“The most important thing in the world is to be saved?
Thinking about the greatness of the purpose of salvation
- I visited Dr.
- Wilford Widen in the hospital shortly before his death on September 27.
- 1982.
- From his bed he looked at me and.
- With a smile.
- Said.
- “Pastor John.
- The most important thing in the world is to be.
- These words are the enduring legacy of a great believer who oversaw our church’s Sunday school for forty years and led a campaign to build one of our buildings.
Do you also think that being saved is the most important thing in the world?Otherwise, it may be because you never felt truly lost and desperate in the face of God’s judgment or threatened by an eternity of conscious torment in hell. Oh, how we love to live, after they almost killed us!Maybe because of the strong swell. Or because a hand got stuck in the drain of a pool (yes, a lot of water!I remember it well!) Or for quickly leaving the front of a car driving at high speed a few inches from you, when your Wife’s Voice alerts you, just before you take a dead step. Or the victory of a great fight against cancer. Or for his release from a prison camp, after sixteen years where he hoped to be killed, or after surviving a plane crash, when other people died.
Oh! How we love life right now and how we cling to all that is precious. This also happens when we experience the precious of being saved from sin. It’s not just a word. It is not just a fact learned from the Bible; you really feel that you are just doomed and lost without hope, away from God, from life and joy. Then you learn that God has prepared a way; He will forgive you your sins, accept you, love you, and make everything suitable for your good. Learn that all your sins can be forgiven and thrown to the bottom of the sea, so as not to be brought back against you. How precious it is to be saved from sin, judgment, and hell!
But does the Bible allow us to say that the most important thing in the world is for someone to be saved?In fact, the most important person in the world is God. Widen did not intend to compare our experience of being saved with God; I wanted to compare that to all the other experiences. The reason to be saved is the greatest experience in the world is that God is the most important person in the world, and being Saved means being saved from sin and condemnation, so that we can know God and appreciate Him forever. If God were not the most important reality in the universe, being saved to be with him would not be the greatest experience in the universe.
Yes, but is it really biblical to say that? As I write, I have in mind a passage from Scripture: Jesus said to his seventy disciples, “Rejoice, not because the spirits submit to you, but because their name is inscribed in heaven” (Luke 10:20). In other words, you have had great success in your department. The demons have subdued him. People have been liberated. That’s wonderful. That’s what I sent them to. Praise God for this triumph.
But do not let this be your main joy, or the source of joy, or your indispensable joy, on the contrary?Why is your name written in heaven?In other words, rejoice in the fact that you are among the redeemed. Be glad you’ll go to heaven when you die. Rejoice because God wrote your name among the chosen ones. to be saved. That’s the most important thing, not the department. And yes, to know God, to see God, to rejoice in God. The most important thing in the world is to be saved, because the purpose of being saved is to enjoy Forever the person of God.
Devotion of John Piper’s book Provai e Vede
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