Salvation

Two Timothy chapter 1, and we’ll just read verses 8, 9, and 10.

And Paul writes, “Therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord, nor of me his prisoner, but share in suffering for the gospel by the power of God, who saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began, and which now has been manifested through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.”

Heavenly Father, we pray that you will help us as we look at these verses together now—that you will meet us at our point of need, that you will show us who we are and what we are before your holiness and your majesty, that you will soften our hearts by your grace, and that you will bring us into a saving, growing relationship with your Son, Jesus Christ. For it’s in his name we pray. Amen.

Well, we dealt with verse 8 this morning, Paul’s exhortation: “Do not be ashamed of the message, and don’t be ashamed of the messenger, but instead share in suffering for the gospel of God and by the power of God.” And then, in a way that is just so natural for Paul—when I say that, I mean it in relationship to the things that we find elsewhere in his letters—he then just flows very quickly and easily into the wonder of all that God is to the believer in and through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And so, here, in a way that I’m tempted to believe just happened to him spontaneously… If he was writing it down himself, his pen would almost have gone off on its own; if he was dictating it, the person taking down the notes would have been caught up along with him as he simply reminds Timothy, as his young colleague in the gospel, of the wonder of salvation; of the nature of this gospel, the testimony of which he’s not to be ashamed of; and of the way in which God has worked in the lives of his children.

The Nature of Salvation

And as I say, there are many places in the letters where Paul provides us with this kind of synopsis of the gospel itself. And it is important for us, those of us who use this terminology with frequency, to make sure that we are clear when we are talking in these terms. The gospel is not just a sort of general word of comfort. It’s not a word of comfort—you know, “Well, don’t worry about things. God is a loving God, and Jesus is a wonderful Savior,” or “Well, don’t worry about things. The good news is that surely things’ll be working out one way or another, because after all, we have this amazing story.” No, the gospel is far more comprehensive than that. The gospel is clearly definable. The gospel also encompasses an entire view of life.

When we as pastors talk about others around the country who are in various charges of responsibility in a local church, the question that we will often say to one another is “Is Mr. So-and-So a gospel man?” “Is he a gospel man?” We’re not asking if he’s a Baptist or a Presbyterian or a Methodist or whatever else he might be. That may be of significance, but the real question is “Is he a gospel man?” And what we’re really saying is “Does his understanding of the gospel orientate the way in which he engages in ministry and the way in which he conducts his life?”

Because, you see, the gospel encompasses our entire perspective on life. The gospel actually addresses all the great questions and issues of our life. It is the gospel that actually gives the ultimate answer to the question “Where did our world come from?” Someone who doesn’t believe the gospel may say, “I don’t know where our world came from,” and they would be agnostic. Someone else says, “Well, I think the world came about as a result of an accident.” But the gospel man or woman says, “No. The world came about as a result of the creative handiwork of God himself. He has made the world.” And it is the gospel that also tells us how he has made man—man qua man, men and women—how he has made mankind and why he has made mankind. Shakespeare, you remember, he says,

         What [good] is a man
If [the] chief good and [action] of his time
Be but to sleep and feed? [He is] a beast, no more.[1]

If all that humanity is to do is to exist, to get up, to eat a little, to work a little, to play a little, and then eventually to die, then this is a very forlorn perspective on the world. And yet it is a perspective of many. But the gospel changes our view of that. The gospel tells us that God made man to enjoy a relationship with himself and that the purpose of man is to engage in that relationship.

The gospel also tells us what has gone wrong with man, in a way that society doesn’t have an answer. If you read the newspapers this week, there is so much in the newspaper and so much on the news that is just saying to us as humanity, “Things are really messed up!” People are spoiled. People are jealous. People are angry. People are making strange choices. People hate each other. People steal from one another. The price of goods in the consumer world is in part related to the extent of theft in department stores. A significant part of the cost involved in making a purchase from Dillard’s or Nordstrom has to do with the fact that man steals stuff, that man is dishonest. And society says, “And why is man dishonest?” And it doesn’t know what to say. The gospel tells us why. It says that man is a rebel against God, has turned his back on God, has chosen to go his own way, has chosen to please himself. And that same man, those same men and women, when they think about trying to unscramble the riddle of life, we always begin with ourselves. We always begin with a consideration of ourselves, trying to understand who we are and where we came from and what we’re doing and where we’re going. And within relatively short order, we’re in absolute chaos and confusion.

The gospel tells us that God made man to enjoy a relationship with himself and that the purpose of man is to engage in that relationship.

The gospel actually tackles it differently. The gospel says that the beginning is always with God, that the beginning of any kind of consideration of our existence has to do with the opening phrase of the Bible, “In the beginning, God…”[2] The Bible doesn’t argue for the existence of God. It doesn’t produce theistic proofs for the existence of God. Those theistic proofs have been dealt with by philosophers throughout the ages, and they’re okay. They’re not great. They tend to undergird those who already believe in God, but I haven’t known them convincing anybody who is an avowed atheist on the basis of the theistic proofs. But the Bible doesn’t start there. The Bible assumes God. It begins with God. And it begins with a world that God has made in all of its beauty and in its wonder. And then it explains that man has rebelled against that and as a result has brought chaos and sin upon himself.

So, all of that to say by way of introduction, because we come here to this little phrase “who saved us.” “Who saved us.” Why does anybody need saved? See, people say, “Well, nobody needs saved. They might need helped. They might need guided. They might need encouraged. They might need their resources filled up,” and so on. No, the Bible says, “No, actually, men need saved.” Why? Because man is spoiled, because man is rotten, and because man is fallen. And the extent of that sin within the fabric of our humanity is such that we as men and women need to be saved from the guilt of sin, for we’re guilty, as having broken God’s law and gone our own way. We need to be saved from the power of sin, because it now holds us in its grip, and we can’t get free. And we need to be saved from the pollution of sin, because it has made us dirty—and so dirty that even our cleanest offerings to God are still marked by pollution.

So, you see, if that is really the predicament of man, then it is wonderful when you turn to the Bible and you discover that God saves people. And this is what Paul is saying. He’s rejoicing in the fact that we have a gospel to proclaim. And he says, “And I don’t want you to be ashamed of this testimony about Jesus. It is a wonderful story that we have to proclaim, Timothy. And don’t be ashamed of me just because I’m in the jail. Remember the resources that have been given to you. And remember this: that God saved us.”

In other words, he did what we couldn’t do. In the Hundredth Psalm, in the metrical version it, it contains the lines

Know that the Lord is God indeed;
Without our aid he did us make.
We are his flock; he doth us feed,
And for his sheep he doth us take.[3]

“Without our aid he did us make.” We didn’t make ourselves, nor can we save ourselves. Therefore, it is only God who saves. When John writes in his prologue, he says the same thing, doesn’t he? Speaking of God, he said, “… he gave the right to become [the] children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but [born] of God.”[4] God has saved us. And again, we remind ourselves what we were reminded of as children in Sunday school: that the work of God in salvation is to save us from the penalty of sin, which justifiably falls on us as those who have broken his law; to save us on an ongoing basis from the power of sin, which threatens to trip us up and undo us and put us in a dungeon; and ultimately, one day, to save us from the very presence of sin.

And the God who has done this, who has saved us, has also, you will notice, “called us to a holy calling.” Because God is holy, those whom he calls to himself are to be holy as well. And Paul is very clear on this. He’s very clear in his little letter to Titus when he says much the same thing. Listen to this little summary: “For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us…” Now, notice this:

training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.[5]

So, you see, this matter of salvation—salvation is a far more comprehensive term than the way in which most of us are tempted to use it. I catch people all the time saying, “And not only has God saved us, but he has also justified us, he sanctifies us, and he glorifies us.” But loved ones, those are all aspects of salvation. Salvation as a word, salvation as a term, is not descriptive of the initial encounter with God in Christ whereby, if you like, he saves us by getting us started, and then you add to that these other elements. No. All of these other elements are included in the comprehensive work of God’s grace. As he reaches into a life, he gives us an entirely new status as his sons. He gives us an entirely new nature by the power of the Holy Spirit. He removes us out of the condemned cell as justified men and women. He puts the power of his Spirit within our lives to conform us to the image of his Son, to make us holy. And he assures us of our redemption in the work of the Holy Spirit so that one day we know that when we see him, we will be like him.[6] This is all in the comprehensive wonder of what it means when we say, “He saved us.” “He saved us”—all of this and more besides included in the comprehensive work of God. It involves immortality, as you see from the text. It involves holiness. It involves forgiveness.

That, then, if you like, is the nature of this salvation. We could say more, but we won’t. What is it that he has done in saving us and calling us to a holy calling?

The Cause of Salvation

Well, if that is the nature of it, what is the cause of it? What is the cause of this salvation? How has this been brought about? Well, he tells us, first of all in the negative and then in the positive.

First of all, he says, it’s “not because of our works.” Now, this is very interesting. This is what he rules out. In fact, he rules out the very notion that one finds in a person who has encountered religion. Don’t you find that? Someone who says, “Well, I haven’t had any interest in religion at all or in the Bible or in Jesus or anything else about that. But I’ve become very interested in it now.” And if you listen to them talk, you’ll discover whether they have been saved or whether they’re just interested in religion. If they are just interested in religion, their terminology will go along these lines: “I’m feeling so much better about myself since I stopped doing x and since I started doing y and z.” And fill in the blanks: “since I stopped cussing and I started going to the services;” “since I stopped x and I started doing …, it’s making me feel so much better about myself. I’m so glad that I have found this religious experience.”

Well, I can pretty well guarantee you that that individual does not understand the gospel at all. Because they are viewing salvation as if it were an achievement or as if it were a reward—as a result of something that they have now decided to do. They’ve taken themselves in hand. They’ve turned over a new leaf. They’ve begun again. They’ve decided to get back, as it were, on the tracks—all very interesting and potentially good things, but not an evidence of the saving work of God. And that will always be the case until a man or a woman realizes that salvation is actually “not because of our works” —our endeavors, our personal righteousnesses—but instead is “because of his own purpose and grace.” “His own purpose and grace.”

You see, this is how you will know that a person is saved: because of the way they talk. If they talk about themselves and the changes they’ve made and the things they’ve done and how they’re fixed and everything else, it’s obvious that this is something that they have done. This is something they’ve begun to do, as if somehow or another, if you do this, you’ll be accepted; and so they’ve decided to do all of this in the hope that they will be accepted. It’s only when they have understood that in Jesus our acceptance is to be found on account of his favor, his unmerited grace, his unmerited goodness and righteousness, then our acceptance is in him, and we do this not in order to be accepted but because we have been accepted. There’s all the difference in the world!

I’m not cleaning up the kitchen to make my wife love me. I’m cleaning up the kitchen because she loves me. Actually, she’s not even there, so I’m cleaning up the kitchen because I have to. But that’s not a very good analogy. But the fact of the matter is, if not doing this is an achievement, you say, “Would you reward me for what I do?” No: “I love you, and you have loved me even though I am an unlovable rascal. And here, as an expression of my devotion to you, on account of the unmerited favor that you have showered upon me by your gracious love, these things I do, not in order to achieve your hand but because you have so graciously granted me your hand.” That’s what he’s saying here. He “saved us.” He “saved us, … called us to a holy calling, not because of our works,” not because of our religious endeavors.

Paul was a master at that before he met Jesus on the Damascus Road. That was his whole gig, wasn’t it? That “I was this, and I was that, and I did the next thing, and I was pretty well certain I was good. And then I met Jesus. And then I suddenly realized, ‘Oh, that’s what that thing about the cross is. That’s what was happening when he was dying. That’s why what I’m actually doing in persecuting these people is actually persecuting Jesus, because they are included in Christ according to his own purpose and grace.’” It’s a fantastic thought, isn’t it, that God’s initiative predates time? Do you see that little phrase at the end of verse 9, “before the ages began”? “How long have you loved me?”

Remember, when Paul reminds the Ephesians of how they had come to faith in Jesus, he tells them and he says, you know, “In him you also, when you heard the word of truth”— there’s something that they heard, they could understand—when they heard the word of truth, it was “the gospel of your salvation, and [you] believed in him.” So, here’s what happened: someone told them this story, this good-news story of Jesus, and that he was the source and provision of salvation, and they “believed in him” and they “were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit.” The Holy Spirit came to live in their lives as a down payment, as a “guarantee of [the] inheritance”[7] that now awaits them in the glory, the then.

That’s what he says in verse 13. But he actually began further back than that. And when these Ephesians, you see, traced the river of grace back to its source, then they found themselves in eternity itself: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places”—listen to this—“even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world”—“before the foundation of the world”—in order (same emphasis) “that we should be holy and blameless before him.”[8]

Well, the story line of the Bible is just this story line. It’s the story line of God’s sovereign initiative, both in creation and in redemption. Now, the doctrine of election, which is what this is, brings stability to us and ought to engender humility in us.

James G. Small—who may have been a small man, I don’t know—was a minister of the Free Church of Scotland. He is best known in history not for his sermons but for a hymn that he wrote. And the hymn that he wrote begins,

I’ve found a friend, O such a friend!
He loved me ere I knew him;
He drew me with the cords of love,
And thus he bound me to him;
And round my heart [so] closely twine
[These] ties [that] naught can sever,
For I am his, and he is mine,
Forever and forever.[9]

We can’t fully comprehend the vastness of all that is wrapped up in that.

And in the same way, Emmanuel T. Sibomana from Burundi, contemplating the same thing, wrote his own hymn, which has the seven hundred verses that we sing—actually, only seven. It seems like seven hundred. And you remember how the hymn begins:

O how the grace of God amazes me!
It loosed me from my bonds and set me free!
What made it happen so?
His own will, this much I know,
Set me, as now I show, at liberty.[10]

As I was writing these things in my notes, I thought, “What a wonderful cameo of the wonder of salvation!” Here, in a similar time frame but separated by thousands of miles, you’ve got two different people. You’ve got a little Scottish guy who’s a Presbyterian, and you’ve got an African man who’s a Baptist. And they both sit down one day, and they write a hymn, separated by thousands of miles and yet united in eternity by the wonder of the gospel because their names were entered into the purposes and plan of God before they ever breathed a breath.

How could somebody who understands salvation ever be anything other than humble? How could someone who understands the wonder of this ever look down their noses at someone who as yet has to turn to Christ in repentance and in faith? “Oh, listen, Timothy: don’t you be ashamed of this stuff. You need to make sure that you stay the course. Let me remind you: he saved us, called us to a holy calling. He didn’t do it because of we were very special. He did it because of his own purpose and grace. And this he gave to us.” Notice: that “which he gave us in Christ Jesus.” He gave us it in Christ Jesus. “All I have is Christ.”[11] We sing that don’t we? “All I have is Christ.” It’s all in the package.

How could somebody who understands salvation ever be anything other than humble? How could someone who understands the wonder of this ever look down their noses at someone who as yet has to turn to Christ in repentance and in faith?

And some of us are living as if we, you know… It’s the old story, isn’t it? It’s a hackneyed old story. I didn’t get it out of a book, but somebody did—but it works, doesn’t it? You know, the person who goes on one of these cruises, and, you know, they’re on day three, and someone finds them at the mealtimes on a deck chair, you know, on deck six and says to them, “You know, why do you never come in for the meals?” And the person says, “Oh, I didn’t pay for the meals.” The person says, “Do you have a ticket? Do you have a room?” “Yeah.” “Well, you know, the meals come with it.” “Oh, I didn’t know that”—just sitting out on the deck freezing, eating crackers, not realizing the immensity of what was available to them as a result of what had been purchased by them. In our case, it is the immensity of what has been purchased for us that is entrusted to us, given to us in the Lord Jesus Christ.

And it is this Savior Jesus Christ who has now appeared; he “has been manifested.” That which was mysterious, all of this work in eternity past, has now been brought to the fore through the appearing of our Savior Jesus Christ. As John says, again, “Light has come into the world”[12]—that what God had planned from all of eternity has become apparent in the incarnation.

And what Paul is affirming here is what the Bible affirms: that in the person of Christ, God entered time, bringing salvation—a salvation that is found nowhere else and in no one else. And in this appearing of our Savior Jesus Christ and in his overcoming, he has, we’re told, “abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.” Here’s another question that the gospel answers—a question for which our world has no answer—and that is: Why is there death in the world? Where did death come from? Why do people die? Why doesn’t everyone just live forever?

Genesis chapter 2: “And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, ‘You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”[13] Paul, using that as the backdrop in his great chapter on the resurrection, affirms the same truth: “For as by a man came death”—namely, Adam in the garden—“for as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.”[14] We are all by nature in Adam, participants in the fall—therefore in need of salvation. By nature in Adam, by grace in Christ. Are you in Christ tonight?

Paul is absolutely clear on these things. I’ll give you just one other reference from Romans chapter 6. He’s making the same point, and straightforwardly so. You know the verse very well: “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in [Jesus Christ] our Lord.”[15] And Paul when he writes to the Ephesians, he refers to the unbeliever as someone who is dead in trespasses. He says, “Before you understood the gospel, before you became a Christian, you were dead in your trespasses.”[16]

Now, again, that doesn’t play very well with our society, does it? I mean, the man in your office who’s your boss and who’s a nice man, you know, and cares for you and brings you a box of chocolates every so often, if he’s not a Christian, he’s dead in his trespasses. He’s a dead man and completely unable to make himself alive. And if he works for the next fifty years at being a nice person and doing his best and cleaning up his act and attending church and reading his Bible and getting baptized and joining a choir and doing everything he can think of to put himself in a right relationship with God, he can’t do it. It is only as a result of God’s own purpose and grace. And it is by that means that death is vanquished.

Now, if you think about it, spiritual death is a reality. Men and women are spiritually dead because our souls are separated from God. We’re not in a living relationship with God. By nature, we’re not in a relationship with God. There’s enough of God out there in creation for us to be accountable to him as Creator, but there is not enough out there in the mountains and walking around in Colorado for us to be saved. The only way that we can be saved is a result of the initiative-taking grace of God through the work of Jesus on the cross. So we are by nature spiritually dead. That is spiritual death. One day we will be physically dead. That’s the day when our souls will be separated from our bodies, and someone will say, “Begg has died.” Here’s the kicker: if we experience physical death while still spiritually dead, then we face eternal death—what the Revelation refers to as “the second death.”[17]

Do you understand this? By nature, I am spiritually dead. My soul is separated from God. Spiritual birth closes that gap and unites me with God in Christ, so that one day when I die, although I may walk through the valley of the shadow of death, although they may declare me gone, the reality of things is, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, that because in Christ all these things have been granted to us and he has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel, then we need not fear that which we are afraid of. And what we are most afraid of we will never actually experience. How it’s going to work I don’t know. But the promise of the Bible is “He’s taken care of it.” Okay, well then, that’s good enough for me.

And again, here is where the gospel addresses the failures of our culture. Our culture runs from reality. Our culture is afraid of death. It has nothing to say to death. And you remember the Evil One in the garden says to Eve, he says, “You won’t die. You won’t die. The only reason God told you that is ’cause he wants to mess you around. He wants to spoil your life. The reason that he said that to you is so you won’t… You’ll become like God if you eat that stuff!”[18] And today, the Evil One hasn’t changed his tune very much. He just tailors it to the aspirations of a culture. And the incipient Eastern mysticism and Hinduism that has bled its way into American life is such that you go, pick up your yoga mat, and sit down with your friends, and listen to their twaddle—and ’cause the Evil One has convinced them, “You will not surely die. You will be reincarnated. You’ll get a second chance at this.”

Okay, make your choice. On what basis is anybody going to say that? On the basis of speculation and of forlorn hope. On what basis are you going to say that “it is appointed unto [man] …, [and] after this [comes] judgment”?[19] On the basis of the authority of God’s Word. Okay, choose whichever way you want to go. But the gospel reorientates our entire thinking. That’s why in Hebrews—and I will stop now—but that’s why Hebrews is so wonderfully encouraging and helpful in relationship to this as it speaks of the work of Jesus, where the writer to the Hebrews says, “Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood”—that is, the children of God, humanity—“he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil”—we’re back to overcomer again—“and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.”[20]

Do you see how important it is that it is because of what has happened then in Christ historically that the believer may then enjoy the benefit now existentially, all the time looking forward to what it will be in its ultimate reality eschatologically, because the comprehensive nature of God’s goodness to us spans from eternity to eternity. God has put eternity in the hearts of men,[21] and people know that there is more beyond life. That’s why they have a hankering for it. That’s why C. S. Lewis was able to say to them, you know, if you find that there is something in you that is longing for something beyond this life, it’s not just because this life isn’t that good. It’s because you were made for something beyond this life.[22] But men and women will never be able to understand what that means until they discover in Jesus the life that never ends. And you don’t discover that in isolation from coming to Jesus and discovering him as a Savior and as a friend.

The comprehensive nature of God’s goodness to us spans from eternity to eternity.

The tension is as I mentioned this morning: the tension is that death has been abolished, but, of course, it has not yet been annihilated. We await that. Then there will be no more crying, no more sighing, no more cancer, no more tears, no more failure, no more of that.[23] Richard Baxter, who said that it was the task of the pastor to make sure that his congregation were prepared to die, wrote a hymn which begins, “Lord, it belongs not to my care whether I [live] or [die].” And it contains the wonderfully honest and, for me, phenomenally helpful verse when he says, in relationship to this notion of life and immortality and the passage through death and into the reality of all that eternity will bring, he says,

My knowledge of that life is small,
The eye of faith is dim;
[It is] enough that Christ knows all
And I shall be with him.[24]

And you know, this little statement here has such a ring of authenticity to it, doesn’t it? Because the person who’s writing these words about how in the gospel life and immortality has been brought to light, manifested in the appearing of this Lord Jesus Christ, it’s coming from the pen of somebody who with every time the jailer comes down the corridor, the apostle Paul faces the possibility that this will be the day when his life is brought to an end. And in the shadow of death he writes of the reality of immortality. And that, loved ones, is all part of this great and comprehensive gospel which we come to believe.

Father, some of us will perhaps find ourselves encapsulated in the observations regarding turning over a new leaf, trying to do my best, trying to fix things up, because we haven’t as yet realized that the softening of our hearts and the opening of our eyes is to the wonder of who Jesus is and what he’s done. We have come, as it were, along the way, but we have not yet come and understood the power and glory that is in the cross. So bring us there, O God, we pray. Grant that we might turn to you in childlike trust, in believing faith, in honest repentance, so that we might be able to look back over our shoulders and say, “You know, I had been like Paul: so religious and so right and so orthodox. And then one day the scales fell off my eyes, and suddenly the gospel laid hold of me.” Accomplish your purposes, O God, we pray. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

[1] William Shakespeare, Hamlet, 4.4.

[2] Genesis 1:1 (ESV).

[3] William Kethe, “All People That on Earth Do Dwell” (1561).

[4] John 1:12–13 (ESV).

[5] Titus 2:11–14 (ESV).

[6] See 1 John 3:2.

[7] Ephesians 1:13–14 (ESV).

[8] Ephesians 1:3–4 (ESV).

[9] James Grindlay Small, “I’ve Found a Friend” (1863).

[10] Emmanuel T. Sibomana, “O How the Grace of God Amazes Me.”

[11] Jordan Kauflin, “All I Have Is Christ” (2008).

[12] John 3:19 (ESV).

[13] Genesis 2:16–17 (ESV).

[14] 1 Corinthians 15:21–22 (ESV).

[15] Romans 6:23 (ESV).

[16] Ephesians 2:1 (paraphrased).

[17] Revelation 20:14 (ESV).

[18] Genesis 3:4–5 (paraphrased).

[19] Hebrews 9:27 (KJV).

[20] Hebrews 2:14–15 (ESV).

[21] See Ecclesiastes 3:11.

[22] C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (1952), bk. 3, chap. 10.

[23] See Revelation 21:4.

[24] Richard Baxter, “Lord, It Belongs Not to My Care” (1681).