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

An overview of God’s complete salvation

God’s salvation is twofold

In His salvation, God must resolve both the problem of man’s disobedience and the problem of the poisonous, sinful life of Satan which man has taken in. Therefore, God’s complete, twofold salvation deals first with our problem before God (the judicial aspect); second, and more importantly, it takes care of the subjective problem within us (the organic aspect). The first aspect resolves man’s objective problem before God. The second aspect fulfills God’s eternal purpose to gain a corporate group of people filled with Him as life to be His expression for eternity.

The following quote by F. Godet further identifies these two aspects:

“The work of Jesus in the world is two-fold. It is a work accomplished for us, destined to effect reconciliation between God and man; it is a work accomplished in us, with the object of effecting our sanctification. By the one, a right relation is established between God and us; by the other is the fruit of the re-established order. By the former the condemned sinner is received into the state of grace: by the latter the pardoned sinner is associated with the life of God….How many express themselves as if when forgiveness, with the peace which it procures has been once obtained, all is finished, and the work of salvation complete. They seem to have no suspicion that salvation consists in the health of the soul, and that the health of the soul consists in holiness. Forgiveness is not the re-establishment of health; it is but the crisis of convalescence. If God thinks fit to declare the sinner righteous, it is in order that He may by that means restore him to holiness.” (qtd. in Gordon 8)

In speaking of reconciliation and sanctification, Godet is referring, respectively, to the judicial and the organic aspects of God’s complete salvation. Judicially, we are “received into the state of grace.” Organically, we are “associated with the life of God.” According to Godet, the goal of God’s complete salvation is not forgiveness but holiness, that is, that we would become partakers of the divine nature (2 Pet. 1:4) and thus have our whole being permeated with God Himself.