God's Full Salvation

Norman Grubb has some poignant words in his book God Unlimited regarding our salvation:

"How will [God] regain for Himself His stolen property--us humans who have become containers and manifestors of that usurping god, the spirit of self-love, in place of Himself, the Spirit of self-giving, whom we had been created to receive in the Tree of life [in the garden of Eden]? So often the gospel is preached and the offer of salvation made on a much more superficial level. The idea is given that we are out of step with God through sin, but that a restoration has been made by the atoning death of Christ, which has removed the guilt and eternal consequences of our sins, and restored to us sonship and fellowship with God. Now let us carry on living with the help of God. But, we are then told, we shall not live as we ought to, nor find heart satisfaction unless we own Him as Lord as well as Saviour: Saviour He must be or we are damned: Lord He should be or our lives will be fruitless. To have Him as Saviour is mandatory: to have Him as Lord is optional. What nonsense! Redemption is only redemption when God regains (buys back) for Himself His dwelling place, our human personalities which were created for no other purpose than to contain Him. Therefore unless redemption immediately makes that a fact, and a saved sinner is from that instant the dwelling place of the Living God, there is no salvation.

"Through ignorance a redeemed person may not realize what has happened to him and may blunder about as a consequence, but it has happened all the same; and so often the responsibility for our blundering, soulish, flesh-manifesting though redeemed, lives lies at the door of a gospel only half-preached, or believers only half-instructed. And does that not really mean that the preachers themselves are only half-enlightened, because we surely give out what we have within? There is much talk these days of depth-psychology. We surely need evangelical depth-theology. Do we not need to reorientate our gospel message, and tell right out to the non-Christians that we are not bringing them some panacea for happier living or future security? We are bringing them a total revolution, a life which is nothing less than God Himself living in them through the radical replacement effected by Christ crucified and risen, with all the radical consequences which will follow from a Christ-centred in place of self-centred life. And it is by no means merely the non-Christians who need to become Christians. The much harder job is to make the Christians Christians!"