Salvation A (Listen or Read)
Salvation
What is meant by “salvation”? What does believing in Jesus save us from? In “Repentance and Salvation,” Robert Wilkin, executive director of the Grace Evangelical Society stated:
It would be difficult to find a concept which is richer and more varied in meaning than the biblical concept of salvation. The breadth of salvation is so sweeping and its intended aim so magnificent that in many contexts the words used defy precise definition.2
Joseph Dillow, Th.D. Dallas Theological Seminary and author of The Reign of the Servant Kings, explained:
Salvation is a broad term. It commonly means “to make whole,” “to sanctify,” “to endure victoriously,” or “to be delivered from some general trouble or difficulty.” Without question, the common “knee-jerk” reaction which assumes that “salvation” always has eternal deliverance in view, has seriously compromised the ability of many to objectively discern what the New Testament writers intended to teach.3
In A Generous Orthodoxy, Brian McLaren, founding pastor of Cedar Ridge Community Church in Baltimore and author of Finding Faith and other titles, wrote,
In the Bible, “save” means “rescue” or “heal.” It emphatically does not automatically mean “save from hell” or “give eternal life after death.”…Its meaning varies from passage to passage, but in general, in any context, “save” means “get out of trouble.”4
In order to better understand salvation, we need to get a broad overview of what Christ came to do for us. He came to:
¨ Give rest (Mt. 11:28).
¨ Heal the brokenhearted, free the captives and oppressed, and give sight to the blind (Lu. 4:18).
¨ Comfort the mourning, give beauty for ashes, joy for mourning, and a garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness (Is. 61:2, 3).
¨ Save from sin and turn from iniquity (Mic 7:19; Mt. 1:21; Ac. 3:26; Ro. 11:26).
¨ Save from God’s passionate displeasure (wrath) and just recompense of sinful conduct (Ro. 5:9). (See “God’s Wrath,” page 71).
¨ Set free from sin (Ro. 6:22).
¨ Rescue from this present evil age (Ga. 1:4 NAS).
¨ Bring hope and God to the hopeless and godless (Ep. 2:12).
¨ Redeem from every lawless deed and purify us. (Tit. 2:11-15 NAS).
¨ Set free those who all their lives were enslaved to the fear of death (He. 2:14-15).
¨ Redeem from aimless conduct (1Pe. 1:18-19).
¨ Model compassion for the distressed and dispirited and igniting our hearts to pray for laborers in the harvest (Mt. 9:36-38 NAS).
If salvation is deliverance from eternal woe, why the emphasis on temporal deliverances? These passages speak of deliverance from being heavy laden, blindness, broken-heartedness, sorrow, mourning, heaviness of spirit, hopelessness, impurity, fear of death, aimless conduct, weariness, being distressed and dispirited, lawless deeds (sin) and their consequences, the present evil age. How can Scripture emphasize these comparatively insignificant temporal pains in the face of infinite pain? For life on earth is but a vapor (Ja. 4:14), and then we are hurled into eternal woe. How could James say pure religion is to visit orphans and widows (Ja. 1:27)? What a waste of time when we could be snatching the masses from hell! Why does Scripture not place the emphasis where it ought to be? Why the smoke screens? The only answer making sense to me is that a flawed view of judgment has distorted the significance and scope of God’s salvation.
References: See Bibliography page.
