Glory Be to Our Great God | Day 30 - God is Redeemer
Give Thanks to the Saving, Rescuing, and Liberating God
The LORD is a man of war; the LORD is his name. - Exodus 15:3
Then David said to the Philistine, “You come to me with a sword and with a spear and with a javelin, but I come to you in the name of the LORD of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This day the LORD will deliver you into my hand, and I will strike you down and cut off your head. And I will give the dead bodies of the host of the Philistines this day to the birds of the air and to the wild beasts of the earth, that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel, and that all this assembly may know that the LORD saves not with sword and spear. For the battle is the LORD’s, and he will give you into our hand.” - 1 Samuel 17:45-47
Salvation belongs to the LORD; your blessing be on your people! Selah - Psalm 3:8
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. - John 3:16
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, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory. In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory. - Ephesians 1:3-14
We believe that the salvation of sinners is wholly of grace; through the mediatorial offices of the Son of God; who by the appointment of the Father, freely took upon him our nature, yet without sin; honored the divine law by his personal obedience, and by his death made a full atonement for our sins; that having risen from the dead he is now enthroned in heaven; and uniting in his wonderful person the tenderest sympathies with divine perfections, he is every way qualified to be a suitable, a compassionate, and an all-sufficient Savior. - The New Hampshire Confession of Faith of 1853
To God be the glory, great things he has done!
So loved he the world that he gave us his Son,
who yielded his life an atonement for sin,
and opened the life-gate that all may go in.
Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord,
Let the earth hear his voice!
Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord!
Let the people rejoice!
O come to the Father through Jesus the Son
and give him the glory, great things he has done!
- Fanny Crosby, “To God Be the Glory”Redeemed, how I love to proclaim it!
Redeemed by the blood of the Lamb;
Redeemed thro' His infinite mercy,
His child, and forever, I am.
Redeemed, redeemed,
Redeemed by the blood of the Lamb;
Redeemed, thro' His infinite mercy,
His child and forever, I am.
- Fanny Crosby, “Redeemed, How I Love to Proclaim It!”There is a Redeemer,
Jesus God’s own Son,
Precious Lamb of God,
Messiah, Holy One.
Thank You, O my Father
For giving us Your Son,
And leaving Your Spirit ’til
Your work on earth is done.
- Keith Green, “There is a Redeemer”To the praise of Your glory
To the praise of Your mercy and grace
To the praise of Your glory
You are the God who saves
- Sovereign Grace Music, “Come Praise and Glorify”
“He Will Give You Into Our Hand!”
What the atomic bomb is for us in the modern era, Goliath the giant was to the ancient armies at the Battle of the Valley of Elah. The Philistine army brought what seemed like the ultimate weapon to bring to a land battle: a 9-foot-tall giant with the finest weaponry of the Iron Age, and when he emerged from their camp and walked up to the Philistine battle line, every single Israelite in King Saul’s army just froze in silent terror. Well . . . everyone except one guy. He wasn’t even a soldier, but a shepherd boy who had come to the Israelite camp to bring supplies to his brothers, but he overhears Goliath say the same words he did on the first day of the standoff:
He stood and shouted to the ranks of Israel, “Why have you come out to draw up for battle? Am I not a Philistine, and are you not servants of Saul? Choose a man for yourselves, and let him come down to me. If he is able to fight with me and kill me, then we will be your servants. But if I prevail against him and kill him, then you shall be our servants and serve us.” And the Philistine said, “I defy the ranks of Israel this day. Give me a man, that we may fight together.” - 1 Samuel 17:8-10
“And David heard him” (1 Sam. 17:17), and he got ticked off from hearing such defiant mocks against the LORD God. “For who is this uncircumcised Philistine, that he should defy the armies of the living God” (1 Sam. 17:26)? He find himself going to announcing that he will slay this pagan mocker to standing in the presence of King Saul who says “You are not able to go against this Philistine to fight with him, for you are but a youth, and he has been a man of war from his youth” (1 Sam. 7:33). But David responds,
“Your servant used to keep sheep for his father. And when there came a lion, or a bear, and took a lamb from the flock, I went after him and struck him and delivered it out of his mouth. And if he arose against me, I caught him by his beard and struck him and killed him. Your servant has struck down both lions and bears, and this uncircumcised Philistine shall be like one of them, for he has defied the armies of the living God.” And David said, “The LORD who delivered me from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine.” - 1 Samuel 17:34-37
With only a staff, a sling, and five smooth stones, he steps up to the battle line, and when Goliath spotted this boy, he said, “Am I a dog, that you come to me with sticks?” And the Philistine cursed David by his gods. The Philistine said to David, “Come to me, and I will give your flesh to the birds of the air and to the beasts of the field” (1 Sam. 17:43-44). But David responds, giving one of the greatest smack-talk speeches ever recorded in the Bible:
Then David said to the Philistine, “You come to me with a sword and with a spear and with a javelin, but I come to you in the name of the LORD of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This day the LORD will deliver you into my hand, and I will strike you down and cut off your head. And I will give the dead bodies of the host of the Philistines this day to the birds of the air and to the wild beasts of the earth, that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel, and that all this assembly may know that the LORD saves not with sword and spear. For the battle is the LORD’s, and he will give you into our hand.” - 1 Samuel 17:45-47
The passage continues with the battle:
When the Philistine arose and came and drew near to meet David, David ran quickly toward the battle line to meet the Philistine. And David put his hand in his bag and took out a stone and slung it and struck the Philistine on his forehead. The stone sank into his forehead, and he fell on his face to the ground. So David prevailed over the Philistine with a sling and with a stone, and struck the Philistine and killed him. There was no sword in the hand of David. Then David ran and stood over the Philistine and took his sword and drew it out of its sheath and killed him and cut off his head with it. When the Philistines saw that their champion was dead, they fled. And the men of Israel and Judah rose with a shout and pursued the Philistines as far as Gath and the gates of Ekron, so that the wounded Philistines fell on the way from Shaaraim as far as Gath and Ekron. - 1 Samuel 17:48-52
Notice that the text does not emphasize anything impressive about David. In fact, the Holy Spirit-led, biblical author labors to depict how humanly one-sided this battle is.
The Philistines have a freaking giant!
The Philistines have the best bronze and iron weaponry, armor, and equipment.
The entire Israelite army—from the lowest conscript to King Saul himself—is cowering in fear.
The Israelites have forgotten the LORD of hosts, whom the Philistine giant is defying.
David is just a twig wearing only his normal shepherd garb (not the king’s armor) compared to the humongous Goliath decked out in the best gear.
So why? Why did David win? Why was he able to slay the giant? Why was the Israelite army saved and victorious that day? Yes, David slayed the giant, but remember his own words, “that all this assembly may know that the LORD saves not with sword and spear. For the battle is the LORD’s, and he will give you into our hand” (1 Sam. 17:47).
The story of David and Goliath points to a greater story because it was never about underdogs slaying their giant but about God saving his people.1 In fact, David understood that his doctrine of God mattered always because it was this God who would deliver him and his Israelite comrades from the fear of the Philistines. He knew, like he did when writing Psalm 3:8, that “Salvation belongs to the LORD.” And it’s not just David who understood this. We could’ve looked elsewhere for examples: Moses against the Egyptians at the Red Sea, Joshua at the Battle of Jericho, Jehoshaphat against the Moabites and Ammonites, and Hezekiah being attacked by the Assyrian army. But at the heart of the story of the Bible is this central reality:
Only God can save sinners.
This Triune God that we have been thinking through over the past 29 posts is the God who not only is great in himself but also has accomplished his eternal plan of salvation to save sinners for himself. Because we have spent the first half of this series understanding God’s nature and then his persons, we are now ready to understand the nature and intricacies of his work of salvation.2 We recognize that this awesome God is the Covenental LORD who, according to his eternal plans, created and sustains all things, yet a vital stage laid out by his eternal plan is his plan of redemption.
Again, only God saves sinners.
Salvation Belongs to the LORD!
Salvation can be generally defined as “the rescue from a state of danger and restoration to wholeness and prosperity.”3 However, the terms “save” and “salvation” show up commonly and constantly throughout the Old and New Testaments (OT & NT) and have different uses depending on the context where they are used.4 As shown in 1 Samuel 17, God uses David, his anointed, to bring physical deliverance and preservation to the armies of Israel, but we also see throughout Holy Scripture that deeper need for spiritual deliverance from sin, God’s wrath, guilt, shame, and many other afflictions and threats. But the biblical authors highlight that the one who is designated as “savior” who can bring not only physical salvation but also, and more vitally, spiritual salvation is God and God alone. As David wrote in Psalm 62:1, “For God alone my soul waits in silence; from him comes my salvation.” So what does it mean that God is our Redeemer—the only savior from whom our salvation comes?
First, God is not obligated to save sinners and has every right to damn them forever. Woah! You didn’t expect that to be the first thing to reflect on. To our secular, “love-is-love” culture, this sounds harsh, bigoted, and offensive to the uttermost, but let’s remember the nature and character of God. Recall that God is the all-sufficient, undivided, perfect LORD who is infinite in all of his perfections, including his love, holiness, goodness, and righteousness.5 Furthermore, God has no need or dependency on anything outside of him for his existence and satisfaction since God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit eternally commune in eternal love and devotion.6 So God is independent and never needed to create anything, but according to his eternal decrees, he chose to create all things, including humanity.7 However, we read in Genesis 3 how Adam and Eve chose to rebel against God, their loving Creator, by trading his good commands and laws for the lies of a created being, the serpent. God had every right to instantly destroy this rebellious couple because they had sinned against the perfect being whose love is not to be belittled and whose righteousness can’t be bent or rationalized. As the psalmist wrote, “If you, O LORD, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand?” Answer, no one, because they ought to be cut down by him. Paul states that every human being that has ever existed since Adam “has sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23), that “the wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23), and that “the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth” (Rom. 1:18). When the sinfulness of man gets confronted with the perfection of the Holy One, no one can make a defense as “all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin” (Rom. 3:19) and “the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Cor. 6:9). Because God is perfect in all that he is, he is obligated due to his perfect nature to perfectly judge against all who are against him which is all sinful humanity.
Second, out of sheer grace, God has chosen to save sinners according to his definite plan of redemption. Let’s pause for a reality check: we and every human being since Adam and Eve are sinners who deserve eternal damnation due to our rebellion against the perfectly holy God. Again, let that horror sink into you heart and mind because we often think too highly of ourselves and forget the utter Godness of God. To worldly standards, there are sins that are acceptable and a handful that are terrible, but “If you, O LORD, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand” (Ps. 130:3). If “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one” (Rom. 3:10-12), we are lunatics to think that we can somehow attempt to atone for our sin. Within ourselves, we possess no hope. But with God, “According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1 Pet. 1:3). Only God can save those who have offended him, and this was all according to his definite plan to save sinners by his sovereign grace. For, although he has every right to nuke those who have rebelled against him and does not need creation, God “has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved” (Eph. 1:3-6). God predestined the work of salvation accomplished by the Son of God to be applied to his elect so that they will be devoted to and justified before him. Our salvation from our sin was all according to his perfect plan.
Third, God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit accomplish the work of salvation. John Webster writes, “The bedrock of soteriology is the doctrine of the Trinity. The perfect life of the Holy Trinity is the all-encompassing and first reality from whose completeness all else derives. . . . the high and eternal God who is life in himself gives life to creatures.”8 How does God execute his plan to save sinners?9 We see that God the Father chose undeserving sinners to become his adopted sons by sending the Son into time and space to accomplish this wonderful work. In Genesis 3:15, thousands of years before David would sling a stone at Goliath, God promises to the serpant in the presence of Adam and Eve, those who brought original sin, that he “will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruse your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” This offspring who will crush the serpant’s head is Jesus, the incarnate Son of God, and he said that he came “not to be served but to serve and to give his life as and ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). Peter, the leader of the original twelve disciples of Christ, states “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit” (1 Pet. 3:18), and Paul writes that “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation” (Rom. 5:8-11). Jesus ascends to heaven after being victorious over sin and death, but he said to his disciples in his Olivet Discourse that he will send to them “the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father” (John 15:26) who will guide them into all truth because he is the Helper and the Spirit of adoption to make us sons of God (Rom. 8:15-17). Salvation is the Triune God giving himself to us because “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Rom. 5:5; see also Gal. 4:4-7).
Only God can save sinners.
“That Thou, My God, Shouldst Die for Me!”
When we start a the beginning of a story, we will be able to see and appreaciate the how it ends. The same can be said of understanding God and his wonderful works. Without understand the nature and person of God, we will not truly appreciate and rightly understand his wonderful works, especially our salvation. God is our Redeemer because he alone can save us, and when we understand how he is the all-sufficient, simple, and infinite Creator who is perfect in all he is and does, “What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things” (Rom. 8:31-32). Friends, because God is great and glorious, we have so great and glorious a salvation. With that, let’s reflect on some of the numerous implications of this wonderful reality.
One, God, and thus our salvation, is greater than we can imagine. As Ray Ortlund puts it:
God saves sinners. We don’t believe that. We bank our happiness on other things. But God says to us, “I’m better than you think. You’re worse that you think. Let’s get together.”10
Think about it. If the God of the universe, who is perfectly just to punish us for our sins, has chosen to save us and call us his beloved, what justification do we have to complain, gripe, or murmur about God? None. Instead, we have received grace upon grace through being united with Christ and thus have only peaceful communion with the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. By the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus, all who trust in him have been brought into a fellowship of everlasting love that will never cease because this love is none other than the infinite divine love of the eternal Trinity. The only right we have before this God who saves us is to always give thanks to him because he saved wretches like you and me. This means that our pursuit of holiness and every good deed is fueled not by mere obligation but out of the love and favor we have freely received from the LORD. It is the Triune love of God demonstrated at the cross and resurrection of Christ that compels us to loathe every sinful passion and participation and strive to live out the holiness that we have been clothed in by the Holy Spirit.
Second, we, Christians, get the privilege to go and make disciples with the good news that the Trinity saves sinners. When reflecting on the Great Commission, it is under the one name (LORD) of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, that disciples are baptized into. As Herman Bavinck writes, “In the love of the Father, the grace of the Son, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit is contained the whole salvation of men.” Therefore, the Christian life, from conversion to glorification, derives all life, power, and passion from the Triune God. For the church of Jesus here on earth, our mission is to go and make disciples by sharing with them the good news of the Triune God who brought salvation through the incarnate Son. Jesus has commissioned Christians—and thus local churches—in their evangelism and discipleship to point to and behold the wonders of God, his works, and all of his commands. But it is this same Triune God to empowers those whom he has commissioned to work out his will (Matt. 28:20; Eph. 2:10; Phil. 2:12-13).
What more can we say—even sing—to the One who alone is God and has chosen to make wretched rebels into his beloved saints? We might as well join the hymnists like Charles Wesley and sing praises to God like this:
Amazing love! how can it be
That Thou, my God, shouldst die for me!
- Charles Wesley, “And Can It Be, That I Should Gain?”
Father, thank you so much for giving us so great a salvation through your Son, Jesus, the Christ. I’m humbled that you chose before the foundations of the universe that I would be adopted as your child through mystical union with your Son and the indwelling of your Holy Spirit. What can I offer you except my need to be saved because of my sinfulness? But that is exactly why you sent your Son to my world: to save sinners like me. Jesus, thank you for living the perfectly obedient life I could never live, dying the death that I deserve for my sin against God, and rising from the dead victorious over sin and death so that I can have everlasting life by faith in you. Holy Spirit, remind me that I have been saved by you, the Almighty God, who will keep me to the end. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Joel T. Hamme, “Salvation,” in Lexham Theological Wordbook, ed. Douglas Mangum et al., Lexham Bible Reference Series (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2014).
Thomas R. Schreiner and Christopher W. Morgan, Salvation, Theology for the People of God (Nashville: B&H Academic, 2024), 2-3.
See previous posts on God’s Lordship, Simplicity, Aseity, Infinitude, Love, Righteousness, Goodness, and Holiness.
See the previous post on the Trinity and Inseparable Operations.
See previous posts on God’s eternal decree and creation.
John Webster, God Without Measure: Working Papers in Christian Theology, Volume 1: God and the Works of God (London: T&T Clark, 2016), 145-6.
See the first series of Daily Thanksgiving Devotionals which focus on the Doctrine of Salvation.