Jehovah, or the Lord’s internal, was the very Celestial of Love, that is, Love itself, to which no other attributes are fitting than those of pure Love, thus of pure Mercy toward the whole human race; which is such that it wishes to save all and make them happy for ever, and to bestow on them all that it has; thus out of pure mercy to draw all who are willing to follow, to heaven, that is, to itself, by the strong force of love (AC 1735).
Although we often hear about God being a punishing judging God, nothing could be farther from the truth. God is mercy itself, and wishes to draw all upwards to Himself and into heaven. John testifies to this truth, as Swedenborg tells us,
That the Lord imputes good to every person and evil to none, hence that He does not judge any one to hell, but so far as a person follows raises all to heaven are evident from His words: Jesus said, “When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all persons unto Myself” (John 12:32); “God sent His Son into the world not to judge the world, but that the world through Him might be saved” (John 3:17); Jesus said, “I judge no man” (John 8:15) (TCR 652).
Likewise In another place we find Swedenborg saying,
Divine mercy is pure mercy toward the whole human race to save it, and it is likewise with every person, and never recedes from any one; so that whoever can be saved, is saved (HH522).
But what about that last line? I mean the one that goes, “whoever can be saved, is saved.” Who are those who can be saved? Well, Swedenborg makes this very clear in his book, True Christian Religion, “Since all men have been redeemed, all may be regenerated each according to his state” (TCR 579).
So all humans can be redeemed and saved. But we have a role to play in salvation. It isn’t just given instantly. We are saved by faith–true faith. The faith that saves is not just belief. Saving faith is the faith that comes from a life lived in love. A life that is lived in love is called charity. When we are doing good in all aspects of our life, then we are living the life called charity. So Swedenborg tells us,
The light of heaven from the Lord’s Divine Human cannot reach to any but those who live in the good of faith, that is, in charity; or what is the same, those who have conscience. The very plane into which that light can operate, or the receptacle of that light, is the good of faith, or charity, and thus conscience (AC 2776).
Some would like to take the easy way out. Some think that the way we live doesn’t matter, as long as we believe in Jesus. But salvation is just as much a matter of living well as it is a matter of believing rightly. We need to live a good life, and also we need to believe what is true. Then both our heart and our mind are involved in the spiritual life. By heart and mind, I mean the whole person.
But all the power we have to do good, and all the power we have to understand truth is given to us by the Divine Humanity of Jesus Christ. For it is God Himself, acting through the Divine Humanity of Jesus Christ, that brings salvation to the whole human race.
For the universal truth of all is that the Lord united His Human to the Divine itself, and that thus man has peace and salvation. And it is a universal truth that man must be conjoined to the Lord, which is effected by rebirth, that he may have peace and salvation (AC 10730).
This is why Jesus says that He is the gate through which we must enter, in order to be saved. We cannot understand God in God’s infinity, or God’s essence. We need God’s revelation through Jesus Christ in order to come to God. Swedenborg makes this very clear. “The Infinite Being, that is Jehovah, could in no way be manifested to man except through the Human Essence, thus through the Lord” (AC 1990).
The absolute and complete union of Jehovah God and Jesus Christ took place in stages throughout Jesus’ life on earth. In the Arcana Coelestia #2520 we read, “The Lord’s life was a continual progression of the Human to the Divine, even to absolute union” (AC 2520). This process took place until all the human was made divine and all the divine was made human. As Swedenborg puts it, “The Lord made all the human with Himself divine” (AC 2194). Since the union of divine and human took place gradually, we have language recorded in the Gospels that makes it look as if God and Jesus were two separate beings. But there is only one God. The union is complete and total. God became man and man became God in the one person of Jesus Christ. The union of God and the Christ is not a metaphor as if two separate people work together as if they formed a union. It is a union in one person. Swedenborg shows us that no other model of the union between God and the Christ is possible than a union into one person.
There is not meant a union such as that of two who are distinct from each other, and are conjoined merely by love, as a father with a son, when the father loves the son and the son the father, or as when a brother loves a brother, or a friend a friend, but it is a real union into one, that they be not two but one . . . and because they are one, therefore also the whole Human of the Lord is the Divine Being or Jehovah (AC 3737).
This is a highly controversial point, but it is at the heart of the New Christianity. This is what is meant by Simon Peter’s confession that Jesus is the Messiah. This is what Jesus means when he says, “anyone who does not enter the sheep pen by the gate, but climbs in by some other way, is a thief and a robber” (John 10:1). In short, Jesus is the way the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Him (John 14:6). And this is the rock on which Jesus builds His church.