What everybody ought to know about salvation

Salvation. We often hear that term in Christian circles, but do we understand what the word means? If someone were to ask you to define salvation, what would you say? If you are part of the 74% of Americans who check the “Christian” box when filling out forms, you would probably say something like, “salvation is about believing in Jesus and assuring ourselves a spot in heaven after we die.”

Most Christians understand salvation to be about preparing for the afterlife. It’s often explained like this: God the Father and God the Son made an arrangement (Jesus’s death on the cross) that would make it possible for our sins to be forgiven. Our part is to say “Yes” to God’s invitation by believing in Jesus. Our faith results in the forgiveness of our sins and guarantees us a home in heaven after we die.

That’s as far as “salvation” goes for most of us. An eternal insurance policy. But is that the core meaning of salvation? Is it primarily about getting our sins forgiven so we can get into heaven? No, but the belief that salvation is only about the afterlife has contributed to some sobering statistics: when the percentages are tallied, there is no appreciable difference between those who check the Christian box and those who don’t when it comes to crime rates, drug addiction, divorce rates, pornography, child abuse, and everything else. Those stats shock me. How can the people of light be indistinguishable from those who stumble around in the darkness?

Is it possible we are missing something very important about the concept of salvation when we treat it as little more than a get-out-of-hell-free card? Most of us hear the word “salvation” and think “ticket to heaven.” But what if salvation is something altogether different?

If we want a good biblical definition, perhaps we should consider the word Jesus most often used to describe salvation: zoe, the little Greek word for life.

• When Jesus met with Nicodemus (John 3), he spoke of the necessity of being born again–receiving new life from God.
• In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus describes two paths: a broad one leading to death and a narrow one leading to life (Matthew 7).
• In John 10, Jesus says he came that we might have life, and life to its fullest.

Jesus described salvation as life and taught his disciples to do the same. The word appears throughout the New Testament.

• So we read in 1 John 5, “God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son does not have life.”
• Romans 6 says, “the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus, our Lord.”
• In Ephesians 2 we read, “God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ… it is by grace you have been saved.”

We could look at many other examples, but here is the takeaway from the Bible: the message of Jesus and his first disciples is not focused on forgiveness of sin–it is focused on newness of life. Now that involves the forgiveness of sin, but forgiveness is only a small part of the story. The larger part is about walking through life’s ups and downs with Jesus at your side.

This is what salvation is in its fullest sense–being in tune with the rhythms of the life God created us for. Living out 1 Thessalonians 5 by always being joyful, staying in constant touch with God, and giving thanks in all circumstances. This is how our life is connected to our salvation. It becomes an outworking of the life God placed in us (Philippians 2:12–13).

If we limit the meaning of salvation to the forgiveness of sins, we will never make sense of what it has to do with our life. It is only when we see the connection between salvation and what happens in our day-to-day life that we will begin to understand that salvation is not about the future so much as its about our life today.

And when we look to Scripture we find it has always been that way. The one characteristic of all those who truly believed in God was their belief that salvation is about life in the here and now. When Abram left home to follow God’s promise, he left home trusting in a God who would be involved in his life today, guiding and directing his steps. The same was true of Moses, David, Daniel, and many others.

Jesus gives us a definition of eternal life in John 17 that can really help us understand what salvation is. Jesus says to the Father, “This is eternal life–to know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, the one you sent.” Jesus says the key to salvation and eternal life is knowing God. Now that may sound like mere head knowledge until we realize Jesus is not saying eternal life is knowing about God. He says it is about knowing God personally. Jesus uses the term “know” in the same sense of personal relationship that God uses it in Amos 3 when he says to Israel, “You only have I known of all the families of the earth; therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities.” Obviously God knew about the other families on earth, but he did not “know” them in the sense of having a personal relationship with them. Or Mary’s words in response to the angel who told her she would bear a child. “How can that be,” she asked, “since I know no man?” Mary knew about men, but she had not yet known a man in the sense of becoming intimate. In the same way, the eternal life (salvation) Jesus speaks of is not knowledge about God, but an intimate interactive relationship with him.

When we understand salvation in terms of accepting an arrangement made between God the Father and God the Son that involved a cross, we totally miss what salvation is about. The real issue with God is not whether we have said or done something that brought about our forgiveness–the real issue with God is whether we are alive or dead to him. Do we have an interactive relationship with him that constitutes a new kind of life, a life from above? Do we have genuine confidence in God in every dimension of our daily life? Do we believe the Lord is right about everything and adequate to take care of anything? And, most importantly, do our thoughts and prayers and actions reflect our confidence in Jesus? For most believers, the answer to that last question is, “sometimes.” We have faith, but we are often distracted by dark forces and preoccupied with worry.

Next: the myth of the overnight disciple.

James, Part 9

He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of first fruits of all he created… Therefore, put away all the filth and evil in your lives and humbly accept the word planted in you, for it has the power to save your souls. 

James 1:18, 21

The introduction to James’s letter makes it clear that he is writing to people who have put their faith in Jesus and have been regenerated (born-again). In verse 18, James affirms they had experienced “birth through the word of truth,” and he identifies them as examples of God’s grace and goodness (“first fruits”). Then we come to verse 21, where salvation is described as something yet to come. “Humbly accept the Word,” James says, “because it has the power to save your souls.”

This is a confusing statement to Christians who have been taught that salvation only refers to the new birth. Jesus described the new birth as “eternal life” and promised anyone who trusted in him would never perish. The doctrine of the eternal security of the believer (sometimes referred to as “once saved, always saved”) is one of the most important concepts in the Bible. It allows Christ-followers to move forward boldly, knowing they will never be forsaken by God.

So why would I need to be saved in the future if I already possess eternal life?

Good question. We will explore James’s answer in detail next week, but James is not alone in his understanding of salvation as something which believers will experience in the future (at Christ’s return).

• The apostle Paul reminded the church in Rome that, “Our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. The night is nearly over; the day is almost here, so let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light” (Romans 13:11-12).

• Hebrews 9:28 says Jesus, “will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him.”

• The apostle Peter says, “In his great mercy God has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade–kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time” (1 Peter 1:3-5).  

What do these passages teach us? They teach us that we sometimes define salvation too narrowly. It is a much broader subject than most Christians realize–salvation is another word for deliverance, and that deliverance can be physical or spiritual or both. Sometimes salvation refers to something we were delivered from in the past; sometimes it refers to something we will be delivered from in the future; and sometimes salvation is spoken of in the present tense because, in a sense, it is ongoing. To determine how the word is being used in a particular text, we must look at the context.

• The word is often used in the past tense. A popular verse in Ephesians 2 says, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith–and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God.” For me, that happened in 1963, and I can remember the day like it was yesterday. The Holy Spirit had been chasing (and finding) me for weeks. I came to believe that only Jesus could deliver me from myself and the mess I had made of my thirteen-year-old life. I came home from school one day, threw my books into the middle of living room, fell on my knees, and asked God to forgive my sins and save me. He said “Yes,” and in that moment I was delivered from spiritual death. I was reconciled with God, not because of anything I did, but because of God’s gift–the salvation purchased for me by Jesus on the cross.

• Scripture also speaks of salvation in the future tense. We have already looked at three of the many passages that point to the deliverance God’s people will experience when Christ returns.

• Salvation is also spoken of in the present tense because it is ongoing. While we have been made right with God for eternity, we are not out of harm’s way–we still live in a broken world, and we’ll have trials and temptations until the day we die. This is why Jesus taught us to pray, “give us today our daily bread” and “deliver us from the evil one.”

Our salvation is a God-initiated process that we have been given a small role in. Paul discusses our part and God’s part in Phillipians 2:12. He tells the believers in Phillipi, “continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.”

• God’s part in the process of salvation is to forgive us, give us eternal life, reconcile us to himself, justify us, redeem us, sanctify us, and eventually to glorify us. In other words, God does all the heavy lifting. Every aspect of salvation is powered by God.

• Our part is to trust Jesus and allow the Holy Spirit to accomplish his purpose in our life. We are to “work out” our salvation. The Greek word used there refers to “bringing to the surface” what God has wrought inside us.

James discusses what bringing our salvation to the surface looks like in verses 22–25. We’ll look at that next time.

Next: The mark of genuine Christianity.

In the Gospel of John we are given a detailed account of Jesus’s last hours with his disciples before his arrest and crucifixion. Jesus, knowing this is about to happen, speaks to the confusion and uncertainty his departure will create. He tells them in chapter 14, “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.”

One of the disciples, Thomas, interrupts with a question: “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” Thomas was utterly honest, pessimistic, and uninhibited–a virtual poster-child for the “I’ll believe it when I see it” crowd.

Jesus answers Thomas’s question by telling him that the disciples not only know the way, but that the way is standing right in front of them! “I am the way, and the truth, and the life,” Jesus tells them. He then explains that he will be leaving, but they will not be abandoned. Jesus promises that someone very much like him (the Holy Spirit) will take his place. “He will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you… In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.”

The “day” Jesus mentioned is the day of his resurrection. After that, the disciples would realize by their own experience that Jesus lived in his Father, and they lived in Jesus, and Jesus lived in them. In other words, they would begin to know what it means to live in God and have God live in them.

The key, Jesus said, is the abiding nature of his relationship with those who follow him: “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.” The Greek word translated “make our home” is meno, which means to “remain” or “abide.” The same root word is used in verse 2, where it is translated “rooms.”

In Jesus’s next image of a vine (John 15) he uses the word meno again and again: he says, “Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine…” He uses the word eleven times in just this one chapter, and forty times in the Gospel of John. Why does he repeat the same word so many times? Why is Jesus so redundant? Remember the occasion for this teaching: the disciples feel like their world is out of control; they feel like they are spiraling downward… just like so many of us feel today. Sometimes we feel like everything we worked so hard to put together is falling apart, like we have been abandoned.

Jesus is speaking not just to his first century apprentices, but also to his twenty-first century apprentices. Many of us make the same mistake the rival archeologist in Raiders of the Lost Ark made: he thought the Ark of the Covenant was like a telephone that people could use to get their requests answered. Kinda like the magic lamp in the Aladdin story. But God isn’t that way. He never planned a relationship with us where he is just our “emergency contact person.” The relationship He designed is much more organic and connected, like a branch and a vine.

Please take some time this week to thoughtfully read Jesus’s prayer in John 17; it is a storehouse of information about who God is and His plan for those who follow Him.

We live in a time of acute uncertainty, and that is creating all kinds of questions and confusion in us. In John chapters 13-17, Jesus speaks to people in a similar situation, folks whose future is completely up in the air. His disciples have been with him virtually twenty-four hours a day for three years receiving on-the-job-training. Over the course of those years Jesus has taught them many truths. He will now teach them one last time before his arrest and crucifixion, and his focus is the welfare of his wavering and lightly-tested apprentices. He knows that after he is gone, wolves will attack his flock.

Jesus’s first lesson on that last evening is about “greatness,” and he uses a towel and a basin of water to demonstrate how the greatest among them will be the servant to all. Then he moves into the discussion of his soon departure by saying that one of the twelve will betray him. This totally confuses his apprentices. How could betrayal be in God’s plan? How could one who had lived and worked side by side with Jesus for three years be an unbeliever?

Like many of us, 

Judas Iscariot respected Jesus, 

but when it came to the important stuff, 

Judas only trusted himself. 

Deep fears churn in the hearts of the eleven apostles. Peter is the first to express their worry: “Lord, where are you going?” (John 13:36). It sounds like Jesus is saying he is about to leave them on their own, and the men are filled with questions they are afraid to even ask.

Jesus knows their fears, and his first words address their insecurity. He assures them that he is not going to abandon them. “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also” (John 14:1-3).

What is Jesus referring to?

• Some believe Jesus is explaining how he will go to heaven to prepare “rooms” (KJV, “mansions”) for his followers to live in with him. Jesus’s promise to “come again” is understood by many to be the rapture and Second Coming of Christ.
• Others who read Jesus’s words don’t understand him to be discussing real estate, but relationships. That when Jesus said he would bring them to the “Father’s house,” he is talking about bringing them into a more intimate relationship with God, not simply providing them with eternal lodging.

Which of these messages did Jesus have in mind when he promised his followers that he would not abandon them? People debate that and come to different conclusions, but one thing I hope all of us see is that the entire passage (John 13-17) emphasizes a relationship that God wants to develop with each of us, a relationship that will forever end our aloneness and fear.

Next: Jesus describes what this relationship looks like in the life of his followers.