You Can’t Save Yourself

This episode contains portions from the following programs:

"He Is Our Savior"

"An Invitation to Die"

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Dannah Gresh: Be honest with me. Are you satisfied with life? I mean really content? Or, are you facing some measure of disappointment? Feel like something is off or should be better? 

Today I want to go back to the basics of the Christian faith to remind you of something important: Jesus wants to be your Savior.

Hey, welcome to Revive Our Hearts Weekend. I’m Dannah Gresh, and I'm so glad you’re here today. 

If we’re honest, we’re all facing some measure of discontent—in our personal lives, in the political world. Everywhere we look, the world is groaning to be rescued. The effects of sin reverberate around us! 

But here’s the thing, and let’s be brutally honest with this one: is some of your corner of the world broken because you are? 

Ouch! Stepped on my own toes there.

Well, how do we experience the rescue we need? In John chapter 14, verse 6, Jesus says “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” Jesus is the only One who can rescue us from our sinful nature and redeem our broken world. 

Maybe this is news to you, and if so, I’m excited to tell you more. Or if you’ve heard this before, I am praying you can hear things with new ears. Let’s talk about the one thing every single one of us needs desperately, the greatest need we each have—salvation. Here’s Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: That salvation, we learn throughout the Scripture, is found in God and God alone. Listen to some of these verses from the book of Isaiah: “I am the LORD, and besides me there is no savior. . . . There is no god besides me, a righteous God and a Savior; there is none besides me.” (43:11; 45:21)

Then in Hosea chapter 13: “I am the LORD your God from the land of Egypt; you know no God but me, and besides me there is no savior” (v. 4). Get that into your head, get that in your heart, get it in your whole system, to remember—there is no savior besides God. There is nothing and no one who can save us, who can meet the deepest need of our heart, beside God.

When you listen to all the political and news commentary, and you hear people say, “What’s needed in this day is this . . .” and “What’s needed in this day is this . . .” and “What’s needed to address this . . .” No. The greatest need of the human heart and the human race is for salvation, and that comes from God alone.

Seven hundred years before Jesus was born, the prophet Isaiah predicted: “He will send them a Savior and a Mighty One, and He will deliver them” (19:20). So for hundreds of years, for millennia, the people waited, they longed, they groaned—in desperate need of a Savior. Ever since Genesis chapter 3, the fact is, all of mankind has been in desperate need of deliverance, of salvation. We’ve desperately needed a Savior.

That Savior had to be both divine and human. That means it takes a great Savior to save us from our sins. Scripture says that, by nature, we were children of disobedience. (That’s a term you find in the book of Ephesians.) That was our genetic makeup.

We were dead in trespasses and sins. What a horrible condition! 

The Greek word in the New Testament for Savior means "a deliverer, a preserver." The verb form means “to save,” or “to heal,” or “to preserve,” or “to rescue.” Saving sinners is Jesus’ mission. That’s why He came to this earth; that’s why God sent Him to this earth.

Jesus’ saving work in our lives has different aspects to it. There is a past, and a present, and a future aspect to the salvation we receive from Jesus our Savior. There is a sense in which, if you have put your faith in Him, He has saved you, past tense. He has saved you from the penalty of sin. “By grace you have been saved through faith” (Eph. 2:8).

When the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior. (Titus 3:4–6)

It’s a Savior who saves. You can’t be saved without a Savior. So we have that past tense sense of salvation. In theological terms we call it "justification"—declared righteous in God’s sight, because of the price Jesus paid for us on the cross.

There’s another sense in which our Savior is saving us right now, a present tense salvation. He is saving us from the power of sin. We call that in theological terms "sanctification." It’s an ongoing process. It continues from the point of justification until the day we see Jesus and we enter into what is called "glorification."

This present tense salvation, 1 Corinthians 1:18 says, "The cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God."

The cross is the power of God. So when someone says to you, “When were you saved?” hopefully you can tell them at least a series of circumstances or a season in your life when you came to saving faith in Christ.

Hopefully you can tell them, “I’m still being saved. He’s delivering me, He’s rescuing me from the power of sin, indwelling sin, in my life.” First Corinthians 15:1–2 says, “I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received [past tense] . . . and by which you are being saved.” [present tense]

It took Jesus’ saving work on the cross to justify you (past tense), and it still takes, today, Jesus’ saving work on the cross to sanctify you and me, to deliver us from our sinful flesh and sinful habit patterns. He is saving us. 2 Corinthians 2:15, “We are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing.”

• There is past tense, justification (we were saved). 
• There is present tense, sanctification (we are being saved). 
• Then there’s a tense yet to come, a future salvation when we’ll be saved—praise God—from the very presence of sin. Our Savior will return. We will be glorified . . . like Him . . . that state of glorification.

We read in Romans 5, “Having now been justified [past tense] by his blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through him” (v. 9 NASB). There’s a future sense to our salvation. Philippians 3, “Our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body” (vv. 21–22).

Now, all this talk of salvation raises a really important question: What does Jesus save us from? Because, if you don’t know what He saves us from and what we need to be saved from, then you will never run to Him to save you. You won’t love and embrace Him as your Savior if you don’t know that you have any need to be saved.

The Scripture says He saves us from the wrath of God, from divine judgment. First Thessalonians says, “Jesus . . . delivers us from the wrath to come. . . . For God has not destined us [those of us who believe in Christ] for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1:10, 5:9).

Listen, you will have one or the other. You will have salvation through Jesus Christ, and Christ alone, or you will experience the eternal wrath and judgment of a holy God because of your sin. You’ll have salvation or wrath. There’s so little teaching today on hell, on judgment, on the holiness and the wrath of God. As a result, we’ve presented a false God, and people have no sense of danger—no sense of needing to be saved from anything.

The fact is, we deserve the wrath of God for our sin. We deserve to be damned eternally, and if He does not save us, we must bear our own judgment. Either you trust that He bore your judgment for you, or you will bear your own judgment for all of eternity. 

Jesus came, our Savior came, to melt our hard hearts, to give us the gift of repentance, to take away our love of sinning. Now, wouldn’t that be salvation? . . . to not want to sin anymore. Do you know that one day that will be true? We will have no desire to sin anymore!

“Come, Lord Jesus, save me. I need it!” He came to preserve us, to save us from ourselves and, ultimately, to deliver us from all evil, and from the Evil One, and to take us to heaven to live in sweet fellowship with the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit forever and ever and ever. What a grand salvation!

So, two questions I want to ask you today: First, have you ever recognized and acknowledged your need to be saved?You can’t be saved if you don’t know that you need to be saved. If you don’t think you’re drowning, you won’t appreciate a rescuer. If you don’t think there’s a fire, you’re not going to appreciate a fireman coming to save you.

If you don’t know that you’re a sinner, not just that you do sinful things, but that your DNA is wickedly sinful—that you have rebelled against God and His law. If you don’t know that you’re a sinner . . . if you’ve never known that, you’ve never come under conviction of being deeply sinful, then you will not love a Savior or trust Him to save you. Have you ever acknowledged your need to be saved?

Secondly, who or what are you trusting, today, to save you? Jesus is not just a Savior, He’s not just my Savior—though He is that—He is the Savior of the world. That’s a foundational tenet of “Christianity 101.” There is salvation in no one else, “for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).

There is no other Savior, no other religion, no other means of salvation, and you cannot and will not ever be saved by looking to anyone or anything or anywhere else, other than Christ, for deliverance. If you look to yourself, if you look to others, if you look to other religions for your salvation . . . if that’s what you’re trusting . . . you cannot be saved.

If people can be saved through any other religious system, popular as it may be, then Jesus is not the Savior. If He is the Savior, then there is no other way to be saved. Nothing and no one else can save you . . . parents, their faith . . . friends, their faith . . . a counselor . . . your pastor . . . religion . . . good works. Our best works are filthy in the sight of a holy God because they come from sinful hearts.

Philosophy can’t save you, ethics can’t save you, being baptized doesn’t save you, Christian parents, biblical knowledge . . . none of those things can provide the rescue and the deliverance that we desperately need from sin. So, who or what are you trusting—today—to save you for all of eternity?

Dannah: Take a minute. Answer those questions Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth just asked.

• Have you ever recognized and acknowledged your need to be saved? 
• And who or what are you trusting, today, to save you?

I have acknowledged my need to be saved. I was just a little girl when I realized how sinful I can be. And that I needed to be saved. 

It was at a Child Evangelism Fellowship backyard Bible club where I first asked Jesus to forgive my sins. What a sweet day! The day I surrendered to the salvation of Jesus Christ.

At that age I understood the very familiar John 3:16: "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life."

But somewhere along the way I forgot why Jesus died. “For God so loved!” I forgot the love, and I started to believe a lie: God loves me when I perform. 

Are there any type-A girls out there feeling that one? Well, when we believe that lie, we’re trusting someone other than Jesus to do the saving. We’re trusting ourselves. Well, Friend, you cannot save yourself!

Let me see if I can say this another way, because I just know I’m not the only one who has faced this crisis of faith. How about this: I believe God loved me . . . when I was good. When I didn’t mess up! 

But the thing is, I still did sin after I was saved. And though the regret of sin, even our shame, can be a tool God uses to bring us back to Him when we wander—kind of like a shepherd's crook inviting us back into the flock of salvation—Satan likes to use shame, too, as a beating stick. And my proverbial heart was black and blue from that stick.

Can you identify?

If so, I have some truth for you to feast on. Let me read Romans 5:8 to you.

God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 

God is not surprised by your sin. He knows everything. No matter what you have done or how much you have messed up, God still loves you and will forgive you. But you’ve got to stop believing the lie that you have to perform to be loved.

Have you ever believed that lie? I think most of us have at some point in our lives. I totally understand why we feel so far from God when we're in the midst of it. Sin makes it difficult to feel God’s love even though it is still there. Trying to feel connected to God after we sin, can be like trying to listen to an episode of Revive Our Hearts Weekend when you don’t have good Wi-Fi. The connection is there, but something is interfering with it.

Sin makes it hard for us to connect clearly to God. But God is still there, and He still loves you!

Something that helps me reconnect to God when I’ve sinned is confession—to God and to others in the Body of Christ. Tell someone. Rip the seal off the secrets in your heart and rediscover God’s love for you. But stop trying to be your own savior. It doesn’t work.

In reality, there’s so much freedom in knowing we can’t save ourselves, right? You can’t ever do enough or be enough or work hard enough to save yourself for eternity. But the best news is that Jesus can save you—and He did. You just have to accept it. If you need some help understanding that, we’ve got you covered. Go to ReviveOurHearts.com/GoodNews. 

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Now, the funny thing about believing we have to be good to be loved is that it’s a form of pride. Yep, pride has a spectrum. On one end, we’re overly confident of ourselves, and on the other, we self-loathe. Both are forms of self-focus. There’s no room for that in the Christian walk.

When we give our lives to Christ, He asks us to die to ourselves and invites us to live a life of constant surrender. Damaris Carbaugh explained this thought really well in a conversation with Nancy. Here’s what she had to say.

Damaris Carbaugh: He says, “You want to follow Me? You need to deny yourself, pick up your cross and follow Me. Deny yourself, die to yourself, die to what you want.” That sounds so negative until you understand that His invitation to die is for one reason, so that you might live. It makes no sense unless you know the Lord.

But His invitation to die is not a kill-joy. His invitation to die is that if you continue in what you want, it will destroy you. But if you die to what you want, you will begin to live.

Nancy: That’s just the opposite of what we naturally think is the case.

Damaris: Totally. Totally. And it really does. I never thought that dying to my dream, which was so wonderful in my mind, would bring joy. And oh my goodness! If I could just go to every person who’s struggling with giving up what they want . . .

Let me tell you something. My thing was my career. But I can almost say it could go for anything. It could be for wanting a child—you’ve been married ten years and you still don’t have a child. And having a child is wonderful. I have two children.

But I really want to say if you just say, “Lord, I give You everything I want. I die to everything I want—even the good things.” How could it not be good to have a child, or how could it not be good to get married, or how could it not be good to write a book about the Lord? And yet, the Lord hasn’t really opened up those doors. How could it? Oh, I’m telling you right now, just die to all that you want because He wants you to live. When you begin to understand that the joy that comes . . .

I have to tell you real quickly, before flying here to Michigan, we were at our prayer meeting the other night. After the prayer meeting, I spoke to a young couple that are living together. They have recently come to know the Lord. She’s expecting their second child. I mean, it’s a mess when you think of how to get it right. But this is what hit me, Nancy.

We’re in East Harlem. They’re poor. I remember looking at them and feeling such love for them, wanting so much to let the Lord just save them and make them right and start living the way God wants them to live. The thought of the fact that [in the past] I wanted to be on a stage, and I couldn’t care less about this precious couple that was now in front of me.

And I said, “Truly, the Lord wanted me to die to what I wanted.” But the joy of seeing them so want to be right with God. It cannot even compare to anything that I could have ever dreamed of. I realized God wanted me to die to my dream, because my dream was selfish.

My dream, Nancy, was only for what I wanted. But God wants me to die to my dream because He loves those two that are right there in front of me. He loves people. His invitation to die will always to be to live. In the end you live, and you bless others. Your way, it’s only death.

Nancy: Right. Right.

Damaris: Even people that don’t believe in God, Nancy, that pursue selfish ambitions, even some of these people that don’t even acknowledge God have actually been honest enough to say that when they reach their goals, there’s an emptiness there that what they were going for does not fulfill. So the Lord says, everything you want, believe Me . . . The Lord says that a man’s ways seem right to him. But what is it in the end? It’s death. It’s destruction. You don’t really realize that you’re on a one-way collision to death. And God is saying, “My way is the way to live.” But you won’t know that until you get in His Word. 

Dannah: I hope you will get into God’s Word as Damaris Carbaugh just suggested. Let me give you a good place to begin. How about John chapter 3. Soak a bit in His love. There’s a whole lot of it in that book of the Bible. 

I hope you’re coming away from today’s episode with a new perspective or at least a fresh reminder of the saving power of Jesus. Throughout the last several weeks on Revive Our Hearts, we’ve been diving deep to discover who Jesus really was and is, in Nancy’s series “Incomparable.” 

Right now a couple resources to go along with this theme are available to you. First is Nancy’s book, Incomparable: 50 Days with Jesus. It’s s devotional on the life, work, and words of Christ to help you know Him better. And designed to accompany this book is the new Incomparable Scripture Card Set. Each of the 52 unique cards contains a quote from Nancy and verse from Scripture.

Right now when you give any amount to Revive Our Hearts, we’ll send you either Nancy’s book Incomparable, or the Incomparable Scripture Card Set. Just go to ReviveOurHearts.com/weekend and click on today’s episode. When you give, let us know which of the resources you’d like to receive. 

Today we’ve seen how only Jesus can save us. Next weekend, I hope you’ll join me as we look at Jesus’ death and the power of the cross. And the week after that we’ll look closer at His resurrection and what difference it makes in our lives today.

Thanks for listening today. I’m Dannah Gresh. We’ll see you next time for Revive Our Hearts Weekend.

This program is a listener-supported production of Revive Our Hearts in Niles, Michigan, calling women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

*Offers available only during the broadcast of the podcast season.