Seeking to Understand Salvation

Here is my 1,001^st blog post—and I have been wanting to write this since making the Dec. 26 post that was largely based on Habakkuk 3:17. This article begins with Hab. 3:18—and focuses on just one word in that verse: salvation (or Savior, depending on the translation). 

What is the meaning of salvation in Habakkuk 3:18? That is the first matter to be clarified. In evangelical Christianity, salvation is primarily thought to be the future gift of “eternal life” in Heaven that we humans can receive through the forgiveness of our sins by faith in Jesus Christ.

That, obviously, was not what Habakkuk meant in referring to “God of my salvation” (NRSV) or “God my Savior” (NIV). Habakkuk lived 600 years before Jesus was born, and the context is about being “saved” from the effects of crop failure.

As in much of the Old Testament, salvation here primarily means deliverance from physical hardships in the present, not salvation from the punishment of sin and blissful life after death.

Salvation in the OT usually means deliverance from some physical calamity or liberation from bondage. Of course, even in modern times, we sometimes use that same terminology. For example, a child is saved from death in a burning building, or a company is saved from bankruptcy with a large loan.

So in spite of the fig tree not budding and there being no fruit on the vine, the song of Habakkuk 3:17-19 rejoices in the God who the prophet expects to deliver God’s people from doom. At the very least, the people’s faith in God delivers them from worry and frees them from fear of the future.

What did Jesus say about salvation? Jesus didn’t talk much about salvation or people being saved—although there was certainly much about that in the New Testament after Jesus’ death and resurrection.

One of the very few times Jesus used the word salvation was in the story about Zacchaeus as recorded in the 19^th chapter of Luke. After Jesus invited himself to Zacchaeus’s house, treating him as a person worth respect rather than an enemy of the people, Zacchaeus said,

Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor, and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.

Jesus responded by declaring, “Today salvation has come to this house, because he, too, is a son of Abraham” (vv. 8-9, NRSV).

Was the salvation Jesus was referring to here the gift of eternal life in Heaven? No, Zacchaeus’s promise to generously share his possessions was not him buying a ticket to Heaven.

Jesus was most likely thinking of salvation in the ways the Jewish people of his time, and for centuries before, had generally thought of salvation. It was deliverance or liberation for the present, not for some future state of existence. But from what was Zacchaeus saved/delivered?

He was saved/liberated from his alienation from his own people by his working as a hated tax collector for the Romans. By releasing much of his ill-gotten wealth, he was freed from allegiance to Rome and became, again, a member of his Jewish community. He became, again, “a son of Abraham.”

Concurrently, Zacchaeus was saved/freed from his greed, his love of riches, his self-centeredness. He committed himself to boldly helping others, not lining his own pockets as tax collectors then regularly did.

Because of Zacchaeus’s repentance (=180^o change of direction in his way of living), salvation came to his house that day.

What does salvation mean for us today? Certainly, I am not disparaging what the followers of Jesus later said about “eternal salvation,” even though there are, undoubtedly, many misunderstandings entwining that important concept.

What I am emphasizing here is the need to understand salvation also, or maybe first, in the way Jesus spoke of salvation to Zacchaeus.

Perhaps it is primarily the “prosperity Gospel” preachers, the “Foxvangelicals” (to use the term my friend Brian Kaylor recently used with reference to Robert Jeffress), and so many U.S. Christians who are so entangled in consumerism who need to consider this the most.**

But what about you—and me?

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** Kaylor is President and Editor of Word&Way (the Christian media company based in Missouri since 1896). He used this term in a Jan. 17 article (found here) titled “A Tale of Two Services.” I highly commend this piece comparing/contrasting what former Vice-president Pence said at First Baptist Church, Dallas, and what President Biden said at Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta, this past Sunday.

TTT #10 For Christians, Jesus Must be Lord as Well as Savior

In the ninth chapter of Thirty True Things . . . (TTT), I emphasize that Christians must be careful when they call Jesus “Lord,” but the following chapter accentuates what seems to be just the opposite: Christians must be careful to call Jesus “Lord” and to mean it. In other words, for Christian believers, Jesus must be Lord and not just Savior.

Confessing Jesus as Savior

For historic Christianity, nothing in all the world—or in the world beyond—is more important than being “saved” by Jesus. Although there are differences in interpretation and implementation, confessing Jesus as Savior has been the fundamental basis for Christianity through the centuries.

Beginning in New Testament times and continuing to the present, salvation in Christianity has regularly been interpreted as the redemption of human beings from the punishment of sin (eternal death, Hell) and the gift/promise of everlasting life (in Heaven).

While the Catholic Church has interpreted salvation as the result of receiving, willingly or otherwise, the sacrament of baptism, the Protestant tradition has emphasized personal confession of faith in Jesus as the means of salvation.

In both cases, though, the result of salvation was essentially the same: escape from eternal torment which awaited all the “unsaved” at the time of death.

Objecting to Jesus as Savior Only

Especially in much traditional evangelical Christianity, salvation was (is?) largely presented as a type of “fire insurance.” It was/is a very good policy to have so one will not “fry when they die.”

When I was a boy attending a conservative Baptist church, many of the revival preachers I heard were related, religiously, to the legendary “fire and brimstone” evangelists who did so much to expand the membership of evangelical churches in England and especially in the United States from the 1730s through the 20th century.

They were quite successful in expanding the number of Christians—but they were also responsible for fostering a limited view of what salvation really means.

The revivalists, as well as many (most?) local evangelical pastors, preached effectively about the certainty of escaping Hell and going to Heaven through faith in Jesus Christ. Their main message was almost exclusively individualistic and otherworldly; that is, it was about the salvation of individuals from damnation upon death.

The emphasis was mostly on Jesus as Savior. Little, if anything, was said about the importance of Jesus being Lord now. Similarly, there was hardly any emphasis on the Kingdom of God. Its presence in the present world and the necessity of Christians being a conscious part of that Kingdom was seldom mentioned.

Confessing Jesus as Lord

It was the more liberal churches, and church organizations, that began emphasizing the Kingdom of God and the Lordship of Christ in ways that were largely absent in the conservative, evangelical Churches. That contrasting emphasis led to the formation of competing world organizations of churches.

The World Council of Churches (WCC) was established in 1948, and the World Evangelical Fellowship was established in 1951 and its name changed to World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) in 2001.

Through the years, the WCC put more and more stress on social justice issues, but the WEA continued to emphasize that the central mission of the church should be for the primary purpose of evangelism in the traditional sense, that is, saving people for eternal life in Heaven.

As I point out in a later chapter in TTT, the best choice, in this case as in most others, is both/and rather than either/or. That is why I like the following diagram—and why I think emphasizing Jesus as Lord is important for moving traditional evangelical Christians toward the middle. 

[Please click here to read the tenth chapter of Thirty True Things Everyone Needs to Know Now (TTT) upon which this article is based.]