Salvation Belongs to our God

by    14th August 2010    0 responses

salvationbelongs

Revelation 7:9-10   Expand passage

9After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. 10And they cried out in a loud voice:

"Salvation belongs to our God,
who sits on the throne,
and to the Lamb."

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Chris Wright describes these words as the “climactic final chorus” of the Bible, and really this book is a 200-page exposition of this “theme song”.  If the thought of a 200-word exposition of two verses from Revelation leaves you in despair, please bear with my review long enough to explain that all is not as it first seems!  This is not a stuffy book of impenetrable theological jargon about Revelation, but rather is an explanation of the Bible’s great big story of salvation.

Chris Wright uses the phrases of Revelation 7:10 to take the reader through what the Bible has to say about salvation, each chapter taking a theme from the verse.  Chapter 1 defines what is meant by salvation, and majors on our need for a saviour.  Chapter 2 defines the God who saves: as Wright pertinently points out, when we are talking about God, “merely using the right word does not mean we have the right understanding”.  Chapters 3 and 4 cover the notion of covenant and salvation – the fact that it is our God who saves.  Chapter 5 picks up on the context of corporate celebration in Revelation 7, explaining the importance of the experience of salvation.  Chapter 6, ” Salvation and the Sovereignty of God”, covers the significance of salvation from the God who sits on the throne.  Although central to the whole story so far, Chapter 7 focuses on the saving work of Jesus, the Lamb of God.

The thing I most appreciated from this book was the frequent use of summary paragraphs and bullet points.  Often these can be a tedious and unnecessary addition to books, but here they were welcome.  One great use of a summary outlined what is means to have been saved, to be being saved, and to be awaiting salvation.  This could be a difficult argument to follow, but Wright makes it easy.  He begins with a bullet-point summary of each “stage” of this “storied” aspect to salvation, and then uses a great illustration to get the point clear.  Then, he treats each stage in turn with its own section.  By first demonstrating how the stages all fit together, he makes it much easier to see the argument of each in turn.

This kind of attention to detail runs through the book.  This is a short book for Wright, and you can see on almost every page that it is both concise and thorough.  There are plenty of aspects to salvation covered here that I had never thought about before, or simply taken for granted.  Wright’s treatment helped me to define my thoughts more carefully and to see how they fit together in God’s scheme of history.  The book does not cover disagreements over the mechanics of salvation or similar controversies, but it does briefly address issues such as universalism with a balanced perspective.

Ultimately, I have to recommend Salvation Belongs to our God because it is a heart-warming read.  It is a very readable overview of God’s work of salvation, which is the major theme of the Bible and the life of the Christian.  It is not all theorizing, either: Wright addresses issues such as ethics and living as people saved by the blood of the Lamb.  It is a helpful, but also enjoyable read.  Take half and hour a day for a week to reflect on the God who saves.

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Ali grew up in London, but is currently at university in the North East of England. He helped to re-launch Crossring in 2009, and has acted as Managing Editor of the website since then. He occasionally dabbles in photography and web development - he also designed and maintains the Crossring website.

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