What the salvation of God really means for you and me

Over Christmas, I was given a book by a good friend. It is called Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell. I read the book in about 3 days, mostly on the plane returning to Mexico. I highly recommend reading this book whether you are now a Christian or if you are interested in the new kind of life that Jesus offers. It beautifully explains what the life of God is and the reason for Jesus’ sacrificial death. In Chapter 4, Bell writes about the restorative power of Christ in our lives.

“In one sense, salvation is a legal transaction. Humans are guilty because of our sin, and God is the judge who has to deal with our sin because he is holy and any act of sin goes against his core nature. He has to deal with it. Enter Jesus, who dies on the cross in our place. Jesus gets what we deserve; we get what Jesus deserves. For Jesus, however, salvation is far more. Salvation is living in harmony with God, a process that will go on forever.

When we understand salvation from a legal-transaction perspective, then the point of the cross becomes what it has done for us. Nothing more to be offered and nothing more to be sacrificed. Jesus’ death perfectly satisfies God. But let’s also use a slightly different phrase: the work of the cross in us. There is Jesus’ death on our behalf, once and for all, but there is also the ongoing work of the cross in our hearts and souls and minds and lives. There is the ongoing need to return to the cross to be reminded of our brokenness and dependence on God. There is the healing that we need from the cross every single day.

Which leads to forgiveness. The point of the cross isn’t forgiveness. Forgiveness leads to something bigger: restoration. God isn’t just interested in covering over our sins; God wants to make us into the people we were originally created to be. It is not just the removal of what is being held against us; it is God pulling us into the people he originally had in mind when he created us. This restoration is why Jesus always orients his message around becoming the kind of people who are generous and loving and compassionate. The goal here isn’t simply not to sin. Our purpose is to increase the shalom [peace, presence of the goodness of God] in this world, which is why approaches to the Christian faith that deal solely with not sinning always fail. They aim at the wrong thing. It is not about what you don’t do. The point is becoming more and more the kind of people God had in mind when we were first created.

If we only have a legal-transaction understanding of salvation in which we are forgiven of our sins so we can go to heaven, then salvation essentially becomes a ticket to somewhere else. In this understanding, eternity is something that kicks in when we die. But Jesus did not teach this. Jesus says that when we believe, we have crossed over from death into life (John 5:24). God always has been and always will be. And when I enter into a relationship with God through Christ, I am connected with God now and I will be connected with God forever. For Jesus, salvation is now.”

I grew up with the belief that the Christian life was mostly concerned with “don’t do this or that”, focusing on the negative. Rather, when I look at Jesus’ teachings, he talked a lot about “do this and do that”, framing everyday life in the positive. Jesus doesn’t focus on not sinning. He focuses on acting righteously and lovingly toward God and man. When I first began to understand this some time ago, it was absolutely radical. I understand now that to act righteously toward God and others requires a transformation inside; it isn’t my nature to be like Jesus. But Jesus living his life through me transforms me all the way down to my motives (read Matthew 5).

Bless God today with your words, thoughts and actions. Bless him for being the right, true and unchanging God.