Salvation

Salvation is the restoration of man's communion with God and the redemption of all creation from the bondage of sin and death. God gives salvation not only for the present life, but for eternity to every person who accepts Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. Salvation is a gift from God, made possible by grace, given on the basis of faith in Jesus Christ, not deserved by personal merits or good works. (Ephesians 2,4-10; 1. Corinthians 1,9; Romans 8,21-23; 6,18.22-23)

Salvation - a rescue operation!

Salvation, redemption is a rescue operation. To approach the concept of salvation we need to know three things: what the problem was; what God did about it; and how we should respond to it.

What man is

When God made man, he created him "in his own image," and he called his creation "very good" (1. Mose 1,26-27 and 31). Man was a wonderful creature: made of dust, but animated by the breath of God (1. Mose 2,7).

The "image of God" probably includes intelligence, creative power and authority over creation. And also the ability to enter into relationships and make moral decisions. In some ways we are like God Himself. It is because God has a very special purpose for us, His children.

The book of Moses tells us that the first humans did something that God forbade them to do (1. Mose 3,1-13). Their disobedience showed that they did not trust God; and it was a violation of his trust in her. Unbelief had clouded the relationship and failed to do what God wanted for them. As a result, they lost some of their likeness to God. The result, said God, would be: struggle, pain and death (vv. 16-19). If they did not want to follow the instructions of the Creator, they had to go through the valley of tears.

Man is noble and mean at the same time. We can have high ideals and still be barbaric. We are godlike and yet godless. We are no longer "in the sense of the inventor". Even though we have "corrupted" ourselves, God still considers us to be made in the image of God (1. Mose 9,6). The potential to become godlike is still there. That is why God wants to save us, that is why He wants to redeem us and restore the relationship that He had with us.

God wants to give us eternal life, free of pain, a life on good terms with God and with each other. He wants our intelligence, creativity and power to be used for the better. He wants us to become like him, to be even better than the first humans. That is salvation.

The centerpiece of the plan

So we are in need of rescue. And God saved us - but in a way no one could have counted on. The Son of God became man, lived a sinless life, and we killed him. And that - says God - is the salvation we need. What irony! We are saved by a sacrifice. Our creator became flesh so that he could represent our sin punishment vicariously. God resurrected him, and through Jesus he promised to lead us also to the resurrection.

The death and resurrection of Jesus reflects the death and resurrection of all mankind and makes it possible in the first place. His death is what our failures and mistakes deserve, and as our Creator, he has made all our mistakes. Although he did not deserve death, in his stead he willingly took it upon himself.

Jesus Christ died for us and was raised for us too (Romans 4,25). Our old selves died with him, and with him a new person was raised to life (Romans 6,3-4). With a single sacrifice he served the penalty for the sins of "the whole world" (1. John 2,2). The payment has already been made; the question now is how we will benefit from it. Our participation in the plan is through repentance and faith.

contrition

Jesus came to call people to repentance (Luke 5,32); (“Repentance” is usually translated by Luther as “repentance”). Peter called for repentance and turning to God for forgiveness (Acts 2,38; 3,19). Paul urged people to "repent to God" (Acts 20,21:1, Elberfeld Bible). Repentance means turning away from sin and turning to God. Paul proclaimed to the Athenians that God overlooked ignorant idolatry, but now “commands men everywhere to repent” (Acts Cor7,30). Say: You should desist from idolatry.

Paul worried that some of the Corinthian Christians might not repent of their sins of fornication (2. Corinthians 12,21). For these people, repentance meant a willingness to desist from fornication. Man, according to Paul, should "do righteous works of repentance", that is, prove the genuineness of his repentance by deeds (Acts 26,20). We change our minds and our behavior.

The foundation of our doctrine is “repentance from dead works” (Hebrews 6,1). That doesn't mean perfection from the start - the Christian is not perfect (1Joh1,8). Repentance does not mean that we have already reached our goal, but that we are starting to go in the right direction.

We no longer live to ourselves, but to the Savior Christ (2. Corinthians 5,15; 1. Corinthians 6,20). Paul tells us, "As you gave your members to the ministering of uncleanness and unrighteousness to ever new unrighteousness, so now give your members to the ministering of righteousness that they may be holy" (Romans 6,19).

Faith

Simply calling people to repent does not yet save them from their fallibility. People have been called to obedience for thousands of years, but are still in need of salvation. A second element is required and that is belief. The New Testament says far more about faith than it does about repentance (penance) - the words for faith are more than eight times more common.

Whoever believes in Jesus will be forgiven (Acts 10,43). “Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you and your house will be saved” (Acts 16,31.) The gospel “is the power of God, which saves everyone who believes in it” (Romans 1,16). Christians are nicknamed believers, not repentants. The decisive characteristic is belief.

What does "believe" mean - the acceptance of certain facts? The Greek word can mean this kind of belief, but mostly it has the main sense "trust". When Paul calls us to believe in Christ, he does not primarily mean the factual. (Even the devil knows the facts about Jesus, but is still not saved.)

If we believe in Jesus Christ, we trust Him. We know he is loyal and trustworthy. We can count on him to take care of us, to give us what he promises. We can trust Him to save us from the worst problems of humanity. When we come to him for salvation, we acknowledge that we need help and that he can give it to us.

Faith by itself doesn't save us - it has to be faith in Him, not in anything else. We entrust ourselves to him and he saves us. When we trust Christ, we stop trusting ourselves. While we strive to behave well, we don't believe that our effort will save us ("striving" never made anyone perfect). On the other hand, we do not despair when our efforts fail. We trust that Jesus will bring us salvation, not that we will work for it ourselves. We rely on him, not on our own success or failure.

Faith is the driving force of repentance. If we trust Jesus as our Savior; when we realize that God loves us so much that he sent his Son to die for us; When we know that he wants the best for us, it gives us the willingness to live and be pleasing to him. We make a decision: we give up the meaningless and frustrating life that we have led and accept the God-given meaning of life, the God-given life direction and orientation.

Faith – that is the all-important inner change. Our faith does not "earn" anything for us, nor does it add anything to what Jesus "earned" for us. Faith is simply the willingness to respond, to respond, to what one has done. We are like slaves working in a clay pit, slaves to whom Christ proclaims, "I have redeemed you." We are free to remain in the clay pit or to trust Him and leave the clay pit. Redemption has taken place; it is our duty to accept them and act accordingly.

Grace

Salvation is a gift from God in the literal sense: God gives it to us through his grace, through his generosity. We can't earn it no matter what we do. "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast" (Ephesians 2,8-9). Faith is also a gift from God. Even if we obey perfectly from this moment on, we do not deserve a reward7,10).

We are created for good works (Ephesians 2,10), but good works cannot save us. They follow the attainment of salvation, but cannot bring it about. As Paul says: If one could come to salvation by keeping the laws, Christ would have died in vain (Galatians 2,21). Grace does not give us license to sin, but it is given to us while we are still sinning (Romans 6,15; 1John1,9). When we do good works, we must give thanks to God, for He does them in us (Galatians 2,20; Philippians 2,13).

God “has saved us, and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his purpose and grace” (2 Tim1,9). God saved us “not because of works of righteousness which we had done, but according to his mercy” (Titus 3,5).

Grace is at the heart of the gospel: salvation comes as a gift from God, not through our works. The gospel is “the word of his grace” (Acts 1 Cor4,3; 20,24). We believe that "by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ we shall be saved" (Acts 1 Cor5,11). We are "justified without merit by his grace through the redemption that is through Christ Jesus" (Romans 3,24). Without the grace of God we would be helplessly at the mercy of sin and damnation.

Our salvation stands or falls with what Christ did. He is the Savior, the one who saves us. We cannot boast about our obedience because it is always imperfect. The only thing we can be proud of is what Christ did (2. Corinthians 10,17-18) - and he did it for everyone, not just us.

justification

Salvation is circumscribed in the Bible in many terms: ransom, redemption, forgiveness, reconciliation, childhood, justification, etc. The reason: people see their problematic in different light. If you feel dirty, Christ offers purification. He who feels enslaved offers redemption; He who feels guilty, he gives forgiveness.

He who feels alienated and set back offers reconciliation and friendship. He who appears worthless, he gives new, secure esteem. He who does not feel affiliated anywhere, he offers salvation as a child and inheritance. Anyone who feels aimless gives him meaning and purpose. He offers peace to the weary. He gives peace to the timid. All this is salvation, and more.

Let's take a closer look at one single term: justification. The Greek word comes from the legal field. The defendant is pronounced "not guilty". He is exonerated, rehabilitated, acquitted. When God justifies us, He declares that our sins are no longer imputable to us. The debt account has been paid off.

If we accept that Jesus died for us, if we acknowledge that we need a Savior, if we acknowledge that our sin deserves punishment and that Jesus bore the punishment of sin for us, then we have faith and God assures us that we are forgiven.

No one can be justified—justified—by “works of the law” (Romans 3,20), because the law does not save. It's just a standard we don't live up to; no one lives up to this standard (v. 23). God justifies him "who is by faith in Jesus" (v. 26). Man becomes righteous "without the works of the law, but only through faith" (v. 28).

To illustrate the principle of justification by faith, Paul quotes Abraham: "Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness" (Romans 4,3, a quote from 1. Moses 15,6). Because Abraham trusted in God, God counted him righteous. Long before the code of law was drawn up, this was evidence that justification is a gift from God received by faith, not earned by keeping the law.

Justification is more than forgiveness, it is more than clearing the debt account. Justification means: from now on we are considered just, we stand there as someone who has done something right. Our righteousness does not come from our own works, but from Christ (1. Corinthians 1,30). Through the obedience of Christ, Paul writes, the believer becomes righteous (Romans 5,19).

Even to the “wicked” his “faith is counted as righteousness” (Romans 4,5). A sinner who trusts in God is righteous in God's eyes (and therefore will be accepted at the Last Judgment). Those who trust in God will no longer want to be godless, but this is a consequence, not a cause, of salvation. Paul knows and emphasizes again and again that “man is not justified by works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ” (Galatians 2,16).

A new Start

Some people believe in an instant. Something clicks in their brains, a light goes on, and they profess Jesus as their Savior. Others come to faith in a more gradual way; they slowly realize that to attain salvation they no longer rely on themselves, but on Christ.

Either way, the Bible describes it as a new birth. If we have faith in Christ, we are born again as children of God (John 1,12-13; Galatians 3,26; 1John5,1). The Holy Spirit begins to live in us (John 14,17), and God sets a new cycle of creation in motion in us (2. Corinthians 5,17; Galatians 6,15). The old self dies, a new person begins to become (Ephesians 4,22-24) - God transforms us.

In Jesus Christ - and in us, if we believe in him - God annuls the consequences of the sin of humanity. With the work of the Holy Spirit in us, a new humanity is forming. How that happens, the Bible does not tell us in detail; it just tells us it's happening. The process begins in this life and will be completed in the next.

The goal is for us to become more like Jesus Christ. He is the perfect image of God (2. Corinthians 4,4; Colossians 1,15; Hebrews 1,3), and we must be transformed into his likeness (2. Corinthians 3,18; Gal4,19; Ephesians 4,13; Colossians 3,10). We are to become like him in spirit - in love, joy, peace, humility and other God-qualities. This is what the Holy Spirit does in us. He renews the image of God.

Salvation is also described as reconciliation - the restoration of our relationship with God (Romans 5,10-11; 2. Corinthians 5,18-21; Ephesians 2,16; Colossians 1,20-22). We no longer resist or ignore God - we love him. From enemies we become friends. Yes, to more than friends - God says he will accept us as his children (Romans 8,15; Ephesians 1,5). We are of his family with rights, duties, and a glorious inheritance (Romans 8,16-17; Galatians 3,29; Ephesians 1,18; Colossians 1,12).

In the end there will be no more pain or suffering1,4), which means that nobody makes mistakes anymore. Sin will be no more, and death will be no more (1. Corinthians 15,26). That goal may be a long way off when we consider our state now, but the journey begins with one step - the step of accepting Jesus Christ as Savior. Christ will complete the work He begins in us (Philippians 1,6).

And then we'll become even more Christ-like (1. Corinthians 15,49; 1. John 3,2). Immortal, immortal, glorious and sinless we will be. Our spirit-body will have supernatural powers. We will have a vitality, intelligence, creativity, strength and love that we cannot now dream of. The image of God, once tainted by sin, will shine with greater brilliance than ever before.

Michael Morrison

Salvation