What Is Salvation?

If you were driving your car down a country road and blew a tire, which threw your car out of control so that you rolled over and landed upside down in a canal full of water, unconscious, you would be in danger of drowning. If someone saw your accident happen and jumped into the canal without any concern for his own safety and pulled out of the car and onto the canal bank, he would have rescued you. He would have saved you from certain death.

That is what salvation is, rescue from certain death.

When we’re talking about salvation in a Biblical sense, it is still the same, rescue from certain death. It isn’t a guarantee that your earthly body won’t die, God doesn’t promise that. What is it then? It’s a rescue from what the Bible calls the second death, after the death of the body. It is an eternal death.

Different religions have their own opinions and teachings about heaven and hell and life after death, and it can all be very confusing. Forget about religion for a little bit. Religions are a way of identifying a group of people and what they, in general, believe as a body. These beliefs often divert from, and frequently directly conflict with what the Bible says. For the purposes of this discussion, and the many I hope will follow, we aren’t going to cite what a particular church or faith believes as being the truth. What we are going to do it see what the Bible has to say about any given subject and use that as our line of truth.

Revelation 21:8 says that the second death is to be cast into the lake of everlasting fire. Revelation 20:14-15 says that this is the fate of whoever is not found in the book of life.

There can be no doubt that it is a punishment that lasts forever, without end, Matthew 25:46. Matthew 13:42 says that they will be cast into the lake of fire prepared for the devil and his angels. Revelation 20:10 describes this place as a place of torment forever, and ever. It also means a permanent, everlasting separation from God. Matthew 22:1-14 is the story of the wedding feast, which is a parable of the kingdom of heaven. Those not found wearing the wedding garment, the righteousness of Christ, were cast into the outer darkness, a place where no light is. This is a place where Christ is not, because where Christ is, there is light, Revelation 21:23.

The salvation God offers is a rescue from this fate. Revelation 20:15 says that those whose names are not found in the Book of Life will suffer this, and those whose names are written there, will not. In John 3:14-18, Christ tells us that whoever believes in him will have eternal life in 4 out of 5 of these verses. Those who do not believe in him, will be condemned. 

In a world that tells us that there is no real right or wrong, heaven or hell, black or white, truth or deception but rather shades of gray where you are not responsible for what you do or your own shortcomings, situational ethics where truth and integrity are whatever is true for you in the moment and God won't send anyone to hell it can be hard to discern what the truth really is. Because the world is telling us what we want to hear, and our earthly flesh delights in taking the path of least resistance and accepting whatever makes life easier and more emotionally and psychologically comfortable for us, it's can be hard for us to overcome it for ourselves, and to convince others of the truth.

But God sees things differently, and he doesn't change his mind or alter what he thinks is right and wrong based on what situation happens to present itself, Malachi 3:6, and we should be the same, even when the word we give to someone ends up being to our own detriment, or hurt, Psalm 15:4.

Those passages in John 3:14-18, as well as others, paint a pretty clear black and white picture  about God's eternity. There is eternal life and eternal death. There is no limbo, purgatory, cessation  of existence, temporary stay in hell or ghost life on this earth.

When all is said and done, it doesn't matter a whit what we think about the way things are or should be. God, the creator and Lord of the universe, is the one who set up the rules. At great expense to himself he made our rescue, our salvation, as easy for us as possible.

What is salvation? It is our rescue from a sure eternal death.

Next week we'll discuss why we need salvation.