“And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”
Acts 4:12 ESV
The Gospel is about what God has given to us through His son, Jesus Christ. The gospel is a message of salvation. It is both a message to be believed and a person to be welcomed.
Throughout the scriptures, we are instructed in salvation, redemption, justification, and sanctification. Big words that we must understand. They provide our foundation as believers. We could call them pillars of faith, and as such, I want to explore each of these with you over the next few weeks.
These truths are activated and released the moment we believe…..
“…because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.”
Romans 10:9-10 ESV
…and creating a tension of now and not yet that we as believers are called to live in.
To begin with, salvation is one of the easiest words to understand.
From Oxford's Online Dictionary, we learn that salvation means ~ 1. preservation or deliverance from harm, ruin, or loss. 2. deliverance from sin and its consequences, believed by Christians to be brought about by faith in Christ.
From the Helps Dictionary in the Discovery Bible, the Greek rendering for salvation is :
4982 sōzō (from sōs, "safe, rescued") – properly, to deliver out of danger and into safety; used principally of God rescuing believers from the penalty and power of sin – and into His provisions (safety).
[4982 (sōzō) is the root of: 4990/sōtēr ("Savior"), 4991/sōtēría ("salvation") and the adjectival form, 4992/sōtērion (what is "saved/rescued from destruction and brought into divine safety”).]
4982/sōzō ("save, rescue") refers to the Lord's saving work in the believer and is applied in all three time tenses in the Greek NT: past, present, and future. The believer:
has been saved – Eph 2:5,8: "By grace you have been saved for by grace you have been saved through faith”;
• Believers are being saved from the power of sin (= sanctification, 1 Cor 1:18, 2 Cor 2:15, Phil 2:12).
• Believers will be saved at Christ's return from the previous effects of sin (= glorification, Ro 5:10, 11 Thes 5:8, 22 Thes 2:14).
2 Corinthians 1:10 shows us the Apostle Paul's confidence in all three of these phases of salvation provided. It is important for us to understand the tension between the now and not yet. While we have been saved, we continue to have a daily need for salvation. We enter this salvation experience through our acknowledgment of Romans 10:9-10, and we live in this place of being saved through a process the bible calls sanctification.
Next week’s Good Word ~ Redemption