Snatched Away!

  

From time to time I’ll read a story about someone falling onto subway tracks, unable to save himself or herself, when a bystander is transformed from being a bystander to being a savior – jumping down onto the tracks and snatching the person facing death away to safety.

 

Yesterday morning, as I began reading Galatians, I was struck by the word “rescue” in the following: “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for our sins so that He might rescue us from this present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be the glory forevermore. Amen.” (Gal. 1:3 – 5).

 

This brought me to Colossians 1:13 -14, “Who rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins…”

 

Also consider what Jesus told Paul about Paul’s calling, that Paul would open the eyes of the Gentiles “so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the dominion of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who have been sanctified by faith in Me.” (Acts 26:18).

 

We need to be rescued from the present evil age, which is the domain of darkness, the dominion of Satan…by and to our Lord Jesus Christ. But I don’t think we (professing Christians) believe this, for we live lives of accommodation rather than Gospel proclamation. We fail to recognize the hostility of the world to the Kingdom of God, and we usually seek the path of least resistance in our daily lives rather than obedience to Jesus Christ. Holiness is not something we pursue, and we’d rather convince others of our political persuasions than of their need for Jesus Christ. We are pretty much people of the present evil age.

 

For me, I need constant reminders that I am to live for others and not myself; that there is the quicksand of the temporal all around me; that I must not fall into self-righteousness, the love of money, materialism, or pursue what Francis Schaffer styled, “Personal peace and affluence.” I need rescue from the values of this present evil age – in their apparently “good” forms as well as their blatantly evil forms.

 

Every day I am convinced of my need of Jesus Christ my Lord and Savior.

 

But I want to go back to Galatians and the word “rescue,” for the Greek word for rescue in Galatians is different than the word translated “rescued” in Colossians (I’m using the NASB). The word used in Galatians is seldom used in the Greek New Testament, and the force of the word really means “to pluck” or “to snatch” or “to jerk.” We see this word in Jesus’ command, “If your eye offends you pluck it out.”

 

This is why I began this reflection with a person being snatched away from subway tracks, because this is the image that we have in the Greek verb – that of being snatched away from something. This is something that happens to us, we cannot rescue ourselves, we cannot cause ourselves to be snatched away from this present evil age – only Jesus Christ can do this for us.

 

Note that in order for Jesus to snatch us away that our sins must be forgiven, and in order for our sins to be forgiven that Jesus must “give Himself” for us. All three of the above verses in Galatians, Colossians, and Acts speak of the forgiveness of sins. O that we might see the hideousness and wickedness of sin, of all sin, not so much my neighbor’s sin but my own sin, and not just the sins that I commit, but the sinful person I am outside of Jesus Christ. I not only need my sins forgiven, but I need a change of nature – for without a change of nature I will continue to live the life of a sinner in spiritual death. I need to be snatched away from this present evil age.

 

I can take no credit for having been snatched away from spiritual death, I contributed absolutely nothing to this event – and when a person realizes that he has indeed been snatched away, that person is quick to recognize that he or she had nothing to do with the rescue – all credit, all glory, goes to the Rescuer, the Deliverer.

 

In looking at other English translations and paraphrases of Galatians 1:4 I haven’t seen any that convey the force of being “plucked” or “snatched,” perhaps the idea is too unusual to translate it this way – but we miss something by not considering the force of the word – for I think we can agree than should we ever fall onto subway tracks with a train’s lights coming toward us, that being snatched away to safety is our best hope of survival.

 

A Quote To Ponder On "Accepting Christ"

 

From A.W. Tozer:

“I cannot estimate the number, although I think it is a very large number, of people who have been brought into some kind of religious experience by a fleeting formality of ‘accepting Christ,’ and a great, great number of them are still not saved. The results of this are all around us as people who falsely count themselves saved still behave like the sinners they are instead of behaving like someone who is truly born again. This sad increase of people who are deceived in this way is a direct result of an irresponsible approach to evangelism among evangelicals – an approach that suggests “it is the easiest thing in the world to ‘accept Jesus’” and permits people to accept him simply by a fleeting emotional impulse.

 

“In previous generations, the call to ‘accept’ Christ communicated the mighty and glorious truth that individuals do not have to earn heaven through good works. However, since that time, the word ‘accept’ has degenerated quite significantly and now implies someone can become a Christian apart from real repentance and spiritual transformation. The call to ‘accept’ Christ has produced a generation of Christians, or so-called Christians, that are impenitent in their heart, frivolous in their spirit, and worldly in their conduct.”

 

“Is justification from past offenses all that distinguishes a Christian from a sinner? Can a man become a believer in Christ and be no better than he was before? Does the gospel offer no more than a skillful advocate to get the guilty sinners off free at the day of judgment?”

 

A Quote to Ponder on the Old Testament

 

“The Old Testament is not to the New like the chrysalis, out of which the living “life” has burst, and is now only a lifeless casement; rather is it like the personal appearance of Him, who has in man’s sight ‘no form or comeliness’, but which, when He appeared in His glory, was transfigured, and shone transparently, with a portion of His Majesty which was veiled within it; or so again, that His risen Body, still bore the print of the nails and of the spear, and could be handled, although it was no longer subject to the laws of flesh, but showed itself to be a ‘glorified Body’, and what before seemed the exception and a miracle, when It walked on the water, now appeared as the rule; and Jesus came and went uniformly after the manner of a Spirit, to accustom us to think on His Body as spiritualized, yea, Deified and yet a Body, so should we regard the Old Testament, not as the dead body of our Lord, to be embalmed with honour, and laid with the dead, but as a living and true Body, which it hath pleased God to take, in order to be accessible to us; and wherein alone we can see Him “Full of grace and truth.”  

Edward Bouverie Pusey, Lecture 24 (Italics mine).