‘A Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.’ Every individual needs a Saviour, a Deliverer, otherwise our sins will bring us down and when we die we will be judged and banished from the presence of God everlastingly. We need a Saviour who will deliver us from the consequences of human rebellion, from being cut off from God and separated from him. Christ is first of all, before anything else, a Saviour. We cannot have Christ as a source of happiness. We cannot have him as the Prince in heaven who answers our prayers. We cannot have Christ as the one who will bless us, until first we have him as a Saviour from sin. First, he must forgive our sins; he must give us new life and bring us into touch with himself as the living God.
He is ‘a Saviour, which is Christ’ – that means he is the anointed one of God. Christ is the Greek equivalent of the hebrew Messiah, the anointed one. That is important. The Saviour must be anointed by God. If you want to be operated on by a surgeon you have the comfort of knowing that that surgeon is qualified you have the comfort of knowing that the person who picks up the scalpel has been trained, duly examined, and qualified. You must have somebody who is officially appointed to do such a sophisticated task. It is the same with the Saviour. We need a Saviour, but one who is anointed, appointed by God, because not just anybody could do this task. No ordinary man or woman could possibly be my Saviour, because every other man and woman in the world is condemned for his and her sin, just as I am. What is the good of having a purely human Saviour like me, who is condemned to die for sin? There is only one who is qualified and that is the Saviour who is come from heaven, the Saviour who is God himself. There are three persons in one godhead. There is the Father, the eternal Son, and the Holy Spirit, all three one God, one essence. The second person of the Trinity, who has come and become a man has entered into human flesh, so you don't have a man to be your Saviour. You have the God man. He is God; he is also man; he is the only one qualified. That is why he is called Christ, the anointed one, the chosen one, the officially appointed one. What a task he carried out! Christ had to come and to take all the pain and all the punishment and all consequences of our sin, all that punishment which you and I should have borne ever and for ever and he had to take it all somehow compressed into the space of a few hours in order to pay the price of our sin for us, and to take away the curse and the punishment so that he could buy the right to forgive us.
There are some people who think they can have salvation – their sins forgiven, a place in heaven, and the blessing of God – simply by asking for the forgiveness of their sins. There is just a little more to it than that. We repent of our sins. And as we do, we submit to him as Lord, and we say, ‘Lord, here is my life. I yield to thee. Here is my life Lord. Take me, make me thy child, rule over me. I will do thy bidding. I will follow thy commands.’ And as we repent of our sin, we also give ourselves to Christ. If you don't do both things you can never know him. He is not only Deliverer, the appointed Deliverer. He is also Lord, and he must be Lord of the life of each one who comes to him. If you don't have him as Saviour, you will never find him. If you don't have him as Lord as well you will never find him. May all have this supreme joy of finding him and knowing him and walking with him.