(The following chapter is tentatively titled The Search for Salvation and is in draft form.)
“The salvation of a single soul is more important than the production or preservation of all the epics and tragedies in the world.”
- C.S. Lewis
Of all the endeavors mankind has attempted, the salvation of our own individual souls turns out to be, by far, the most important. Our foundations can be shaken when we realize that everything we see around us, everything we feel and think and smell and taste is merely temporary. Indeed, when we are truly convinced of our mortality, there is no pleasure or entertainment that can satisfy us. And so, each of us must begin the ultimate search, the search for salvation.
To be sure, every one of us potentially has a different starting point in our search for salvation. However, whether we start looking in nature, inside ourselves, in philosophy, or anywhere else, we will inevitably come to the realization that we need God in order to be saved. The search for salvation ultimately turns out to be the search for our origin, the search for our Creator. This search pushes us to consider religion as the place we might find God, and our salvation.
CHRISTIANITY VS. ALL OTHER WORLD RELIGIONS
Religion, one soon discovers, has many choices. Thankfully, the world’s 10,000 religions can quickly be divided into two groups based on how they look at man.
Most religions begin with the idea that man is basically good, and it is only though circumstances or bad influences that a human being turns bad. Because of his innate goodness, these religions teach that man can seek and find God. In fact, if man follows the appropriate religious rules and is sincere enough, he can not only find God, he can perhaps become one with God. He may become God.
The other group of religions, which notably is less crowded, teach that man starts off bad at his core. Christianity, the major religion in this category, teaches that man, though created good, is now born with a sinful nature and cannot, no matter how hard he tries, be good enough for a relationship with God. Man cannot approach God on his own because there is nothing in him that is good enough. Christianity teaches that man can approach God only because God has first come to man and prepared the way for man to come to Him. This teaching is unique to Christianity.
This first distinction between religions proves that the common belief of all roads leading to God, while a popular and comforting thought, is completely false. All religions can not save you. This can be proven by the fact that all religions do not teach the same thing, especially in the area of salvation. Christianity is incompatible with any of the other major religions based on how it looks at man. The whole story of redemption by a Savior on the cross is rooted in the fact of the fall of the first man and the subsequent sinfulness of all Adam’s children.
In summary, any religion that does not start with the sinfulness of man is not even in the same category as Christianity. The truth is that even religions which seem to teach that man is sinful, always provide a way for man to save himself. This is diametrically opposed to what the Bible teaches.
“There is no one righteous, not even one …
there is no one who does good, not even one …
for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”
Romans 3:10-23
If this famous passage, and other passages like it, are accepted as God’s word, we can rapidly turn away from all other world religions as flawed and look towards Christianity for the answer to salvation.
Christianity teaches us that, even though man is bad and has no way to approach God, there is yet hope. God himself came down to earth in order to save man from his sinful state. He offers us salvation from our own way and a relationship with Him. He does not offer this salvation to us because we deserve it or have been good enough or because we perform well and keep all his laws. He offers it simply because He loves us and wants to save us. This is the only real good news – there is hope for us. We can be saved because of Jesus.
TWO DIFFERENT PATHS WITHIN CHRISTIANITY
Once we have chosen Christianity as the only religion where we might possibly find salvation, we can once again be overwhelmed at the choices. Everywhere we look there is a different church or denomination claiming to be the closest thing to true Christianity in the world today. The World Christian Encyclopedia lists over 33,000 Christian denominations around the world! [a] That means thousands of churches or groups of churches that believe they are more correct in their teaching than other churches! No wonder people are confused.
To be fair, the vast majority of these denominations teach basically the same way to be saved. Sometimes one part is stressed more than others, but you can find the same teaching on salvation almost anywhere you go. When we look at the various “plans of salvation” available in these churches, we once again find two distinct groups based on how they look at man.
(One quick note before continuing. We are about to look at two categories of Christian churches. I do not intend to say that every church falls into one of these groups. My experience in visiting hundreds of churches has shown me that they often have an odd mixture of teachings.)
The first, and by far the largest, group of churches believe that man can continue to be bad after conversion. Of course, nobody would put it that way, but the reality is that most Christian churches teach “positional salvation.” In other words, they teach that man can have a position of being righteous, while not actually being righteous, or even all that good. A Christian has Jesus’ holiness, while being unholy in reality. A Christian can live his life without showing the fruit of having repented and without ever overcoming sin. A person can be a Christian without being a disciple of Jesus. They teach that when God looks at his children He does not see their sin, He sees only Jesus, so that Jesus’ righteousness is imputed to people who are not actually righteous, and may not even try to be.
The second, and by far the smallest, group of churches believe that man is made good by God at conversion and continues to grow in righteousness after conversion. In the teaching of these churches, a born-again believer is not only positionally holy, he or she is actually holy. And this believer grows in holiness. For these Christians, the fruit of righteousness in the life of the believer is what distinguishes true conversion from the false variety and proves that the Holy Spirit is living inside the convert. A true Christian is a Disciple of Jesus. Not that a human being on earth will ever be perfect, but these Churches agree that there is victory, nevertheless, over sin!
This division within Christianity is sometimes portrayed as Christians who believe in “faith alone” versus those who believe in “faith plus works.” This is not at all the case. This division is also not only between churches which teach discipleship and those that do not. Rather, this division is, at its core, the answer to the true meaning of salvation. To understand this better, let’s look at two important questions: what are we saved from, and is salvation a thing of the past or a present reality?
SALVATION FROM WHAT?
For believers, saying we are Christians is the same thing as saying that we are saved. But what are we saved from? For the majority of Christians, the answer to that question seems to be that we are saved from Hell, that we are saved from the consequences of our sins. The idea being that our sin deserves punishment and Jesus paid our debt of sin so that now we no longer have to be punished. Hell is no longer waiting at the end of our journey, thus we are saved.
For a comparatively small group of Christians, this definition of “saved” is true only in part. The true meaning of salvation, which a careful study of Scripture will reveal, is that we are saved from sin. Of course we are also saved from Hell, the consequences of our sin, when we are saved from sin itself. However, the main point of salvation is that we are saved from sin, not merely saved from the punishment that sin deserves.
“He will save His people from their sins”
Matthew 1:21
Jesus did not die merely to make sure we don’t go to Hell. His coming to earth means more than that. Believing that Jesus came just to save us from Hell has had a disastrous effect on Christian thinking because it regards punishment as the enemy, rather than sin itself being the enemy.
Many Christians today live a life of defeat because they do not understand this truth. They expect to be saved from sin once they get to Heaven, but believe they are still bad at their core, and so expect to continue to sin here on Earth. For them, Jesus did not come to give us victory over sin in our daily lives, but only to save us from the punishment that those sins deserve and only free us from them after we die. How can there be victory if defeat is our mentality and expectation?
We get into this more in a later chapter.
SALVATION: PAST OR PRESENT?
For the vast majority of Christian denominations, salvation is something that happens at a specific point in the life of a person. Within these churches there are many explanations of how that moment of salvation takes place. Some teach that a person simply prayed the “sinners prayer” and is now saved. Some might say that a person came forward at an “altar call” and gave their life to Jesus. Some might say that a person “prayed Jesus into their heart.” Others might say that they were “baptized for salvation.” Maybe they “made a decision for Christ.” While these Churches will often, sometimes strongly, disagree over the event, they all hold to the belief that this moment, this event, is the proof that a person has been born again.
As a direct consequence of this thinking, if asked how they know they are saved, most Christians today would answer with a short story about how they “were” saved or born again. They look back to a time in their personal history when they heard the Gospel and believed it. Depending on the individual’s spiritual background, they might include, for example, that they repented, gave their lives to God, prayed Jesus into their hearts, or were baptized.
But is this what the Bible teaches? Let’s look at all the passages in the New Testament where Christians are told to look back at a moment in their past lives in order to be assured of their salvation. The next page lists all the scriptures that could be found:
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Once again, is this the truth? A small percent of Christians today would say “absolutely not!” Salvation is not only a thing that happens to us at one point in our lives and from then on we are “saved.” That is not all there is to it. From everything we read in the Bible, salvation is a present day reality, a continual process and a never-ending concern. We are told that we are to “work out our salvation” on a day-to-day basis. We are “take up our cross daily” and to “live in the spirit” in order to be holy, without which, we “cannot see God.”
At first glance, it seems that you could believe both of these points of view. You could believe that you were saved in the past and also that you need to walk with God in the present. To be sure, as long as your assurance of being saved rests not in a past experience but rather in a present reality, then these views are compatible. The truth is that we continually need a savior! We are “being saved” every, single day.
If we accept the thinking that salvation was a joyous day in our past and also that salvation merely means being saved from Hell, we will miss our present need for a savior.
The concept of a present need for a savior doesn’t fit in with a belief that salvation is merely being saved from the consequences of our sin. It also doesn’t make sense if we think that we are saved at one moment in which our past, present and future sins are forgiven. Why would we need a savior today if we were guaranteed salvation in the end, no matter what? We would not, but we know that is not the case. We need a savior today.
In conclusion, salvation is being saved from our sins, not merely being saved from the consequences of those sins! Salvation is a continual state of being, not a one-time occurrence. It is never truly complete (Philippians 2:12, 2 Corinthians 2:15, 1 Peter 2:2) until we get to heaven.
ASSURANCE OF SALVATION
This leaves us with a very troubling question: how are we to have the assurance of going to heaven if we do not look back at our salvation experience? How can we be reassured that we will spend eternity with God? The answer lies in our relationship with God and our obedience and submission to Him as Lord of our lives.
Does this mean we have to be sinless in order to know we are saved? Not at all! God knows that we are human. He knows that we will sin and continually make mistakes. Nobody has ever been good enough to be saved. All of us, from apostles like Paul and Peter down to the most seemingly insignificant of Christians today, need a savior every single day.
I keep trying to find a life
On my own, apart from you
I am the king of excuses
I’ve got one for every selfish thing I do
What’s going on inside of me?
I despise my own behavior
This only serves to confirm my suspicions
That I’m still a man in need of a Saviour
I wanna be in the light as you are in the light
I wanna shine like the stars in the heavens
Lord be my light and my salvation
All I want is to be in the light of love
All I want is to be in the light
- Charlie Peacock
The answer to assurance of Salvation is found in a living relationship with Jesus Christ. A relationship that is obedient to His commands and trusts His word, even through our own failures and constant struggles. Salvation is up to God; it is by Grace (a gift), through faith (Ephesians 2:8-9). Our assurance lies in who He is, not in what we do.
This means that he can save fully and completely those who approach God through him, for he is always living to intercede on their behalf.
Hebrews 7:25 (Phillips New Testament)
Salvation from Hell alone would not be hard for God. He could destroy Hell with a word. The thing that God cannot, or rather does not do, is change our will. Our will is the thing that he is after. If only we will chose Him, if only we will trust and follow Him, then He will see to the rest. We have no need to worry.
He alone is my rock and my salvation; he is my fortress, I will never be shaken.
Psalm 62:2
CONCLUSION
In one short chapter we have covered topics that would take volumes to cover in acceptable detail. However, we needed to cover them briefly, because the conclusions we drew are essential to our understanding of the topic we will cover in the remainder of the book.
First, true salvation is found only in Christianity because it is the only religion that teaches that man is hopelessly sinful and needs a savior. Christianity is all about the good news that we have that savior in Jesus Christ.
Our second conclusion is that the true path to salvation lies in the teaching that Jesus came to save us from sin, not merely from our sin’s punishment. He offers to be our daily savior, the thing we need most of all. He offers us the victory over sin though a life of discipleship and relationship with Him.
The true meaning of salvation is that we are forgiven for being the sinful beings that we are. At the moment of our salvation we are given a new heart and the Holy Spirit comes to live in our new heart and changes us into the righteous beings we are intended to be. Let us keep this definition in mind as we proceed through this book on the true meaning of baptism.