For Love of Your Love, O Lord, I Recall the Chains from which You Released Me

Recently I read sections 1 and 2 of book 2 of Augustin's Confessions as part of my "devotional" reading. And this portion carries me back to the sins of my youth as so much of what Augustin recalls recalls for me what I don't recall so well left to myself. It felt like a wave breaking over my life that carried up from my past onto the shore of my present the evils from which God has wondrously now rescued me for almost longer than I was immersed in the mire of sin. I'm exceedingly grateful to God and moved with "love of [his] love."

Here are portions of the portions that move me so deeply:

I must now carry my thoughts back to the abominable things I did in those days, the sins of the flesh that defiled my soul. I do this, my God, not because I love those sins, but so that I may love you. For love of your love I shall retrace my wicked ways. The memory is bitter, but it will help me to savor your sweetness, the sweetness that does not deceive but brings real joy and never fails. For love of your love I shall retrieve myself from the havoc of disruption that tore me to pieces when I turned away from you, whom alone I should have sought, and lost myself instead on many a different quest. For as I grew to manhood I was inflamed with desire for a surfeit of hell's pleasures. Foolhardy as I was, I ran wild with lust that was manifold and rank. In your eyes my beauty vanished and I was foul to the core, yet I was pleased with my own condition and anxious to be pleasing in the eyes of men.  

I cared for nothing but to love and be loved. But my love went beyond the affection of one mind for another, beyond the arc of the bright beam of friendship. Bodily desire, like a morass, and adolescent sex welling up within me exuded mists that clouded over and obscured my heart, so that I could not distinguish the clear light of true love from the murk of lust. Love and lust together seethed within me. In my tender youth they swept me away over the precipice of my body's appetites and plunged me in the whirlpool of sin. More and more I angered you, unawares. For I had been deafened by the clank of my chains, the fetters of the death that was my due to punish the pride in my soul. I strayed still further from you and you did not restrain me. I was tossed and spilled, floundering in the broiling sea of my fornication, and you said no word. How long it was before I learned that you were my true joy! You were silent then, and I went on my way, further and further from you, proud in my distress and restless in fatigue, sowing more and more seeds whose only crop was grief.

—Saint Augustine, Confessions, trans. R. S. Pine-Coffin (New York: Penguin, 1961), 43–44.

O Lord God, I Am Weak and Fearful

Luther:

O Lord God, I am weak and fearful. I flee evil and do all I can to guard myself against it. Nevertheless, I am in your hands as I face this evil and every other evil that may overtake me. To flee is not enough, for evil and misery are everywhere. The devil, who has been murdering since the beginning, tries to bring misery, and he never rests nor sleeps. Now you have confined me to this place. Your will be done, for I am your poor creature. You are able to deliver me in this extreme danger as easily as though it were but fire, water, thirst, or any other peril.

—Luther's Prayers (ed. Herbert F. Brokering; Augsberg: Minneapolis, 1994), 105.

Our Future-Oriented Salvation

Commenting on the salvation language of Rom. 5:9 in particular and Paul's writings generally, Doug Moo says:

This future-oriented use of σῴζω is quite usual in Paul. For while he sometimes uses the verb to denote the deliverance from the penalty of sin that comes at conversion (e.g., Rom. 8:24; Eph. 2:5, 8), he more often used the word (and its cognates; cf. Rom. 13:11) to depict the final deliverance of the Christian from the power of sin, the evils of this life, and, especially, judgment (e.g., 1 Cor. 3:15; 5:5; Phil. 2:12). Paul pictures the Christian as having been saved, as looking forward to being saved, and even as in the process of being saved (cf. 2 Cor. 2:15; 2 Thess. 2:10).

 —The Epistle to the Romans, pp. 310-311.

Saved, Being Saved, and Will Be Saved

Martyn Lloyd-Jones on God's salvation in Rom. 1:16:

Let us never use the term "salvation" glibly, or lightly, or loosely. Let us never stop at just saying, "I am saved," or "I have been saved"; let us put equal emphasis on the fact that we are being saved. . . .  

. . . let us, therefore, use the term carefully. Thank God, in Christ we can say we have been saved; but we say it as realizing what we mean. We also mean that we are still being saved. We also mean that we shall not be finally saved in this life, in this present world; that our glorification, which is an essential part of salvation, is beyond this world, and beyond this life. It is coming. It is certain. But not yet. We have been saved. We are being saved. We shall be fully and finally and entirely saved. Salvation—great salvation! God's salvation!

—Romans: An Exposition of Chapter 1, The Gospel of God (The Banner of Truth Trust: Edinburgh, 1985), 279-280.

The "Doctor" on God's Salvation

Dr. David Martyn Lloyd-Jones, expounding Rom. 1:16 at Westminster Chapel in the late 1950s, proclaimed powerfully the salvation of God:

Often this word salvation, or being saved, is used very inadequately. Some people, sometimes, when they use the term, are only referring to one small part of it, while they give the impression that the one small part is the whole. That, surely, is very wrong and very bad. The Apostle glories in this great word, and we must understand something of the fulness of the content which he puts into it. This term salvation can really only be understood as we understand the biblical teaching with regard to man. We will never know the full content of salvation until we know what man was like when God made him, until we know God's view of man—man as he came out of the hands of God and was placed in perfection in an earthly paradise. And, in addition to that, to understand the real meaning of salvation, we must also understand what happened to man as the result of the Fall, and as the result of sin, for if we do not understand what is meant by the Fall, and by sin, we cannot possibly understand what Paul means by salvation. . . . 

That, then, is the way in which you measure this great term salvation. You start with man in the early chapters of Genesis. And that is why you cannot shed the Book of Genesis, or even the first three chapters. If you do, you are immediately detracting from salvation. In other words, if you believe in the doctrine and theory of evolution, which says that man is a creature that has evolved out of the animal, and is still evolving and has not yet "arrived," well, you really cannot have a doctrine of salvation—you will not know what Paul is speaking about in this Epistle to the Romans. In a sense, if the theory of evolution is true, a man does not need salvation. No; the only way to understand salvation is to see man in the garden of Eden, perfect, in absolute correspondence with God, and enjoying the companionship and the fellowship of God, without sin, in a state of perfect innocence. But then you learn that he was tempted and that he fell, he committed that sin, and this led to certain terrible consequences. 

What is salvation? Salvation is the deliverance of man from the consequences of the Fall and of sin; and our definition of salvation must never be less than that. It must include all that, in all its fulness.

The "Doctor" (as he was called—even by his wife!) goes on then to speak to what this deliverance from sin is. Briefly, summarizing what he unpacks more fully, the Doctor says, God's salvation is rescue from the guilt of sin, the power of sin, and the pollution of sin.

—Romans: An Exposition of Chapter 1, The Gospel of God (The Banner of Truth Trust: Edinburgh, 1985), pp. 272-274.