Is Your Definition of Salvation Too Small? The Bible’s Full Teaching

The word salvation, as used in Scripture and Christian theology, communicates God’s deliverance. Salvation addresses public threat or personal plight and pertains to both concrete sorrows and sinful corruptions. Whether regarding one’s soul or one’s station in life, salvation conveys rescue. It signals the need for intervention by another. Rescue missions in the Bible take rather different forms, but they share that one trait: One must intervene to deliver another.

In this article, we aim to explore the ways in which God’s saving deliverance should be understood by plotting it and its connections to a host of biblical doctrines.

Terminology & methodology

Salvation is a category that subsumes many images. Although the term emphasizes intervention by another, that rescue can take many forms. Salvation itself is referentially pliable as it appears in Holy Scripture.

When we expand this to the doctrine of salvation, salvation can function still more porously to include quite a few other images (some of which are more definite). For instance, the language of justification comes from the law court and speaks of justice declared rather than condemnation rendered. That’s a very definite image that’s invoked at various points in Genesis, Psalms, and in Paul with some regularity to convey how God forgives sinners and declares them just in Christ. Or the discussion of redemption in Scripture takes a term used in slave markets of old. Just as a slave would be redeemed at market, so God purchases a people from tyrannical enslavement to sin and death. When redemption is announced, a concrete image is being conveyed. Justification and redemption language are both often considered part of a broader theology of salvation.

Synthesizing a range of such biblical terms into a larger theological category is not wrong. Indeed, some degree of combining is necessary, for the Bible is diverse and yet one. Seeking unity is essential, but it does need to be pursued in a thoughtful way, mindful of its potential missteps. It needs to be done with clarity about complexity and, thus, about the potential complicity of synthesis in theological confusion. Perhaps no topic combines quite so many things from Holy Scripture as does the doctrine of salvation, so particularly here one needs to be vigilant to make sure not to miss key distinctions and differences (which matter gravely) in doing that work of theological synthesis.

The Bible’s account of salvation history

Appreciating the way salvation language appears in the Bible, much less the way other conceptualities are brought into a theology of salvation, demands attention to the order—the scope and sequence and interconnections—present in the Bible’s presentation. The scope of study ought to be wholistic, taking in the full span of biblical teaching. The sequence benefits from a historical and chronological approach, insofar as much of the biblical teaching emphasizes the presence of promise and then fulfillment, of anticipation prior to announced arrival. So before considering other matters of theological synthesis, we ought to explore the biblical sketch of salvation history.

1. Salvation needed & initiated

In the beginning, salvation was not needed. The world—the heavens and the earth, all created of and for God—was pure and good. The man and woman lived in harmony. The trees and soil were fit for a purpose. The prospect of human multiplication was known only as blessing (Gen 1:28–30). God walked there in the garden with these creatures. Problems were not present, and tyranny was no threat.

Eventually, however, problems entered with sin and death. Eve did not rebut the temptation of the serpent. Adam did not guard and keep the garden from a predator who sought to devour. They ate. That forbidden fruit, partaken of by their lips, brought sin and death, corruption and curse. The curse befell the serpent, wayward as he was. The curse befell the man and woman, too, even the earth beneath them as a seemingly innocent bystander. The curse marked their relationship, their efforts to be fruitful, their aim to multiply. The curse ended their communion with God, for they were cast out of the garden that day.

Yet salvation was given right from the start. Even as the curse was being declared in Genesis 3, the promise of salvation was likewise there. The seed of the woman was said to be destined to triumph eventually over the seed of the serpent (Gen 3:15). That word is matched with a manifestation of deliverance. God provides coverings—sourced in animal sacrifice, implicit in the text—so that the shame of the man and woman is no more evident. Both word and sign reveal God’s saving intent.

2. Salvation across the Old Testament

The remainder of the Old Testament witnesses to God’s deliverance in a host of ways. For instance, Noah is delivered from the waters of judgment, Lot is rescued from the condemnation of evil towns, and Joseph is saved from his brother’s murderous plot, and in and through him salvation from famine comes to his people by the largesse of Egypt.

Eventually, however, Egypt represents slavery and death for those Israelites as soon as there is a Pharaoh who no longer remembers Joseph or his kinship and service. When God hears their cries, he works salvation on behalf of his people, for he remembers his covenant favor shown to the patriarchs.

This great act of the Exodus proves central to the Israelite experience of salvation in the Old Testament, becoming a type or model of later prophesied deliverances (Isa 40:3; Mal 3:1; and eventually Mark 1:2–3). Through Isaiah, God pledges the second exodus yet to come. Though God will punish his people for their sins (something that had been warned of back in Deuteronomy), he nonetheless promises still further deliverance. In this way, Deuteronomy and Isaiah alike match the pairing of Genesis 3. Whether just after the fall of Adam and Eve in the garden or related to Israel’s eventual fall into covenant disloyalty, God both condemns according to his law and commits himself in promised salvation.

Notably, as shown, salvation is wrapped up in the covenant life of God with Israel: first with the patriarchs, then with Israel in the era of the Mosaic covenant. Eventually the promise of a Davidic king (2 Sam 7) further specifies some of the ways in which God will save and provide deliverance. Other prophetic passages prove similarly crucial in filling out the anticipations of a later rescue (i.e., Jer 31:31–34; Ezek 36–37; Isa 40; 48; 52–53). Redemptive history begins with these Old Testament occurrences and teachings, all of which prefigure and point forward to the coming of salvation in its fullest sense.

3. Salvation as personal, corporate & cosmic

Salvation does involve public deliverance of peoples from Egypt, Assyria, and the like, but salvation also takes the form of providing relief and rescue from circumstances of personal sorrow and sin. A host of characters receive rescue from varying threats: from Hagar and Ishmael being potentially threatened by competing family lines, to Hannah needing rescue from infertility.

Here, too, later episodes echo the original image of salvation coming to a cursed reality in Genesis 3. That curse took all manner of forms—relational, environmental, physical, economic, sexual, and, yes, religious—and salvation comes “far as the curse is found,” to quote the old Christmas carol.

4. Salvation provided in Christ

A biblical account of salvation will need to pay attention to the full story of Christ and, beyond, to the wider story of salvation that runs across all of the pages of the Holy Scriptures. The language of the history of salvation (historia salutis) has served to gesture in this chronological direction. This redemptive history moves from early anticipations of deliverance through any number of intermediate rescues toward the final redemption of all things in and through Jesus Christ and his outpoured Spirit.

Thus, eventually the good news is announced and not simply anticipated. Anticipation has become arrival. The Christ has come! The kingdom of God has drawn near. Salvation is proclaimed. Sins are forgiven (Matt 9:2), as was predicted by John the Baptist, who said, “Behold the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world” (John 1:29). And that is not all. Blind people see. Deaf ears hear. The lame walk. Jesus tells John the Baptist that all these are signs of deliverance (Luke 7:22). Even the dead are raised (Mark 5:41–42; John 11:43–44), to the point that a cry arises when he is being crucified: “He saved others; let him save himself!” (Luke 23:35).

Jesus lives faithfully and obediently. He grows and develops with integrity and sinlessness. He teaches with authority and truth and also mercifully welcomes the outcast. He faces temptation and maintains his purity, having been armed with the very Word of God.

Eventually Jesus will suffer, die, and be buried. His death is not merely expiration or physical finality—he dies condemned as a criminal, a blasphemer, at the wishes of the religious leaders and the capitulation of the civil authorities. His body is entered into the ground, being placed in the grave. On the third day, in accordance with the Scriptural prophecies, he is raised from the dead, never to know death again, for he has been granted indestructible life (Heb 7:16).

Before ascending on high, he teaches and ministers for several weeks. Then at Pentecost he dispenses the Holy Spirit so as to empower the apostolic mission to the nations. From heaven itself now he ministers as prophet, priest, and king, until such time as he will return in glory to judge the living and the dead. His apostles and his wider church minister in his name and by his Spirit’s power.

Salvation is fulfilled in Christ. It’s in his very name, Jesus, or Yeshua, as we learn from the angelic pronouncement. “You are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins” (Matt 1:21). John 3:16–17 famously speak of the Son coming “to save the world” rather than to condemn it. Among the varied purpose statements offered by Jesus for his incarnation and ministry stands the line that “the Son of Man came to seek and save the lost” (Luke 19:10).

This salvation brought by Jesus ranges widely to include the rescue of the blind, the lame, the deaf, even the dead. Salvation addresses the dehumanizing destruction of demon possession. Salvation also fixes upon the problem of sin and its redress with regularity and emphasis.

Study the doctrine of salvation with the aid of Logos’s Factbook.

5. Salvation yet to come

Yet we still await that final return and the ensuing great and saving transformation of all things. Salvation is something we still pray for and believe will be true.

For instance, the words of the Lord’s Prayer (Matt 6:9–13) gesture toward several facets of God’s deliverance yet to come. Most obviously, the prayer concludes by requesting “deliver us from evil” (6:13). All along the way, it prays for rescue of one sort or another, sometimes by redress of a problem—whether the need for daily bread or for forgiveness—and other times by way of invoking a positive gift, like hallowing God’s name, the coming of God’s own kingdom, and the extension of God’s will on earth. (Note how each of the latter counters implicit alternatives, like silence or blasphemy of God, kingdoms opposed to God’s own, and the tight-knuckled insistence on one’s own will.) The church discipled to pray on its knees for the return of Christ is a church yet awaiting the fulfillment of their salvation.

That salvation appears in its final fullness upon the return of Christ. When he comes, then the end appears (1 Cor 15:24). Dead are raised (1 Cor 15:20–23). The earth is transformed (2 Pet 3:13). The people of God will see him and be changed to be like him for having seen him (1 John 3:2). Whether in terms of cosmic renewal or personal resurrection, the vision is one of total and complete rescue (Rev 21–22). Here is not an image of a transplant, a replacement of parts, but of the full bodily resurrection of God’s own (1 Cor 15:35–49). Here is not an image of environmental renewal but of nothing less than the creation of a new heavens and new earth.

6. Salvation’s greatest gift

Salvation is the great gift of being freed and rescued from “all their sins and sorrows” (as the great hymn “From the Depths of Woe” sings, expounding the perceptive range of Psalm 130). God in his grace changes everything, and deliverance does come to impact all facets of life.

At the same time, sin is the fundamental problem, and final rescue from both its penalty and power are completed at the return of Christ the great Savior. On that day, he not only stands to plead for his own before God’s judgment seat, but he also has transformed them, “from one degree of glory to another,” by his Spirit (John 1:16).

Salvation is a great gift, though the greatest of gifts is that one which salvation but makes possible. Salvation is the penultimate gift through which alone men and women can come to partake of that eternal vision of God in Christ.

Salvation delivers from sin and sorrows. Salvation delivers to God and his glorious kingdom. In that sense, salvation is a great gift, though the greatest of gifts is that one which salvation but makes possible. Salvation ushers people into the position that they might enjoy the transforming presence of God evermore. This promise of God’s glory, unmistakably and unremittingly present, marks the blessed hope of Christians. Salvation is the penultimate gift through which alone men and women can come to partake of that eternal vision of God in Christ.

The expansive scope of salvation

Salvation involves rescue in Christ by the Spirit and, given the range of our need for deliverance, can involve any number of divine provisions that pertain to the harms of sin and its many sorrows.

1. The divine nature of salvation

The language of salvation dose not so much specify the precise nature of deliverance or rescue as it signals the importance of its coming from without, from beyond, and, ultimately, from God above. The Lord saves. Salvation is from God and through God.

Appreciating how radically Godward is salvation—it is his doing, not ours—is related to registering its range. Salvation not only addresses sorrows. It also pertains to sins. Were salvation only rescue from this or that sorrow, we might well find that it can be offered by a range of characters (our own improved selves being one such option). Were salvation deliverance from false plans or ideologies, a new spiritual hack or political program, then many posers might vie for the task. That salvation also involves deliverance from sin, its penalty and its power, means that it must involve nothing less than a provision of an un-sinful one.

2. Salvation’s all-encompassing reach

Salvation delivers us from sin in all its implications and rescues us from all sin’s many sorrows. Those sorrows aren’t, of course, directly applicable always to a particular sin or gaffe. But the corrupt world marked by infertility and climate degradation happens downstream from the fall. The relational ruptures and politically cutthroat quests for dominance that mark our lives exist only east of Eden. Sin has permeated every facet of our existence. This claim is what is meant by talk of total depravity or, otherwise put, the extensiveness of sin pertaining to every nook and cranny of our selves and societies.

Salvation from the Lord is equally global in that grace changes everything for the redeemed. Bodies, minds, lands, relationships, all of it renewed by deliverance from corruption and rescue from sinfulness.

3. The fullness of Christ’s saving work

The full extent of salvation will only be appreciated if we keep an eye upon the full story of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The full gospel spans not just the whole Holy Week experience, but the wider frame of Christ’s story from incarnation all the way through to his exalted reign in heaven. “From the time he took the form of a servant he began the work of our redemption,” says John Calvin.¹

Salvation arrives in a comprehensive and wide-ranging manner with the incarnation, ministry, passion, and ascent of the Son of God:

• Christ’s assumption of flesh reconstitutes humanity pure and undisturbed by sin.
• Christ’s fidelity amid the wilderness temptations rescues humanity from satanic opposition.
• Christ’s public ministry delivers many from untruth and from malady of many forms.
• Christ’s prayers to his and our Father repeatedly uphold his followers and disciples then and now.
• Christ’s suffering and death involve his carrying our guilt, our burden, our shame, our judgment as a sacrifice.
• Christ’s resurrection delivers human creaturely existence from the clutches of death.
• Christ’s ascension saves humanity for life in the glorious and authoritative presence of Almighty God above.
• Christ’s exalted session exercised from heaven’s own throne meets our profound needs with prophetic truth-telling, priestly intercession to plead his sacrifice on our behalf, and kingly rule over the vagaries and threats of history.
• Christ’s sending of his Holy Spirit at Pentecost unleashing a cosmic and penultimate enjoyment of the presence of God in power.
• Finally, the return of Christ in glory shall grant that still more glorious gifts of unconstrained and enduring—even escalating—intimacy with the invisible God in Christ.

This entire gospel story is crucial, lest we miss elements of his saving work. Perhaps his death is most noteworthy. Martin Kahler did refer to the canonical Gospels, after all, as being passion narratives with extended introductions.² Yet the whole story—from the time he came to take on flesh all the way through to his second coming in glory—delivers, saves, and rescues.

Miss a moment, and you minimize the range and all-sufficiency of Christ’s salvation. He not only bears sin and dies but also rises with might and glory to bring new life and hope. He not only taught while on earth but also continues to minister as prophet from heaven above by deploying ministers to attest his Word and by dispensing his Holy Spirit to lead humans into his truth.

The range of early Christian preaching in this vein is suggestive (see especially Acts 2:16–36; 7:2–56; and 13:16–41). Jesus himself had modeled—at least as briefly sketched for us in Luke 24:27, 44–49—such a wide attention devoted to all that he fulfilled and how it connects to the full lot of previous scriptural teachings to everything about his coming, from his death to the dispensing of the Spirit at Pentecost. Later sermons by Peter, Stephen, and Paul model that kind of mentality regarding the whole gospel and its wide roots across the various sections of the Old Testament now fulfilled in Christ and his church’s mission and still to be completed upon his manifest return which is and remains our blessed hope.

4. Salvation from hellish judgment

The language of global reach is pertinent, though it ought not be confused with a universalistic salvation. This rescue involves every facet of life and creaturely existence, to be sure, but it does not bless every individual human. The Bible clearly speaks of a separation of sheep and goats, righteous and wicked (e.g., Matt 25:31–47; John 5:27–29).

Salvation reaches from Jerusalem to Judea to Samaria to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8), thus fulfilling ancient promises to Abraham that his blessing by God will likewise bless the nations (Gen 12:3). In so doing, Israel is a “priestly kingdom” (Exod 19:6–7) and the church eventually a “royal priesthood” (1 Pet 2:9). Yet the saving grace which Israel and the church minister unto the nations is a salvation from a legal condemnation, a divine judgment, and a hellish result for unsaved sinners.

5. Saved by God—for God

Salvation is defined by its aim, not simply by its absenting one from hell or its hallows. Salvation is unto the Lord (Jon 2:9). The language here of it being “of God” conveys not merely his doing, but that it leads unto or to him also.

The original Exodus event—paradigmatic for so many later accounts of salvation—was not only from slavery in Egypt, but unto service or worship to the Lord at his mountain or in the wilderness (Exod 3:12; 7:16; 8:1; 9:1). God performs saving works so that saved persons can be with God in a powerful, palpable manner. The intervention opens up a more intimate fellowship.

6. Salvation for God’s covenant people

Obviously, salvation in that original episode did not result in the blessing of the Egyptian sons or charioteers. Rather, God saved Israelite slaves and their children. God’s salvation comes to his covenant people. Exodus 2:24 says that, having heard the cries of the slaves, God remembered his covenant with their ancestors, the patriarchs of Genesis 12–50.

We do learn that the saving blessing involves others who are not blood descendants of Abraham and of Isaac. As noted above, the Abrahamic covenant includes persons of other family lines blessed in and through Abraham’s blessing (Gen 12:3). We learn much later that such persons—Gentile persons from the nations—are united to Abraham and grafted into the tree by faith (Rom 9:30; 11:20). Faith is the crucial reality that defines those who remain in the tree as believing Israelites or who are grafted into the tree from foreign roots. Salvation is by faith, lest any should boast (Eph 2:9).

The features & application of salvation

The whole extent of salvation also requires attention to the range of ways in which God offers grace to sinners that they might be renewed for fellowship with God.

1. The ordo salutis

Here, too, we might be led to fix upon some singular moment, say, a point of conversion, whether as a child or an adult. Yet a Christian account of the good news needs to tend to all that’s said of Christ’s work by his Spirit in each and every Christian, whether man, woman, or child. In this vein, we talk of the order of salvation (ordo salutis), the scope and sequence of graces that mark out the process of the Spirit applying Christ and his benefits to the lives of individual Christians.

The order of salvation involves any number of divine graces or works, each of which is a gift worthy of exploration in its own right. From election or predestination in the eternal past to calling (or effectual calling) at some point in one’s earthly story to regeneration, faith, justification, adoption, and onward to sanctification, the order of salvation names a number of integral acts of God to deliver sinners from sin and death. Christians sometimes differ on how to regard a given gift (i.e., Augustinians and Arminians on predestination or election, whether it is or is not unconditional) and sometimes differ on the sequence of gifts (i.e., the sequence of regeneration and faith).

A basic guide to much of the order of salvation has been the so-called golden chain of salvation sketched in Romans 8:30. “And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.” Other gifts or acts could be added (such as adoption, mentioned earlier in Rom 8), though this verse itemizes at least a few elemental items for inclusion.

Logos’s Study Assistant providing explanation and resources on the ordo salutis.

2. Salvation past, present & future

A question might arise: Is salvation past tense, present tense, or future tense? In other words, did God save? Is God saving? Will God save? Both the history of redemption and the order of salvation serves helpfully here to inform a response.

First, as regards the history of redemption, salvation is both past, present, and future. We presently live after the promise of salvation and the coming of both the incarnate Word and the life-giving Spirit. Between assumption of human flesh, life and ministry, suffering and death, resurrection and ascension, Pentecost and commissioning of the apostolic mission to the Gentiles, there are so many things that have come to pass. Great comfort can and should be found in the ways in which God has already acted savingly. Yet the history of redemption will not end until the Word returns in glory to judge the living and the dead and to rule in an unending kingdom.

Second, we can observe a chronology of salvation in Christian experience at the personal level. Salvation involves past, present, and future tenses for the believer in this age. Believers are no longer dead in their sins, though they still are marked by indwelling sin (see Rom 6:1–23). They are delivered from sin and death to righteousness and life, though their deliverance has yet to take the final form of final resurrection and ultimate glorification that shall occur upon Christ’s return in glory (Rom 8:23–25).

Not surprisingly, Christian experience is likened by the New Testament writers to that wilderness experience of the Israelite pilgrims (1 Cor 10; Heb 3–4). Christians are no longer in Egypt, though they are not yet in Canaan’s fair and happy land.

Understanding the full and diverse extent of salvation at God’s hand enables not only better theological knowledge of the God to whom salvation belongs (Ps 68:20 calls him “a God who saves”), but also of self-knowledge of one’s need and of one’s promise in the saving work of the triune God.

Conclusion

Salvation is the gift of deliverance and rescue. Appreciating its generosity flows from knowing that from which we have been rescued. Savoring it follows seeing that to which we are delivered. Taking in its full glory demands that we keep our eyes open to the full span of the Bible’s teaching regarding the gospel of Christ.

In this article, we have explored and contemplated that whole counsel in order that we might better perceive Christ and his salvation whole. Hopefully pondering these truths will better prepare you to perceive more of the gracious goodness of Christ as you read from his Word.

Michael Allen’s suggested resources for further study

• Webster, John. Holiness. Eerdmans, 2003.

Additional resources on the doctrine of salvation

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