God’s Complete Salvation: refs. include Watchman Nee and Witness Lee

An overview of God’s complete salvation

Man’s problem is twofold

In order to understand God’s complete salvation—that is, the steps He takes to save man and to fulfill His purpose—we must first see an overview of man’s fallen condition. Man’s fall resulted in two major problems. First, because of Adam’s disobedience, man (denoting all of mankind) has come under God’s condemnation (Rom. 5:18); he is under the wrath of God (John 3:36) and is therefore awaiting God’s judgment (Heb. 9:27). Second, because man ate of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, he actually partook of the sinful life of Satan. When he did this, all three parts of his being (spirit, soul, and body) were damaged. Man’s first problem is before God and it is objective, that is, external. But man’s second problem is subjective, that is, within himself.

An illustration can help us to understand the nature of these two problems. Imagine that a child told by his mother not to drink from a bottle of poison disobeys her and drinks from it anyway. He has not only disobeyed his mother and gotten into trouble with her, but much more seriously, he has ingested poison and will die unless a remedy can be found and applied.

By eating of the tree of knowledge, man not only disobeyed God and came under His condemnation; he also partook of the poisonous nature of Satan. Therefore, in His salvation God has to resolve both the problem of man’s disobedience as well as the problem of the poisonous, sinful life of Satan which man has taken in.