© 2013 by Tom Boynton (editing by Kathy Boynton)

The man stood in the floating enclosure surrounded by an endless sea in every direction. Months had passed since the swirling rain and the gushing geysers had engulfed the earth with water. The agonizing cries of people had long been silenced in the raging seas which now covered even the highest mountains. Only the man, his wife, his three sons, and their three wives remained out of all humanity. They alone had been saved by water.

Wait! Were they really saved by water? Wouldn’t it be more accurate to say they’d been saved from water by the floating ark God had told them to build?

Though it’s true that God preserved Noah’s family within the ark, the Bible clearly states that those “…eight souls were saved by water” (1 Peter 3:20). The preposition, “by,” is translated from the Greek word “δια” which is defined as “a primary preposition denoting the channel of an act.” Until I had noticed that statement, I had always thought Noah and his family were saved from water, not by water.

In what way were they saved by water? God had caused Noah to be a righteous man in the midst of perverse humanity. Have you noticed that the unsaved hate God’s people? Jesus, Himself, told His disciples, “If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you” (John 15:18-19). God had chosen to save Noah out of a wicked world that would constantly hate and seek to kill them. It was “by” a judgment of water that God chose to do this. In Luke, chapter 17, Jesus indicates that He will, again, bring judgment upon wicked humanity just as in Noah’s day. It will be a final judgment of fire rather than water.

Are you one of the wicked who continues to reject salvation by grace through the shed blood of Christ who is God the Son? Are you one of those who will be eternally destroyed in order to deliver God’s redeemed people from the very presence of wickedness? Or will you repent and turn to Christ and pray “…God be merciful to me a sinner” (Luke 18:13)?

 

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