Saviour of the World

by B.B. Warfield

Warfield's expositions unobtrusively express both his scholarly sense of the precise meaning of his texts and the warmth of his devotion to Jesus Christ. The result is a book of the highest order - biblically instructive and spiritually engaging.

Genres: Theology

270 pages, Library Binding

First published June 1, 1991

About the author

Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield (usually known as B. B. Warfield) was professor of theology at Princeton Seminary from 1887 to 1921. Some conservative Presbyterians consider him to be the last of the great Princeton theologians before the split in 1929 that formed Westminster Seminary and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.

(Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Eddie Kaiger · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection of sermons is such a gem for one’s soul. Warfield preaches in a way that he carefully maintains rich theological precision (e.g. refutes kenoticism and subordinationism, upholds the Pactum Salutis) while preaching directly to the heart.

“We cannot be saved by a dead Christ… another martyr of impotent love. To save, he must pass not merely to death but through death. If the penalty was fully paid, it cannot have broken him, it must needs have been broken upon him.”

[Flynn Evans · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good collection of faithful, Christ-centered expositions. Warfield’s intentionality to make his preaching both pastoral and even polemical at times models a needed vigilance of the preacher for the forced arrayed against the souls of his congregation.

[Michael Dionne]

A mixed bag depending on the passage handled, but worth it. Warfield has a few quirks in this group of sermons: he focuses on explaining what the passage does not mean, sometimes a bit too much; he highlights the universality of the gospel at every chance he gets (not a bad thing, but interesting to note), and his early-1900's postmillenialism rears its head every once in awhile.

Quibbles aside, this book is worth your time. Here's a quote, in which he describes the glory of God, "Serene in His unapproachable glory, His will is the resistless law of all existences to which their every motion conforms. Apparelled in majesty and girded with strength, righteousness, and judgment are the foundations of His throne. He sits in the heavens and does whatsoever he pleases. It is this God, a God of whom to say that He is the Lord of all the earth is to say so little that it is to say nothing at all, of whom our text [John 3:16] speaks." (116). Wow.

The highlight of the entire book is the final chapter, "Imitating the Incarnation," in which Warfield masterfully handles Philippians 2:5-8 and applies it to the Christian life. What a treasure!

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

B. B. Warfield is a prince amongst theologians. He has a remarkable gift for taking things that are hard to be understood and making them very plain. These sermons show that a great scholar can also be a great preacher. His post-millennelialism comes through very clearly, but more in a glorious expression of the victory that is found in Christ than in a polemical defense of his position. These sermons are wonderfully uplifting and a great encouragement for the Christian life.

[Eric Yap · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another collection of chapel sermons as devotional reading. Warfield, the "Lion of Princeton," with his usual exegetical precision, pastoral warmth, and Christo-centric exhortations made this a really moving and encouraging read.

"Surely, we shall not wish to measure the saving work of God by what has been already accomplished in these unripe days in which our lot is cast. The sands of time have not yet run out. And before us stretch, not merely the reaches of the ages, but the infinitely resourceful reaches of the promise of God. Are not the saints to inherit the earth? Is not the re-created earth theirs? Are not the kingdoms of the world to become the kingdom of God? Is not the knowledge of the glory of God to cover the earth as the waters cover the sea? Shall not the day dawn when no man need say to his neighbor, "Know the Lord," for all shall know him from the least unto the greatest?

O raise your eyes, raise your eyes, I beseech you, to the far horizon. Let them rest nowhere short of the extreme limit of the divine purpose of grace. And tell me what you see there. Is it not the supreme, the glorious, issue of that love of God which loved, not one here and there only in the world, but the world in its organic completeness; and gave his Son, not to judge the world, but that the world through him should be saved?

And he spake with me, saying, Come hither, I will show thee the bride, the wife of the Lamb. And he ... showed me the holy city Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God.... And the city hath no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine upon it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the lamp thereof is the Lamb. And the nations shall walk amidst the light thereof: and the kings of the earth bring their glory into it. And the gates thereof shall in no wise be shut by day (for there shall be no night there): and they shall bring the glory and the honor of the nations into it: and there shall in no wise enter into it anything unclean, or he that maketh an abomination and a lie: but only they that are written in the Lamb's book of life. (Rev. 21:9-11, 23-27)

Only those written in the Lamb's book of life, and yet all the nations! It is the vision of the saved world. "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have eternal life." It is the vision of the consummated purpose of the immeasurable love of God."

- God's Immeasurable Love (John 3:16)

[Kyler Bell · Rating 5 out of 5]

This work contains many addresses given by Warfield on the topic of Christ. If it only contained his message titled “The Lamb of God,” it would have still been worth the read.

[Michael Locklear]

Per Jeremy Walker (The Magazine Banner Podcast - 11.15.2025)

[Graham Kanagy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hallelujah what a Saviour!

[Daniel Scragg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brilliant on all fronts. As this was my first introduction to B.B Warfield’s work, I was blown away by his insight and the expounded glory of Christ as seen in this book. It would be impossible to read this book with a willing heart and not profit from the time spent.

[Will Turner · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent collection of nine sermons on the beauty, wonder, and majesty of the Lord Jesus Christ. They were originally preached by Warfield during chapel at Old Princeton.

I always try to read a book about Christ on or around Easter. This was a great pick. Warfield didn't shy away from some technical theological discussions but the overall focus of the sermons is warm and devotional.

I. The Prodigal Son (Luke 25:11-32)

RE Parable: "If its teaching is to be the one exclusive source of our Christianity we must content ourselves therefore with a Christianity without Christ." 9. Against many who sought to condense the gospel to this parable.

"A sinner may be too vile for any and everything else; but he cannot be too vile for salvation." 24

"We are sinners. And our only hope is in one who loves sinners; and has come into the world to die for sinners." 31

II. Jesus Only (Acts 4:12)

"If ever the evils of this life are to be relieved, the forces of disease and decay, of injury and death, to be broken, it will be only by Jesus that it will be done; only His name, by faith in His name, can give that perfect soundness for which we long." 42

"Would we do justice to the Scriptural representations, then, we must conceive nobly of salvation. We must enlarge its borders if we would give to it all the land which the Lord has promised it. It belongs to the glory of Christ that His salvation enters into every region of human need and proclaims in all alike complete deliverance." 49

"Jesus is the Gospel; and where Jesus is not, there is no gospel at all." 55

"The salvation of the world hangs, thus, in our human mode of speaking, on the clearness and the strength of our conviction that there is salvation in none other than Jesus, that there is none other name under heaven, given among men, wherein they must be saved. O the cruelty of that indifferentism, miscalled broadness of mind, that would withhold from a perishing world the only healing draught, on the pretence, forsooth, that it is not needed. O remember that the whole world lies in iniquity - ill to death with the dreadful disease of sin, - and that you have in your hands the one curative potion, the only water of life which can purge away sin and restore to spiritual health and beauty." 61-62

III. The Lamb of God (John 1:29)

"This supernatural factor [of scripture] is no less the nerve of the whole historical development than the very heart of the Christian religion." 73

"Man suffers from something worse than political bondage or alien oppression; there is a higher deliverance than that from the dominion of the stranger. It is not a king you need so much as a redeemer." 81

"God on His throne - a broken slave on the cross; these are the end terms. As God, He was the Lord of all the earth; when He became man, He became servant to the whole world; and not content with that, being found in the fashion as a man, He humbled Himself still further even unto death itself, and that the death of the cross." 82

"The vision he brings before us, let us repeat it, is the vision of the ultimate salvation of the world, its complete conquest to Christ when at last Jesus' last enemy shall have been conquered and the whole world shall bow before Him as its Lord and Redeemer." 95

"Our hearts condemn us and God is greater than our hearts." 98

"It is only when we see in Him a slaughtered lamb, lying on a smoking altar, from which ascends the sweet savour of an acceptable sacrifice to God for sin, that we can rise to anything like a true sense of the glory of Jesus Christ, or in any degree give a sufficient account to our souls of His presence in the world." 100

IV. God's Immeasurable Love (John 3:16)

"The love of God...has not merely opened a way of salvation before them, but has actually saved them." 107

"God did not then only so love the world as to give it a bare chance of salvation: He so loved the world that He saved the world." 108

"God does love the world and the flesh and the devil. Therein indeed is the ground of all our comfort and hope: for we - you and I - are of the world and of the flesh and of the devil. Only, - we must punctually note it, - the love wherewith God loves the world, the flesh and the devil - therefore, us - is not a love of complacency, as if He the Holy One and the Good could take pleasure in what is worldly, fleshly, devilish: but that love of benevolence which would fain save us from our worldliness, fleshliness and devilishness." 119

"There were but two things for which He, being what He was as the Son of God, could come into the world, being what it was [sinful]: to judge the world or to save the world." 119

"You will find no marvel so great, no mystery so unfathomable, as this, that the great and good God, whose perfect righteousness flames in indignation at the sight of every iniquity and whose absolute holiness recoils in abhorrence in the presence of every impurity, yet loves this sinful world, - yes, has so loved it that He has given His only begotten Son to die for it." 122

V. The Gospel of Paul (2 Cor. 5:14-15, 18-19, 21)

"That men could perish for whom Christ died, Paul never imagined that human minds could conceive." 141

"In the whole saving process we supply nothing but the sinners to be saved." 144

"The presupposition of this Gospel, you will perceive, is a deep and keen sense of human sin and that in the aspect of guilt. The reason why Paul's heart was filled with such joy at the thought of a reconciled God was that his heart was oppressed with a sense of guilt in the presence of a just God." 149

Our "vanishing sense of sin" "It has seemed worth while to dwell upon this, partly because of the apparent dying out of a deep sense of sin in wide circles of present-day life, but more because this sense of sin though it may be temporarily obscured cannot really die out, but will sooner or later assert itself in every human breast and bring despair when it does not find its antidote in a sense of a reconciled God." 150

"For we do not get to the heart of Paul's doctrine of reconciliation, until we bring clearly before us what he teaches us of the way in which it has been accomplished. That way is, briefly, by a great act of substitution: of the substitution of Jesus Christ for us before the judgement-seat of God and the expiating of our guilt by Him on the tree. It Paul's doctrine of reconciliation is the heart of his Gospel, his doctrine of substitution is the heart of the heart of his Gospel." 152

"Jesus has done it all. He has taken our place and borne in His own body on the tree all our iniquities: He has died our death: and He grants us His righteousness that hereafter we may live and live to Him." 154

"Until Jesus has died for us there was nothing for us to do but to die." 155

"If Christ died for us, He died for us only for this end - that we may live and, living, may live not for ourselves, but to Him." 156

"It would be inconceivable to him that there could be sanctification which did not rest on justification, or that there could be justification which did not issue in sanctification. To die with Christ is to live with Him; to live with Him means to live to Him." 158

VI. The Glorified Christ (Hebrews 2:9)

"If he died to expiate our sins, He reigns in heaven that He may apply the benefits accruing from that expiation to His people, and may thus bring them into the glory He has purchased for them." 183

"Christ our Saviour is on the throne. The hands that were pierced with the nails of the cross wield the sceptre. How can our salvation fail?" 186

VII. The Risen Jesus (2 Timothy 2:8)

"Christianity is a 'historical religion,' and a 'Christianity' wholly unrelated to historical occurrences is just no Christianity at all." 204

"Jesus is a historical figure. What He was, no less than what He did, is a matter of historical testimony. When we turn our backs on historical facts as of no significance to our 'Christianity' we must turn our backs as well on Jesus." 205-206

"Christianity then stands or falls with the historical facts..." 206

"The resurrection of Christ is the fundamental apologetical fact of Christianity." 208

"That He died manifests His love and His willingness to save. It is His rising again that manifests His power and His ability to save. We cannot be saved by a dead Christ, who undertook but could not perform, and who still lies under the Syrian sky, another martyr of impotent love. To save, He must pass not merely to but through death. If the penalty was fully paid, it cannot have broken Him, it must needs have been broken upon Him. The resurrection of Christ is thus the indispensable evidence of His completed work, of His accomplished redemption. It is only because He rose from the dead that we know that the ransom He offered was sufficient, the sacrifice was accepted, and that we are His purchased possession." 210

"It is because He has put this last enemy under His feet that we can say with such energy of conviction that nothing can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord, not even death itself." 212

VIII. The Gospel of the Covenant (John 6:38-39)

"Christ, the true passover, chose the passover time, when men's minds were upon the type, to present the antitype to them in symbol and open speech." 218

"What a God this is that is unveiled before us here. A God of holiness: a God so holy that even in the abyss of eternity-past He could not rest indifferent to the sin which was only after the lapse of innumerable ages to dawn in this corner of the as yet unexistent universe. A God of justice: A God so just that already His indignation burned against the as yet uncommitted sin of such petty creatures of His will as man. But a God of love: a love so inconceivably vast as already in the profundity of the unlimited past to brood over unimaginable plans of mercy toward these few guilty wretches among the numberless multitudes of His contemplated creatures." 235

"As is was upon no sudden caprice that He came into the world, but in execution of a long-cherished and thoroughly laid plan, so it was not partial work which He performed, but the whole work of salvation." 236

"If Christ Jesus came to save and has saved, how can salvation fail?" 238

"Election does indeed lie at the root of our salvation: but faith is the proof of election." 240

"Beloved, do not, I beseech you, ground your salvation even in your faith. Ground it only in Jesus Christ who alone is your Saviour." 243

"Can your faith fail? Nay, forget your faith. Certainly the power of God, your Almighty Saviour, through which alone you have faith and which is pledged to your guarding, cannot fail!" 244

IX. Imitating the Incarnation (Philippians 2:5-8)

"Do we not rightly say that next to our longing to be in Christ is our corresponding longing to be like Christ." 249

"Let us rejoice that He has plainly revealed Himself to us in His Word as a God who loves us, and who, because He loves us, has sacrificed Himself for us." 263

"A life of self-sacrificing unselfishness is the most divinely beautiful life that man can lead." 263

"It is not self-depreciation, but self-abnegation, that is thus commended to us... not degrade ourselves but forget ourselves, and seek every man not his own things but those of others." 264

"Our self-abnegation is thus not for our own sake, but for the sake of others. And thus it is not to mere self-denial that Christ calls us, but specifically to self-sacrifice: not to unselfing ourselves, but to unselfishing ourselves." 268

"Self-sacrifice brought Christ into the world. And self-sacrifice will lead us, His followers, not away from but into the midst of men... Self-sacrifice means not indifference to our times and our fellows: it means absorption in them. It means forgetfulness of self in others." 269

"It means not that we should live one life, but a thousand lives - binding ourselves to a thousand souls by the filaments of so loving a sympathy that their lives become ours." 270