When we talk about needing a Savior, we’re not talking about be a Savior from poverty, as you hear preached so much on television today. That isn’t what we’re talking about, being saved from poverty.

Jesus Christ came into this world for a higher and more noble purpose than that. Of course, if He had come into this world for that purpose, then it would be true that, from that point onward, a baby should never be hungry. No one in all of the world would ever go hungry again, or go to bed hungry again. Well, that would have been a noble purpose, but Jesus had a more noble purpose than that, because He didn’t come to save us from hunger, or from poverty. That message, that “gospel of wealth” just is not the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

But He didn’t come to save us, either, from illness, or sickness. Perhaps you’ve heard it said that, God wants all of His people to be healthy. And if you’re saved, you’re saved by the blood of Jesus Christ, but when you’re saved by the blood of Jesus Christ, according to Isaiah, chapter 28, by His stripes you’re also healed—by the blood that He shed on Calvary’s cross, you’re healed as well. That’s what the Bible does say, BUT it’s NOT talking about a physical healing. He’s talking about the national healing of Israel, who had sinned, and they would be forgiven that sin.

Well, Jesus Christ is also our Savior from sin and not from either poverty or illness. Sometimes these very preachers…. I used have a fellow who preached after I did on radio every Sunday morning. He always preached that, “By His stripes, you are healed; and if you’re a Christian, your healed and you’re not sick, and if you’re sick, you’re not saved.” “In other words,” he said, “if you’re healthy, you’re saved, and if you’re sick, you’re lost.” One of our ladies happened to be a nurse to one of the doctors in the community, and she was treating his leg. He was about to lose one of his feet and leg up to his knee because of a diabetic condition he had. So, if you’re sick, you’re lost, and if you’re healthy, you’re saved—that’s what this fellow was preaching on the radio. My friends, it isn’t true, because nearly all of us are going to be sick from time to time. There will be times in our lives that we’re going to have problems with our health, and so that would mean, then, if I’m sick, I’m lost. And then, tomorrow, if I’m healed, or if I’m feeling good tomorrow, then I’m saved. That would be a yo-yo kind of a situation, up and down, up and down, depending on your health. God doesn’t promise that. He sent Jesus Christ to be the Savior of the world from sin!

All have sinned and come short of the glory of God, Romans 3:23 [“For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God…”]. In Romans 5:12, the apostle Paul said, “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned….” No, he didn’t say in that passage that, death is passed upon all men for that we have inherited the guilt of Adam’s sin. He’s simply saying that because all of us have sinned, then the death sentence has been passed upon us. He’s not talking about physical death; he’s talking about spiritual death.

God said to Adam and Eve in the garden, “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die,” [Genesis 2:17]. They did stretch forth the hand; they ate of the forbidden fruit and that day, they died.

But somebody argues the point by saying that Adam and Even didn’t die that day, because, if you recall the Old Testament Scriptures, they lived on and they even had some children after that. There were Cain and Abel and Seth, and then there were some girls also, because they [the men children] found some wives for themselves. There were other children in the family.

Well, of course, we understand that God was not talking about their dying physically. Death is a separation. That’s what the word “death” actually means—“to be separated, or, a separation”. And James says, “For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also,” James 2:26. The spirit does not die, but the body dies when the spirit leaves it. When there is that separation of the body and the spirit, then the person is dead—he’s pronounced dead, and we conduct a funeral and we bury the body. We don’t bury HIM, we bury the body, and the spirit returns to God [Ecclesiastes 12:7: “Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God Who gave it.”] But, then, other kinds of separation would be death in that sense, and that’s the kind of death that Adam and Eve died that day—a spiritual death. They were separated from God by their sin.

You remember that the Bible says that God loved Adam and Eve. He came down in the cool of the day, and He even walked in the garden and talked with them, had conversations with them. He loved them, and they were enjoying this communion. God enjoyed it, and so did they. BUT, that relationship ended when they committed the sin, and they were separated, alienated, from God. That’s what happens to us when we sin. When we transgress the Law of God, for sin IS a transgression of the Law of God, then, we are alienated, or separated, from God.

But God knew that Adam and Eve would sin, and He knew that all of the rest of us would sin. Even before He began the creation process, He had built into His plan a Way that we could come back, and we could be made alive again, revived, if you will. That plan called for the sending of His Son, Jesus Christ, into this world. And so, what was conceived in Mary was of the Holy Spirit, coming into this world to be the Savior of the world—meaning all of us who have transgressed God’s Law.