God’s heart and character is to save life, not to destroy life

The roots or origins of man’s salvation Our salvation is from God, by God and for God. God is revealed in the early pages of the Scripture as Creator and then as Saviour (Gen.3:15). Jesus is called “Saviour” Luke 1:47; 2:11; cf. see Ex.15:2.

God’s heart and character is to save life, not to destroy life, and this fact can be seen in Luke 6:9 “Then Jesus said to them, ‘I ask you, which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to destroy it?”

These Scriptures above reveal what was at the very heart of Jesus’ deepest motivation in His being among men: to save life, to offer life, not to judge or condemn people according to the Law. His motivation stands in vivid contrast to the Pharisees’ controlling interest in the minutiae of the Law.

John’s Gospel where we see frequent references to the contrast between “life” and “death” (“life” occurs 50 times in 42 verses in John):

* Jesus is “Life” (John 14:6)

*Jesus’ coming is to give abundant life (John 10:10)

The picture of God’s character revealed to us through Jesus is not of a heavenly watchdog, policeman or Pharisee who is watching our every move to see whether or not we obey all points of the law of God. Rather God is revealed to us as “holy” not “holy” in a negative sense (demanding perfection), but in the positive sense = reaching out to us in our unholy and broken state in order to make us holy through His blood so that we might live in the beauty of His presence forever.

God’s nature is as “Saviour” the God who comes down in order to rescue a lost humanity, who seeks after the lost in order to save them from His wrath and the condemnation that He Himself in His justice and righteousness pronounced upon sinful humanity.

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