It’s an honest question I’ve asked myself. It’s a question that can be surprisingly difficult to answer.
Salvation can seem like an illusive concept. Especially during times of suffering when it seems like everything is falling apart, every story is bad news, every moment is a battle. Times like right now.
Personally I asked myself this question in the midst of a season of infertility. All the joy felt like it was stripped from my life as I wrestled with the strange balance of faith in God and grief from unanswered prayers. I wanted to have a baby and that longing was so real and intense that it truly felt impossible to envision a life of fulfillment without one.
But I knew the Gospel, that Jesus died for my sins, that He rose again to defeat death and welcome me into an inheritance and fellowship with Him. That Good News should have been enough to make me get out of the bed, dust off the bitterness and sorrow, and put a smile on my face. Except it wasn’t.
I truly wanted to be content, to be fulfilled by that alone. I just honestly didn’t know how. I began to pray Psalm 51:12, like David, “restore to me the joy of your salvation.”
I prayed that prayer for a long time. If you’ve heard me share my story of infertility before, you know that God began to help me see Him in the small moments. It was His comfort on the worst days, His peace to get through circumstances that felt impossible, His faithfulness that grew my faith. Through that time, my definition of fulfillment changed. Instead of being fulfilled by every dream and plan for my life becoming a reality, I was being fulfilled simply by knowing Jesus.
Isn’t it funny how easily we can forget what God has taught us?
Maybe that’s just me.
While experiencing the fulfillment of Christ’s salvation was a pivotal and powerful moment in my life, I still sometimes find myself underwhelmed with the power of the cross and overwhelmed by the circumstances of life around me.
I’ve found myself overwhelmed so many times in the last couple of weeks. I think I’ve probably cried every day of the last 7 days and sometimes I’m not even sure why.
And the question rises up in my mind again. Is knowing God really enough? If He doesn’t intervene like I want Him to, if bad things happen to people I love, if my family suffers financially or physically, is God’s salvation alone really enough?
Right now, the best answer I have for that question is scripture.
“Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” Romans 5:1-5
There is so much to unpack here, but this is the truth God is helping me see: salvation is incredible. It’s more than enough. And it’s essential to help me keep perspective in awful circumstances.
Romans 5 lays out three things salvation does for us.
1. We have peace with God.
2. We have access to His grace.
3. We have the hope of the glory of God.
Peace with God means I can rest in right-standing with the Creator of the universe. It means I am justified through His salvation.
Access to His grace means I can rejoice not in how good I am or what I can accomplish, but in Him alone. It means I am being sanctified through His salvation.
The hope of glory means I get to look forward to something better than what I see around me right now, I get to experience the actual awe-inspiring, speechless magnitude of God. It means one day I will know the eternal joy of creation restored in Christ. It means I will be glorified through His salvation.
By themselves each one of these things is profound, but together, it’s the most amazing gift. It’s all-inclusive and complex.
And then Romans 5 brings it home in verse 3. This incredible salvation means we can rejoice in our sufferings. What an oxymoron. Rejoice means to show great delight. Suffering means to undergo pain, distress or hardship. So this verse is literally saying that we can show great delight when we experience pain, distress, or hardship. Why? How? Can this really be true?
The only way it can be true is because of this amazing gift of salvation. Because we are at peace with God we can delight in knowing our circumstances can’t destroy us. Because we have access to His grace we can trust that He will strengthen and steady us in our suffering. Because we have the hope of glory we are encouraged as we look not just at this life, but to eternity.
And in God’s loving kindness He didn’t just give us His complex salvation, but He sent us His Holy Spirit, His very presence, to help us and fill us with God’s love.
I don’t like suffering. I certainly struggle with rejoicing in it. But I know, no matter how bad things get or what sorrows my future holds, salvation in Christ will always be the one place I can put my trust, the one thing that will never disappoint.