This is not a little salvation that God has provided for us through Jesus Christ, it is a great salvation. And one of our great dangers is that which is stated here in Hebrews that we would neglect it. Not reject it, not refuse it but just not really enter into it. Just accept it as a theological fact, a doctrine but not embrace it in its fullness in our experience.

In Ephesians 3:18, the apostle Paul is praying for the people of God. And remember, that includes you and me here, all these wonderful prayers of Paul for the church, let’s make them personal, let’s not just accept them as general prayers but let’s make them very specific. And Paul prays there in verses 17–18 of Ephesians 3:

“That you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width, and length, and depth, and height...”

Paul is saying this is not a little salvation that we’ve come into. To me it’s a picture of somebody that walks into a tremendous mansion with many corridors, different types of rooms prepared; and we look, first of all, at the width and it stretches out as far as our eye can see in every direction. Then we look ahead at the length and again, we can’t see to the end of it. And then imagine yourself standing on some grand staircase in some wonderful mansion and you look down and you can’t see all that’s beneath you. And finally, you look up and again, it stretches beyond what you can actually take in with your eyes.

So Paul prays that we’ll not just get isolated in some little corner but that we will be able to comprehend, to embrace, to take in all the scope of this salvation. Its width, its length, its depth and its height.

In the Old Testament—in fact, throughout the Bible—the word salvation has a very wide application. For many people it just means having your sins forgiven and being, as somebody said, a prepackaged soul for heaven. But there’s a lot more to salvation than that. It’s interesting if you read through the Bible in almost any English translation, if you’re looking for the word religion you have to read and read and read. In fact, in most translations you don’t come to it until the epistle of James. There is says “pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit the orphans and the widows, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.” Which is a different definition of religion from what many Christians would offer today. How many Christians are actually visiting the orphans and the widows? But that’s just a side thought.

When you look for the word save and salvation, it’s all through the Bible. I just want to turn to one passage in the book of Psalms, Psalm 78:21–22. This is describing the Lord’s dealings with Israel in bringing them out of Egypt and then taking them through the wilderness. It states why the Lord got angry with His people. If I were to put it in my language, He was angry because they had such a small picture of God and His salvation. I believe sometimes we anger God by the littleness of our comprehension of His salvation. So it says:

“Therefore, the Lord heard this and was furious. So a fire was kindled against Jacob, and anger also came up against Israel because they did not believe in God, and did not trust in his salvation.”

What angered Him? The lack of faith in God’s salvation. And if you analyze that passage, salvation is t

Complete Salvation and How to Receive It

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