It is my intention to blog about how my thinking and beliefs are different today compared with previous years. I made a list while in Florida and will address each item over time on this blog. One item that I listed was the subject of salvation. I did not necessarily intend to start there but I was prompted by Jason Zahariades’ post concerning his journey and its path toward Eastern Orthodoxy. I am excerpting a portion of his post because his evolving understandings of salvation parallel my own. You might enjoy reading the entire post.
Jason first describes the judicial view of salvation which was dominate in my belief about salvation most of my life.
For most of my Christian life as a western Evangelical, I lived and operated under the judicial view of salvation that is common to western Christianity. In addition, I had fully embraced the reduced popular version that one hears in many witnessing opportunities. It goes something like this:
“God loves you and has created you for a wonderful purpose. However, humanity rebelled against God and therefore all people are born and live under the guilt of sin, compounded by their own disobedience. We are all guilty of breaking God’s Law and because the wages of sin is death, every human being is condemned to die. But because God loves you so much, he sent his son to die on your behalf. On the cross, Jesus took upon himself the wrath and judgment reserved for you. So if you accept Jesus’ gift simply by believing it in faith, you are forgiven of your of guilt and God now views you with Jesus’ righteousness.”
Or to reduce it further into how most western evangelicals think, salvation means we’re forgiven of all of our sins and as a result, we will go to heaven when we die. This viewpoint focuses primarily on the individual and treats salvation as an event and a commodity regardless of the actual state of one’s life.
Jason then describes salvation as he has come to understand it as a result of his theological reconstruction.
Salvation is the process of restoration to what humans were created to be. Rather than sin being the breaking of God’s Law, the root of sin is the movement from being to non-being. Sin is the distortion of our humanity, of who we are supposed to be as God’s image on earth. Rather than being truly human, sin makes us subhuman. So the problem of sin is much deadlier and sinister than mere guilt or disobedience. It is the warping, distortion and brokenness of who we are as human beings. It is the full corruption of my mind, heart, body, soul and relationships. In this light, I don’t just need to be forgiven. I need to be healed. I don’t just need assurance of admittance into heaven in the future. I need assurance that who I am in the present is being transformed out of my desperate and destructive subhuman existence and into the image and likeness of God as I was divinely intended to live.
So salvation isn’t primarily about guilt and forgiveness. It’s about brokenness and healing. It’s about delusion and illumination. It’s about distortion and transformation. It’s about death and life in the here and now. As a follower of Jesus, I truly cannot say, “I am saved.” I can only say, “I am being saved.”
Christ’s crucifixion has conquered evil, destroyed death, reconciled creation, redeemed the human nature, and released God’s forgiveness. In other words, Jesus has made God’s salvation completely available to all people. But as St Paul exhorts the Philippians, “work out your salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” Salvation is something that is worked out progressively with God.
As is usually the case, I am much clearer about where I’ve come from than where I am going. Jason’s understandings are deeper than I have delved but they reflect a direction in which my thinking is moving. I am confident that salvation is more than just having assurance of eternal life in heaven. What we believe about salvation has profound implications on our understanding of God and our relationship with him as well as how we live out our daily lives in the Kingdom of God.