missio

Living in Bible Belt culture, I was always taught that you were saved once you said “The Prayer”.  And that was it. You were a Christian. But no one ever told me what Scripture teaches about salvation. Here’s a couple of things:

• First of all, salvation is a process, not a prayer. God works in His people throughout their entire lives, and indeed even after their lives, in order to bring them to Himself.
• Secondly, repentance is not a mantra or ritual, it is a lifestyle. Repentance is literally a changing of the mind that leads to action. Simply saying “I’m sorry” doesn’t cut it.
• Third, we are not saved out of our sin…yet. We are saved from our sins. Even more precise, we are saved from their effects (the wrath of God).
• Fourth, there are three stages of salvation:

1. Justification: This is what we commonly think of as salvation in totality. That Jesus died for us, taking on our sin, and we take His righteousness to be seen before the Father as innocent. This happens in an instant, upon confessing and believing that Jesus is Lord. Here, it can be summed up as salvation despite our sins.
2. Sanctification: This is the process of becoming like Christ. Though we take the righteousness of Christ on instantly before the Father, the actual physical manifestation of this righteousness gradually shows itself through us as we grow with Him. As we see a fuller and fuller revelation of Jesus, we become more like Him over time. This stage takes place over the lifetime of a Christian, and is never completed in this life. We can sum this up as salvation from our sins.
3. Glorification: This is the final stage. That upon the return of Jesus, when we raise from the dead, we are given redeemed, glorified bodies with no corruption from sin. This is the culmination of both our sanctification and salvation. Finally, this is what we long for as Christians desiring to be like Jesus. this is salvation out of our sins.

What a wonderful thought this is: that our salvation is not a wham-bam-thank you ma’am deal, but that even through our salvation, God gives us a progressive revelation (though I hesitate to use that term) of Himself!