There are so many examples in the NT that corrects silverhair's error. No one can be saved, since the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ without learning and trusting in his gospel because salvation is not a concept, it is a person. Salvation as it relates to the washing away of inherent sin is a NT proposition. It is in the blood of the one and only sacrificial Lamb of God, who is Jesus Christ. One must understand his sacrifice and also their own guilt before God, and they must trust him with the whole heart to be delivered from that guilt and be saved. The one thing that is the power of God unto salvation is the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is "the faith" of the NT. It involves God the Father who promises justification through him to anyone who will embrace him by faith and believe what God says he will do for us if and when we do. It involves the Spirit of God and of Christ who indwells the believer when he believes from the heart. It involves our Lord Jesus who became a man and lived a sinless life and then tasted death for all the guilty in a one time sacrifice of himself that God says propitiated him and made peace between himself and guilty sinners, all guilty sinners. Since he had no personal sins that could condemn him, God raised him from the dead and glorified him.
Rom 8:32 He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?
33 Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth.
34 Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.
While all of this is true and God is not imputing personal sins to the account of sinners while they live in the body, he says, that is, since the cross and resurrection of Christ, it is appointed unto men once to die, and after this the judgement. (He 9:27). If men who are alive since the cross and resurrection dies a physical death, which is the separation of body and soul, with his sins still on him, he will suffer the second death in the lake of fire, forever separated from and forgotten of God. Men must meet God in his image or he cannot meet God at all. What is his image? It is a trinity. Soul, body, and Spirit. This is why Jesus came as a man. He poured out his Spirit and died physically and spiritually on that cross, the blood that flowed from his body representing his physical life (the life of the flesh is in the blood), and the water that flowed from his pierced side representing the Spirit. (the Spirit is life - Rom 8). He poured out both and was separated from God for us. Yes, Jesus died both spiritually and physically for us.
While those sinners before the cross who had been justified and their believing what God said to them had been imputed to them for righteousness until the blood was shed that could wash their sins away, they could not enter into the presence of God and were kept by God in what he called "paradise" in the center of the earth, where the soul of Jesus himself went for the three days of his death and before he was resurrected bodily by the power of the Spirit.
1 Peter 18 For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit:
(did anyone get that? His body was made alive by the Spirit being in it. Now the soul and the Spirit is in the body and he is alive).
Few people gets this following.
11 But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you.
Salvation is defined by the renewal to mankind of the trinitarian nature, the Spirit, who is God in us. (eternal presence of God = eternal life = Spirit of God in the body = same/same). But it is more than that. It is a birth into the family of God as his son. Our pattern in the flesh was Adam. Our pattern in the Spirit is Jesus.
1 Cor 15:22 For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. (that is in the family of Adam and in the family of Christ)
1 Corinthians 15:45 And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit.
Jesus Christ is fully man and fully God at the same time and as such he can meet the demands of God for us.
Thinking in terms of humanity, Jesus Christ is, now get this, the FIRST begotten from the dead. He is not the only begotten like he was from the stable, he is the first begotten from the dead. This means there are many more who are born in the same manner and likeness of him. Isn't that what we are told?
Col 1:18 And he is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the preeminence.
Rom 1:3 Concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh; 4 And declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead:
Rom 8:29 For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son (remember the image is trinitarian), that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.
There has never been a man born spiritually as was Jesus until his resurrection, where he is said to be the firstborn son of God from the dead. The dead is where we all who are born again came from. We were dead because we did not have the Spirit of God dwelling in our bodies. That is not true now for those who have been born again.
But, what has this got to do with the error of silverhair? Well he is correct to say that all OT saints were "saved" by Jesus Christ but they were not saved by hearing the gospel of Jesus Christ and they were not "saved" when they believed. They were "justified" and their faith in what God said to them is the basis of their justification. However, they were not made sons of God like New Testament saints are. OT saints were justified and their faith in what God said to them was imputed to them for righteousness but they were not cleared of their sins until the blood was shed that could wash their sins away. I must prove this by two witnesses.
Rom 3:24 Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus:
25 Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for t
he remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God;
26 To declare, I say
, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.
Hebrews 9:11 But Christ being come an high priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this building;
12 Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us.
13 For if the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh:
14 How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?
15 And for this cause he is the mediator of the new testament, that by means of death,
for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first testament, they which are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance.
If I understand silverhair, he thinks that people can be saved without hearing the gospel of Jesus Christ and believing it. If this is his teaching it is dead wrong. Why is this? Because our Lord Jesus worked to redeem us from sin and shed his blood from his body to wash our sins away and he poured out his Spirit, who is his life so we can be saved and presented to God at his house without spot or wrinkle. But we must understand that redemption is his work that he finished at his death on the cross.
Continued