God the Savior.
"I am the Lord thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Saviour." As we know God, he is a Triune Being—Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; and Scripture traces the whole work of salvation to God thus apprehended. Salvation is not the work of one Person of the Trinity, but the work of the whole personality of God. This is the truth which may be unfolded from the expression in this text.
I. SALVATION IS THE WORK OF THE DIVINE TRINITY. This is variously taught in Holy Scripture, but the most complete and precise expression of the truth may be found in Titus 3:4-6, which Conybeare and Howson render thus: "But when God our Saviour made manifest his kindness and love of men, he saved us, not through the works of righteousness which we had done, but according to his own mercy, by the laver of regeneration, and the renewing of the Holy Spirit, which he richly poured forth upon us, by Jesus Christ our Saviour." The love of God appeared. The regenerations and renewings are by the Holy Spirit. And that Divine Spirit is shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ. God is our Saviour. Jesus Christ is our Saviour. The Holy Ghost is our Saviour. And yet we have not three Saviours, but one Saviour. Young Christians, in the earlier stages of religious apprehension, are wont to grasp firmly the one truth—Jesus is the Saviour. Many Christian people grow old in experience without coming to realize that this is a central truth, which has another truth on each side of it. On one side this truth—God is. the Saviour. On the other side—the Holy Ghost is the Saviour. Jesus Christ is declared to be God "manifest in the flesh;" God the Father manifest, so that we may apprehend him; and God the Holy Ghost manifest, so that we may realize his gracious inworkings. We know God the Father and God the Holy Ghost through Christ, the manifested Son. Such enlarging of our thought to embrace the full Divine agency in our redemption involves no kind of dishonour to the Lord Jesus. In his part and sphere he is the only One, the only "Name." As the Manifester and Mediator, he stands alone. His sphere is manes earthly life; he is God with us. He shares our humanity; bears a human name; lives through a human, lot; perfects an obedience in the flesh; endures the final testing of a painful and ignominious human death; and in his redemptive work in the human spheres he has none to share with him. When we speak of separate Persons in the Divine Trinity, we must apprehend the most absolute unity of purpose in them; and the differences of operation which we can trace are simply gracious modes of reaching men so as to be a perfect redemptive power on them. The Father-God, in his Divine fatherly love, initiates the redemptive purpose, and forms, in his infinite wisdom, the redemptive plan. God the Son executes that part of the Divine plan which required manifestation in man's earthly sphere—in the sphere of the senses. God the Spirit is entrusted with that part of the Divine plan which concerned man's inward state—the renewal of his mind and feeling and will.
II. THE ONE FOUNTAIN AND SOURCE OF OUR SALVATION, WHATEVER ITS FORM OR ITS AGENCY MAY BE, IS THE DIVINE LOVE. "We are saved by grace." We too often speak of the "mercy" of God, as if it were only an attribute belonging to him. Nay, it is far better than an attribute—it is God: "God is love." But when that love gains expression in man's sphere, so that we may apprehend it, we find it is working out a marvellous purpose, even the full redemption of a sinful race; and we see it in the blessed life of the redeeming Son and in the inward grace of the renewing Spirit. But all is of God. All is of free, sovereign, unbought, unconstrained, unmerited love. He saved us. He sent the Son. He sheds the Spirit. It is our Father in heaven whose fatherly love pitied us, yearned for us, and found the gracious ways in which to bring the prodigals home, and to make the prodigals sons again. It is the "grace of God that bringeth salvation." We may have laid hold of the truth that Christ for us is the Gift of grace. It may be that we need to gain firm hold of that other and answering truth, that the Holy Ghost in us is the Provision of grace. We want more than the doctrine concerning these high things. We want a living impression, which gives to them practical and persuasive power on our hearts. When we can really feel that our salvation is throughout, from beginning to ending, from predestination to calling, from calling to justification, from justification to sanctification, and right through to glorification, wholly of grace, then the last lingering confidence in our own doings will pass right away, and we shall rejoice altogether in "God our Saviour."—R.T.