The offices of Christ

Christ Our Savior

Jesus Christ is our Savior because he rescues us from sin and its judgment and brings us safely to God. The very name Jesus means the Lord saves, given by the angel because he shall save his people from their sins. He saves not by giving us advice or an example only but by his own death and resurrection in our place, and there is no other name under heaven whereby we must be saved.

And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins.Matthew 1:21 (KJV)

What it means to call Christ our Savior

To call Jesus Savior is to confess that we needed saving, and that we could not save ourselves. A savior rescues those in danger who cannot rescue themselves, and Scripture is honest about our danger. We are not merely unwise or unwell but lost, under the guilt and power of sin, unable by our own strength to make ourselves right with God. Into that helplessness Jesus comes as the one who delivers.

The name given to him carries the whole meaning. The angel told Joseph, Thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins. Jesus is a form of a Hebrew name meaning the Lord saves. So his salvation is aimed first not at our circumstances but at our sins, the deepest trouble we have, the root from which all our other troubles grow. He saves us from the guilt of sin that condemns us, from the power of sin that enslaves us, and at last from the very presence of sin.

This title is the sum of all the others. As Prophet, Priest, and King, Jesus is at work in one great purpose, to save. The angels announced it at his birth: For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. The Samaritans confessed it after meeting him: this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world. To know Jesus at all is to know him as the one who saves.

The Old Testament longing for salvation

Long before the angel spoke his name, the Scriptures were full of the cry for salvation and the promise that it would come. From the first pages of the Bible, when sin entered the world, God gave hope of a deliverer who would one day crush the serpent's head. The whole story that follows is the story of a God who saves, again and again, and of a people learning that their rescue could come from no one but him.

God saved Israel out of Egypt through the blood of the Passover lamb and the parting of the sea, and that great deliverance became the pattern of every hope to come. Yet the people soon fell again, showing that they needed rescue not only from Pharaoh but from themselves. The prophets looked for a salvation deeper than any earthly deliverance, a day when God would forgive iniquity and remember sin no more, when he would give a new heart and pour out his Spirit.

Over and over the Old Testament insists that salvation belongs to the Lord alone. I, even I, am the LORD, God says through Isaiah, and beside me there is no saviour. No king, no army, no wisdom of man could accomplish it. This left the faithful waiting for God himself to act, to come near and save his people with a salvation that would reach the sin at the heart of their trouble and last forever. The sacrifices, the Passover, the very name of salvation woven through their psalms, all were pointing forward to one who had not yet come.

How Jesus accomplishes our salvation

Jesus saves in the way no one else could, by taking our place. He lived the life we should have lived, obeying his Father perfectly, and then died the death we deserved to die, bearing our sins in his own body on the tree. The judgment that hung over us fell on him instead, and in exchange his righteousness is counted to all who trust him. This is why he had to be both truly God and truly man, for only man should pay the debt of man, and only God could pay a debt so great.

His death alone would not have been enough had he stayed in the grave; a dead savior saves no one. But on the third day he rose, breaking the power of death and proving his sacrifice accepted. The resurrection is God's public verdict that the price is paid and the enemy defeated. Because he lives, those who are joined to him will live also, raised with him beyond the reach of death.

And so salvation is entirely his gift, received not by earning but by trusting. Peter told the rulers of Jerusalem, Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved. We do not save ourselves by our religion or our goodness; we are saved by grace through faith in the Savior who did it all. What Israel could only long for, God has done in Jesus: he has come near and saved his people from their sins.

And this salvation is offered to everyone, not to a favored few. The Samaritans called him the Saviour of the world, and John testifies that the Father sent the Son to be exactly that. There is no nation, no class, no kind of sinner shut out from him; whosoever will may come and drink of the water of life freely. He receives the respectable and the ruined on the very same terms, by grace, through faith, for he saves not the deserving but the lost. This is the good news the prophets longed to see: that God's arm of salvation has been made bare before all the ends of the earth, and his name is Jesus.

What Christ our Savior means for us

Because Jesus is our Savior, we can be forgiven and made new no matter what we have done. There is no sin too great for his blood to cover and no life too broken for his hand to remake. He came to seek and to save that which was lost, which means that the further gone we are, the more exactly we are the people he came for. Whosoever will may come.

This changes how we live before God. We no longer strive to earn a salvation we can never buy, but receive with empty hands the gift he freely gives. The weight of proving ourselves is lifted, and in its place comes gratitude, a love for the one who first loved us and gave himself for us. We obey him not to be saved but because we are, and our whole life becomes a thank offering to our Savior.

And it gives us an unshakable hope. The one who saved us will not lose us; he who began a good work in us will finish it. He saves us not only from the penalty of sin but at last from its presence, bringing us safely home to God. To trust Christ the Savior is to know that our past is forgiven, our present is held, and our future is secure in the hands of the one who came to save the world, and came to save us.

Such a salvation frees us to love. Those who know they have been forgiven much, love much, and the person who has stopped trying to earn God's favor is finally free to serve God and neighbor for joy rather than for wages. Gratitude becomes the engine of a new life. We are not saved by our obedience, but being saved, we obey gladly, as children who delight to please the Father who rescued them. And when we stumble, we do not despair, for the Savior who found us has promised never to let us go. To trust Christ the Savior is to lay down the exhausting labor of saving ourselves and to rest in the finished work of the one who came to save us.

A note for all traditions: the threefold office of Christ, Prophet, Priest, and King, is a historic and non-denominational way of understanding Jesus, shared across the Christian church. Every verse above is quoted from the King James Version and can be read in its own context. In every tradition there is one Lord, Jesus Christ, and the invitation of this page is simply to know him.

Related: Christ Our Mediator · Christ Our Priest · Who is Jesus? · The offices of Christ