For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. (John 3:16)

It is important to stress the gaining of eternal life rather than escape from Hell. Both the Old Testament and the New Testament emphasize the gaining of life. In the beginning Adam and Eve lost the right to eat of the tree of life.

Numerous passages of the New Testament speak of the gaining of eternal life and warn that continuing in sin will result in death. The warnings are addressed to Christians.

Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness? (Romans 6:16)

The penalty for continuing in sin is spiritual death, that is, to be cut off from the Life of God that is in Christ.

Deliverance from Hell is not something we can experience today. Eternal life is something we can experience today.

To save a person from torment does not benefit God or His Kingdom. To bring a person from spiritual death to spiritual life is to return the individual to the Presence of God, for eternal life is the Presence of God in Christ.

The Christian salvation is the process of gaining eternal life.

To gain eternal life we enter the following dimensions of salvation:

We receive forgiveness through the blood of Jesus as we turn away from our sins and place our trust for salvation in the Lord.

We learn to live in the Spirit of God rather than by the efforts of our fleshly mind and adamic soul and body.

We turn over the throne of our personality to the Lord so the Father and the Son may govern us from within.

As we press forward in deliverance from sin, in learning to submit every action of life to the Spirit of God, and in receiving the will of God until our greatest joy is to do God's will, we enter more fully into eternal life.

Those who choose to live increasingly in the Spirit of God will one day have their body adopted by God and made alive by God's Spirit. Then their entire personality will be filled with Divine Life and crowned with the authority and power of Divine Life.

Those who continue in sin will receive the destruction of their personality in the Day of the Lord. They have not sown to the Spirit of God and so they will reap corruption. They have slain their own resurrection by continuing to live in the flesh.

The proper concern of the Christian is what he will receive in the Day of the Lord, at the time of the resurrection of the dead. Grace and mercy will not determine what we receive in that Day. It is what we have sown that will determine what we receive when we are raised from the dead.

Notice the emphasis on salvation in the Day of the Lord in the following passage;

To deliver such an one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. (I Corinthians 5:5)

The incestuous Corinthian believer may or may not have been in danger of going to Hell when he died, but he certainly was in danger of his spirit not being "saved in the day of the Lord Jesus" even though he was a member of the church in Corinth. It is what we shall receive in the day of resurrection that is the issue.

To be continued.