In part one of this series, we saw that we are “saved from” sin and our false selves which keep us from becoming all we can be as we are made in the image of God and as the children of God. In part two, we shall look at what we’re saved for. However, there is more to be said about what we are saved from if we are to begin to realize what we are saved for.
The Hebrew word “to save” refers to being rescued from that which would oppress, endanger, or keep us from experiencing the shalom God intends for Her people and creation. Salvation implies deliverance. The New Testament speaks of our being saved from our sins and understands that sin enslaves us so deeply that we need liberation/emancipation. Jesus and Paul recognized the enslaving and addictive power of sin. (I encourage you to read John 8:34-36; Romans 6:1-23; Galatians 5:1; Colossians 5:1, and II Peter 2:19, all of which refer to sin as a form of slavery. Perhaps a substitution of the term “addiction” for “slavery” would communicate the deadly effects of sin for today.) If sin is enslaving, those enslaved obviously need to be liberated from such a sinister condition. The words “ransom” and “redemption” refer to such emancipation and were used to describe the freedom God granted the Hebrew slaves during the exodus.
As we have seen in past blog articles, sin was understood differently in Western Christianity and Eastern Christianity. Western Christianity, under the influence of the later Augustine and especially Calvin, saw sin as a crime which required a judge meting out appropriate punishment. Eastern Christianity understood sin as a disease requiring a physician who could heal and make whole. They reasoned that one could not spank or punish a disease out of a person. The person needed to be cured, and the love of God revealed in Jesus was the medicine that could heal any “sin-sick soul.” Jesus saw sinners as ill and in need of a physician. He said to his critics when they asked why he was ministering to the dregs and sinners of society, “Those who are strong have no need of a physician, but rather those who are ill; I came to call not the upright, but sinners” (Mark 2:17). The goal of a physician is to cure her patients of their illness and guide them toward their optimum health. Wholeness (or shalom) is the aim of any authentic healer.
With these thoughts in mind, let’s look at some of what we are saved for:
- We are saved for a new identity in Christ. In I Corinthians 15, the great resurrection chapter of Paul, the apostle writes about “the first Adam” and “the last Adam.” The first Adam suffers from finitude and corruption. The last Adam (Christ) becomes a life-giving spirit which is eternal and incorruptible. We are destined to share in the future glory and nature of the last Adam. In Romans 6, a rich passage about the nature and meaning of baptism, Paul relates that we “die with Christ” as the old false self comes to an end and rise with Christ in the newness of life he brings. We share with and in Christ this newness in such a radical and transforming way that we become a “new creation.” (Almost every denomination in Western Christianity has lost this profound understanding of baptism.) What begins with our burial in the watery womb of baptism and our rebirth from those waters becomes a life-long experience. We die to the old and rise to the new not just once but repeatedly. Or put in other terms, we are rebirthed (“born again”) numerous times. The “once saved, always saved” assumption creates a static, moribund form of Christianity. It does not allow for the miracle of being changed from one degree of glory into another in the likeness of Christ. We become the authentic and unique human beings we were created to be. That becoming is a process. We are saved for a new identity which lovingly includes the best of who we have been and transcends and transforms all the rest.
- We are saved to find our home in God. Churches often talk about “saving the lost.” The term “lost” assumes that whatever may be lost had an original place where it still belongs (Recall the parables of the lost sheep, coin, and boy. The prodigal’s father even says, “He was lost but is now found.”) Even in the depths of our sin and alienation, there is a memory, an original orientation, a belonging, a home which resonates with the core of our being and identity. Without “coming home” to the Source of our being we cannot become the most fulfilled and unique children of God we were created to be. John’s Gospel emphasizes our “abiding in God.” The word “abide” assumes an “abode” (a home). Salvation includes a dynamic homecoming as we join all of God’s creation around the banquet table of a Gracious Mother who rejoices in all Her children. Thomas Wolfe was wrong—we can come home again, but we return as transformed, joyful, and loving members of a cosmic family.
- We are saved for community. The Bible knows nothing of an individual, self-centered, private salvation. We are saved/ made whole within community and that community includes all of creation. As Russian Orthodox theologian Nicholas Berdyaev wrote, “The greatest religious and moral truth to which man must grow is that we cannot be saved individually. My salvation presupposes the salvation of others also, the salvation of my neighbor; it presupposes universal salvation, the salvation of the whole world, the transfiguration of the world.” (Nicholas Berdyaev, The Divine and the Human, p. 183.) We are saved as a community of creation because as the song says, “He’s got the whole world in his hands.” We are all kept in the heart of God and are joined by the unbreakable bonds of God’s love. We do not exist individually. We exist only within community. As John Donne said, “Send not for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee.” Every life and every death are connected in the heart of God. The very Source of our being creates a matrix in which all things are related. The universe kept in God’s heart is indivisible. If we truly understand God’s unconditional and indiscriminate love, no one could be content if anyone else is ultimately excluded from God’s circle of love and grace. None of us could ever be whole if anyone else was lost in any kind of punitive and everlasting hell. We shall all swim or sink together. By God’s grace, I trust that we shall all, in time or eternity, swim in God’s infinite ocean of love, life, and light.
- We are saved to share in the creative and unfolding joy and love of God. The character Shug in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple put it well regarding God’s relationship and generosity to Her creation: “God’s just wanting to share a good thing.” There is more redemptive and healing truth in Shug’s insight than can be found in volumes of theology. I have always been fond of an image of God pictured by the Early Church Fathers and Mothers along with certain Medieval Christian mystics. God is viewed as an ever-flowing fountain. In one sense, such a fountain is eternal and unchanging. But paradoxically, because of the fresh water that comes from that fountain in each moment in time, it is also forever new. (There was a natural fountain in the woods behind my house when I was a child. Its location was always the same. When I said I was going to the fountain, my family and friends knew my destination. It was the same fountain day after day, week after week, month after month, and year after year. But it was also fresh and new at every moment of time.) God is the eternal and transcendent source of all that is and ever shall be. And yet God is constantly birthing newness in Her creation. Meister Eckhart asked, “What does God do all day long? God gives birth. From all eternity God lies on a maternity bed giving birth.” We are saved to discover, celebrate, and participate in this overflowing joy. As Tony Campolo says, “Kingdom time is party time,” and we are invited to join the play, joy, and beauty of the eternally fleshing out of God’s dream of cosmic shalom. To paraphrase Paul, “Eye has not seen, ear has not heard, neither has the heart conceived what God has in store for those She loves.” Like any loving parent, God wants for Her children all the joy, love, and fulfillment possible in time and eternity. We are destined for joy, and we were created for love. The horizons of our becoming are as vast and infinite as the depth and length of God’s love and compassion. In other words, there are no limits to our becoming because there are no limits to God’s generative love.
- We are saved to become “partakers of the divine nature” (II Peter 1:4). The ultimate goal of God is the divinization of human beings and the whole creation. (Please see my article entitled “Theosis and Cosmic Salvation.”) Theosis was the word used by the early church for this hope and promise. This concept does not mean we or creation become God. It means that we become partakers of the divine nature as we are changed from one degree of glory into another in the likeness of Jesus. This transformation occurs as God loves us and creation into our healing and wholeness. We are invited to share in the love and joy experienced within the Triune God. God wants to hold nothing back as She gives Her very self so that we might share in a very “good thing.”
We are saved for all the above and so much more. May we have the courage and vision to discover in evermore expanding ways the full nature of our salvation in Christ.
