We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.

freedom

The Full Meaning of Salvation

Many view salvation as a legal transaction, which means that it’s a mere acquittal from the consequences of sin. While forgiveness of our sin is certainly involved, the NT view of salvation goes far beyond this when it proclaims that Jesus came to save his people from their sins (Mt. 1:23)—not merely the consequences of those sins. In fact, in expressing God’s perfect, self-sacrificial love on Calvary, Jesus saved us from the ultimate power of sin, which is Satan and the Powers.

The theme is emphasized throughout the New Testament. For example, the message Paul received when he first encountered Christ was that he was being sent to the Gentiles

… to open their eyes so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me (Ac 26:17-18).

Through Paul, God was going to free people from the power of Satan, the “god of this age” who “blinds the minds of unbelievers” (2 Cor. 4:4) and bring them into the power of God. Because of this, they would be in a position to “receive forgiveness of sins” as well as a place among the community of God’s people. It’s clear that salvation includes forgiveness of sins, but it even more fundamentally includes freedom from Satan’s destructive grip.

So too, Scripture teaches that salvation is about escaping “from the snare of the devil, having been held captive by him to do his will” (2 Tim. 2:26). It is about being “set free from this present evil age” (Gal 1:4) and liberated from our “enslavement to the elemental spirits of the world” (Gal 4:3,cf. Rom 6:18; 8:2; Gal 5:1; Col 2:20; Heb 2:14-15). It’s about being freed from the Accuser, knowing that on Calvary Jesus disarmed the Powers and made a mockery of them (Col. 2:14-15). And it’s about being “enabled … to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light” by being “rescued … from the power of darkness and transferred … into the kingdom of his beloved Son” (Col 1: 12-13). This inheritance involves receiving “redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Col 1:14), but we have this inheritance only because we’ve been “transferred” from one domain to another.

In Christ, we see, God did a whole lot more than save his us from the consequences of our sin. He freed us from our enslavement to sin and the evil one who ultimately empowers it.

Yet, as marvelous as all this is, it still doesn’t exhaust the New Testament concept of salvation. For the ultimate purpose of the freedom Christ wins for us is to allow us to share in the wholeness of a marriage-like relationship with God. We are saved from sin and the diabolic Powers in order to participate in the eternally full life of the triune community.

Our marriage to God includes being “seated with Christ … in heavenly places” (Eph. 2), made participants in the divine nature (2 Pet. 1:4) and blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms (Eph. 1:3). We are given a new identity in Christ that replaces our old identity that was conformed to the pattern of this world. Through the gift of the Spirit, God’s own Life is placed in us and wells up within us like a fountain of living water (Jn. 7:39).

Moreover, having been freed from the blindness induced by the “god of this age,” our minds are now empowered to experience the true God in all his glory and to be gradually transformed into this glory (2 Cor. 3:17-4:6). Through the on-going work of the Spirit in our life, all the qualities that belong to God by nature are gradually imparted to us by grace—love, joy, peace, patience, etc. (Gal. 5:22-23).

God rescues us from sin and Satan in order to share his blessed Life with us in a marriage-like relationship that will never end. This freedom from bondage and the wholeness of this relationship is encompassed by the New Testament’s concept of salvation.

Photo credit: DavidCampbell_ / Visual hunt / CC BY-NC

Related Reading

Theo Graff Podcast: Featuring Jessica Kelley

We have a special treat for you today. T. C. Moore is a great friend of ReKnew and he’s recently started a “Jesus-centered, hip hop flavored, geeky, theological, kingdom exploration” called the THEO GRAFF PODCAST. He’s published four podcasts so far and you’ll want to listen to them all when you get a chance, but we wanted…

Lighten Up: He Forgives You…

We don’t really think Jesus does this, but it sure would be understandable sometimes. Right?

Is Suffering Part of God’s Secret Plan?

In the Christian tradition since Augustine, the most common explanation for the apparent arbitrariness of life and God’s interaction with humanity has been God’s mysterious will—his “secret plan,” as Calvin says. Whether or not a child is born healthy or a wife is killed by an intruder is ultimately decided by God. If we ask…

The Reality of Satan and the Spiritual Realm

A theme that underlies Jesus’ entire ministry is the apocalyptic assumption that creation has been seized by a cosmic force and that God is now battling this force to rescue it. Jesus understood himself to be the one in whom this battle was to be played out in a decisive way. The assumption is evident…

What To Do with the Bible’s Talk of Satan

Recently, Roger Olson raised the question on his blog about why Satan is ignored in modern theology. He observed how Greg’s theology takes an “obvious, ‘up front,’ blatant belief in a very personal, very real, very active Satan who has great power in the world.” Because we often have so little to say about Satan…

Sinful Accusers and Capital Punishment

The Pharisees brought to Jesus a woman they had caught in the act of adultery (Jn 8:3-4; where was the guilty man?). They wanted to see how this increasingly popular, would-be Messiah, might respond. Their motive, of course, was to entrap Jesus (vs. 6). The law explicitly commanded that adulterers had be stoned to death…

Tags: ,