- Salvation Evident
Psalm 91:16b
And show him my salvation.
For the one who trusts the Lord and dwells in His Presence God promises to show him His salvation. It is one thing to be saved in actual fact by faith in Jesus Christ and at the same time to know that truth with absolute certainty because of the Gospel that we have heard.
But it is a different thing to have the promise that God will show us that salvation in feeling and experience from time to time. He shows, or reveals, to each believer the salvation He has worked for us at the Cross and the Tomb. That event was far away in time and space, but the Holy Spirit is able through the Gospel to reveal it to our hearts in our own present time and place where we are in a different century and a different continent.
How the Lord may reveal His salvation to each of us will differ with each individual, but the promise is that He will. The Holy Spirit uses the external word of the Gospel to show us God’s Salvation. Just like different witnesses of one and the same event will describe it differently so the individual believer may witness the Singular Event of our Salvation a little differently than another. There is One Gospel Word that saves all of us; that is objective fact outside of us: certainty is based on that fact. But since each believer receives and perceives that Word filtered through a unique perspective the testimony, witness, and account may differ one from another (as in the 4 Gospels). This is a blessing when God “shows,” but certainty is not based on my own subjective experience of salvation. Salvation is certain because of what He shows, not because of the “showing” itself.
God does reveal or show the same salvation (Christ) so that we “see” by faith. The faith or revealing (the showing) does not do the saving, but the object of the faith, the thing revealed, does the saving: that thing is Christ. In other words, faith does not save us, Christ does. A gracious God shows Him to us; we see (believe) Him; He saves us.
But there is a further meaning to this promise. God shows us His salvation from specific dangers and issues that crop up in a regular life. Thousands of answers to prayer point us to and lead us more firmly to the One Great Eternal Salvation, and over and over God’s goodness mercy is revealed to us.