“If while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death
of his Son” (Rom. 5:10). This is the message of salvation for sinners.
The next words of this verse are very significant: “Much more.” The
apostle has just been speaking of salvation for sinners, and now he is
to tell us something “much more.” This word should prepare us for some
amazing revelation of his grace. “Much more, being reconciled, shall we
be saved by his life.”
Do Christians, then, need salvation? Indeed they do, and the Word of
God suggests here that a good name for that salvation which reconciled
Christian needs is “the much more salvation,” and this is just another
way of saying “the Victorious Life.”
God has granted that life to every Christian. But not every Christian
is enjoying it. For the Christian has the terrible power of choosing
to walk after the flesh and not after the Spirit. God’s plan is that
the Christian life should be a moment by moment miracle life, just as
the new birth is a miracle. “If we live by the Spirit, by the Spirit
let us also walk” (Gal. 5:25). Being born again, and “walking,” are
two distinct things. When a Christian learns that God intends him to
walk by faith, letting Christ do it all, just as he has believed that
Christ has done it all in the matter of saving him from the penalty
of his sins, then the Christian is ready to enter into the fulness of
the Spirit, which is the Victorious Life.
And when he does enter by faith for the first time into this complete
victory, which has been his privilege all along in Christ, there is
such a marked change that it is natural for a Christian to think of
it as a “second blessing.” There is that perfectly clear distinction
between being born again, and “walking” or living moment by moment
after the new birth has taken place. The man who has been born again is
in a place to take hold of the much-more salvation for Christians as he
could not do in his unregenerate state.