John R W Stott The Scheme of Salvation as described by John

Introduction

I was reading John Stott's Letters of John and was blown away by his description of the salvation message at the heart of both the Letters and the Gospel of John. Basically it goes as follows:

¹"In our natural state we are given over to the devil (read world) who has sinned since the beginning (1 John 3:8, 2:16, 4:5). We therefore sin (1 John 3:4) and have walked in the darkness (1:6, 2:11) and are spiritually blind (2:11) and dead (3:14). But God loved us and sent his son to the savour to the world (4:14), that we might live (4:9). This was his one and only (4:9) who was from the beginning (1:1) but who became flesh (4:2) and then laid down his life for us (3:16) to take away sin (3:5). To him testimony has been given by those who saw (1:2-3, 4:14), but especially by God (5:9) and the Spirit (5:6). We should therefore accept (5:9) this message as it has been attested (5:10) and acknowledge him (4:2, 3). By believing in him (5:13) we pass from death to life (3:14), for from him we have life (5:11) which is from God (2:29, 3:9, 5:4, 5:18). It is only via following the Word that lives in us that we can find salvation and overcome the world as Christ has done."

There is more in Stott's original tract but as stated above I was only including the basics. I think that this message is both confronting and reassuring. It's of course the same message one finds all through the New Testament. But how simple a message it is, God saves and loves us all enough to sacrifice his only son, who took on the very essence of Man that he might suffer for us. Yet within John we find all the allegory and strands that draw out this message and provide it with both the body and beauty that one finds in the form of the Epistles. The confrontation in the message is in it's simplicity how does Humanity so very driven to judge and be judged accept the gift on offer without looking for the catch. The fun thing is there is no catch, well not one we recognise as a bad one any way. As John points out to us acceptance of this message is one given with a full heart God has no truck with half hearted commitments, we are enjoined to give over all we fear, all we treasure to God for protection and resolution.

notes

¹ p21-23 TNTC The Letters of John, John R.W. Stott