What is salvation?
Ask people what "saved" means and most will say their sins are forgiven and hell is escaped. The commentators quoted below all press a larger claim: forgiveness is where salvation starts, not what salvation is.
More Than Pardon
Writers in this collection repeatedly warn against a casual use of the word — the habit of saying a person has no peace and no assurance, "but at least he is saved."
William KellySalvation always means a great deal more than that my sins are judged in the death of Christ. Salvation means that I am brought consciously to know God in the triumph of redemption by Christ for me... Salvation means known conscious deliverance. It is not merely a good hope of being delivered, but that the person himself by grace has no doubt about it.
Israel's history is used to picture the two stages. Blood on the doorposts sheltered them from the destroyer; the Red Sea brought them out.
Edward DennettThere are many who know the forgiveness of their sins through the blood of Christ; but afterwards, not knowing themselves — the nature of the flesh still in them — or the power of Satan to harass and disturb, they not only lose their joy after pardon, but sometimes fall, through the difficulties all around them, into despondency and alarm.
Freedom From a Power, Not Only a Record
Sins are things done; sin is a power that holds. Salvation deals with both, and a message that stops at the first leaves the hearer defeated.
William KellyWhat God proposes in His gospel is to bring the soul out of the bondage, as well as the guilt, of sin. Anything short of this scarcely deserves to be called His salvation. If out of sins, but not out of sin, it would dishonour the work of the Lord Jesus.
The powers named are wider than guilt alone.
James BoydPresent salvation is the deliverance of the soul from the judicial consequences of its sins, from the dominion of sin, from the fear of death, from the power of the devil, and being brought into right relations with God in Christ.
A Change of Place
Salvation is not repair work on the old life. It moves a person from one standing to another.
F. G. PattersonThe salvation, the glad tidings of which we have heard, is the deliverance or transfer of the person out of the old state and place in which we were in Adam into an entirely new place and relationship with God in Christ.
Wholly a Gift, Yet Costly
Because it is given, the worst case is not excluded; because God is holy, the gift had to be paid for.
W. W. FeredaySalvation is the fruit of a totally different principle. "For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast" (Eph. 2:8-9)... Such a principle as grace gives hope for the most unworthy; indeed it opens the door for us all. But grace must have a foundation of righteousness to work on; otherwise the grace of God would be mere trifling with sins, which is impossible... Here the cross of Christ comes in.
Tied to a Person
Salvation is never handed over as a thing separate from the One who gives it.
W. T. P. WolstonSalvation is a very large word. It takes in forgiveness, and deliverance, and peace, and the knowledge that I am justified. It is not only the knowledge that the Lord died for me, that He put away my sins, but that when He died I died, and when He rose I rose... It is all bound up with a person, the person of the Saviour. He who possesses Christ has God's salvation.
That is why the search for another route is closed off: "there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved" (Acts 4:12), and to allow the possibility of salvation through any other "would therefore be a denial of His Name" (An Outline of Sound Words).
Past, Present and Still Coming
Scripture speaks of believers as already saved, as being kept, and as awaiting salvation. Commentators treat these not as rival systems but as one work seen from three angles.
The Christian's FriendThey bear on our past, our present, and our future; and because the word salvation is applied to each of these, it is quite possible to confuse them without meaning to. They are not three salvations, but different features of the same great work... first, as to the past, linked with His death; secondly, as to the present, with His life of intercession now, unceasingly, on high; third, as to the future, with His coming to take us to be with Himself and like Himself, perfectly and for ever.
The last instalment is physical.
W. W. FeredayThough free and happy in spirit in the consciousness of the love of God, the believer often has to groan because of his unchanged body... The first coming of Christ met the need of the soul; His second coming in glory will meet the need of the body.
Summary
- Deliverance, not just pardon. Forgiveness is the groundwork; salvation is "known conscious deliverance" that a person is sure of.
- Deliverance from power. It frees from the bondage of sin, the fear of death and the power of the devil — not only from the guilt of sins committed.
- Deliverance into a place. It transfers a person out of the old standing in Adam into a new relationship with God in Christ.
- Deliverance as gift. It is by grace through faith, not by works, resting on the cross where righteousness and grace meet.
- Deliverance completed. Held now in the Person of the Saviour, worked out day by day, and finished when He comes and the body is changed.