What Does Salvation Mean, Anyway?

–

What Does Salvation Mean, Anyway?

 Recently it has occurred to me that some of the commonly heard phrases that are often used to express and refer to Jesus Christ and what salvation means are not always clearly or immediately understood (at least independent of an explanation).

For instance:

Statement:                                                                     What does that mean?

“Jesus Christ is Savior”                                              “Ok, but save us from what?”

“We were saved by the blood of Jesus”                    “Wait—whose blood?

“Jesus shed His blood for us”                                     Um, who is Jesus? And is He OK??”

“I am here to spread the gospel.”                              “Do you sing?”

–

Okay, so maybe their responses may not be exactly like those, but the point is that I, as well as other believers, want to provide more answers than questions.

Among believers, Christians may hear these statements and share a hearty, “Amen!”, but what if those phrases aren’t familiar to an individual? They may wonder quietly to themselves, “What is the foundation of the Christian faith, and what does salvation mean, anyway?”

In hopes of answering these questions, I wanted to offer a clear explanation of what salvation means. So, whether you are already a Christian or someone who simply wants to know what it means “to be saved”, I humbly present my notes for you, and I hope they offer both clarity and ultimately a personal decision to be saved through Jesus Christ. Please read on to learn more.

WHAT Does it Mean to be Saved?

 

First, Christianity is not a set of teachings to understand. It is a Person to follow. It is about a relationship with Jesus Christ. 🙂 If you need unconditional love, hope, freedom from your sins, peace (that the world cannot give), and forgiveness- accepting Jesus Christ as your personal Savior is the answer. :o)

WHAT does that mean? Because God is PERFECT and HOLY, we as humans cannot have a relationship with Him by our own means (because we are sinners, our sin separates us from God because he is HOLY).

           Who has sinned?

   Romans 3:23 “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”    [Italics Mine]

We are human; therefore we can’t help our sinful nature. When Adam and Eve sinned (way back in the Garden of Eden in the book of Genesis), sin entered the human race.

            What’s so bad about sin?

            Romans 6:23 “The wages of sin is death.”

            Isaiah 59:2 “Your iniquities have separated you from your God.”

Therefore, since sin is a part of our human nature, we can’t spend eternity in Heaven with a HOLY God. Our sin separates us from Him.

BUT, God loves us so much, and He wants a relationship with us, He sent his son, Jesus Christ, to save us from the sin that separates us from Him, and as a result God saves us from spending eternity away from Him, in hell, when we die. (This is what Jesus is saving us from, and that is why Jesus is called the Savior. Please read on to learn who Jesus is, how He saved us, and what we need to do to be saved.)

 

John 3:16-17

“For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him.

 

 

WHO is Jesus Christ?

 

Matthew 1: 18-25 (NIV)

 

“This is how the birth of Jesus came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. Because Joseph her husband was a righteous man and did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.

But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph, son of David,” do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.

All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: “The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel”—which means, “God with us.”

When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. But he had no union with her until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus.”

–

            Notes (from NIV Life Application Study Bible):

 

–          Why is the virgin birth important to the Christian faith? Jesus Christ, God’s Son, had to be free from the sinful nature passed on to all other human beings by Adam. Because Jesus was born of a woman, he was a human being; but as the Son of God, Jesus was born without any trace of human sin. Jesus is both fully human and fully divine.

 

Because Jesus lived as a man, we know that he fully understands our experiences and struggles (Hebrews 4:15-16). Because he is God, he has the power and authority to deliver us from sin (Colossians 2:13-15). We can tell Jesus all our thoughts, feelings, and needs. He has been where we are now, and he has the ability to help.

–          The angel declared to Joseph that Mary’s child was conceived by the Holy Spirit and would be a son. This reveals an important truth about Jesus—he is both God and human. The infinite, unlimited God took on the limitations of humanity so he could live and die for the salvation of all who would believe in him.

Jesus means “the LORD saves.” Jesus came to earth to save us because we can’t save ourselves from sin and its consequences. No matter how good we are, we can’t eliminate the sinful nature present in all of us. Only Jesus can do that. Jesus didn’t come to help people save themselves; he came to be their Savior from the power and penalty of sin.

–

HOW did Jesus Christ save us from our sin

and allow us to know God personally?

 

Well, remember how the penalty of sin is death? (Romans 6:23 “The wages of sin is death.”) Well, before Jesus Christ came, people used to sacrifice animals as a way to show how sorry they were for their sins (see the Old Testament), but that was only temporary. God’s plan all along was to send His Son, Jesus Christ—who was a perfecthuman being, who NEVER sinned—to die in our place, to pay for the cost of OUR sins. Meaning, Jesus Christ died to take the penalty our sins deserved. He took our punishment so that we wouldn’t have to! Jesus Christ is the final and ultimate sacrifice.

         1 Peter 3:18

“For Christ died for our sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive by the Spirit.”

Jesus did indeed die for our sins, and it wasn’t a pleasant death. And yet, even while knowing the death that He was to bear, He still willingly died to save us.

–

Here is an account of his crucifixion from the book of John:

            John 19:

“Then Pilate [Roman governor] took Jesus and had him flogged. The soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head. They clothed him in a purple robe and went up to him again and again saying, “Hail, king of the Jews!” And they struck him in the face.

Once more Pilate came out and asked the Jews, “Look, I am bringing him out to you to let you know that I find no basis for a charge against him.” When Jesus came out wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe, Pilate said to them, “Here is the man!”

As soon as the chief of priests and their officials saw him, they shouted, “Crucify! Crucify!”

But Pilate answered, “You take him and crucify him. As for me, I find no basis for a charge against him.”

The Jews insisted, “We have a law, and according to that law he must die, because he claimed to be the Son of God.”

When Pilate heard this, he was even more afraid, and he went back inside the palace. “Where do you come from?” he asked Jesus, but Jesus gave no answer. “Do you refuse to speak to me?” Pilate said. “Don’t you realize that I have the power to free you or to crucify you?”

Jesus answered, “You would have no power over me if it were not given to you from above. Therefore the one who handed me over to you is guilty of a greater sin.”

From then on Pilate tried to set Jesus free, but the Jews kept shouting, “If you let this man go, you are no friend of Caesar. Anyone who claims to be a king opposes Caesar.”

When Pilate heard this, he brought Jesus out and sat on the judge’s seat at a place known as the Stone Pavement (which in Aramaic is Gabbatha). It was the day of Preparation of Passover Week, about the sixth hour.

“Here is your king,” Pilate said to the Jews.

But they shouted, “Take him away! Take him away! Crucify him!”

“Shall I crucify your king?” Pilate asked.

“We have no king but Caesar,” the chief priests answered.

Finally Pilate handed him over to be crucified.

Jesus is Placed on the Cross

So the soldiers took charge of Jesus. Carrying his own cross, he went out to the place of the Skull (which in Aramaic is called Golgotha). Here they crucified him, and with him two others—one on each side and Jesus in the middle.

Pilate had a notice prepared and fastened to the cross. It read: JESUS OF NAZARETH, THE KING OF THE JEWS. Many of the Jews read this sign, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city, and the sign was written in Arameic, Latin, and Greek. The chief priests of the Jews protested to Pilate, “Do not write ‘The King of the Jews’, but that this man claimed to be king of the Jews.

Pilate answered, “What I have written, I have written.”

When the soldiers crucified Jesus, they took his clothes, dividing them into four shares, one for each of them, with the undergarment remaining. This garment was seamless, woven in one piece from top to bottom.

“Let’s not tear it,” they said to one another. “Let’s decide by lot who will get it.” This happened that the scripture might be fulfilled which said,

                        “They divided my garments among them

                        and cast lots for my clothing.”

[Psalm 22:18 foretold this and was written more than 800 years before Jesus’ birth]

So this is what the soldiers did.

Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, “Dear woman, here is your son,” and to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” From that time on, this disciple took her into his home.

Jesus Dies on the Cross

Later, knowing that all was now completed, and so that the Scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus said, “I am thirsty.”A jar of wine vinegar was there, so they soaked a sponge in it, put the sponge on a stalk of the hyssop plant, and lifted it to Jesus’ lips. [Psalm 69:20-22 foretold this and was written more than 800 years before Jesus’ birth] When he had received the drink, Jesus said, “It is finished.” With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

[Brackets mine]

[Future Read: Isaiah 53 was written over 500 years before Jesus’ birth. I think after just reading about Jesus’ crucifixion, one may find Isaiah 53 especially astounding.]

 

Matthew 27:51

“At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn from top to bottom. The earth shook and the rocks split.”

–

God is Holy so we couldn’t interact with Him directly (see earlier section of post). As a result, once a year (on the Day of Atonement) only the high priest could enter the Most Holy Place of the temple (which was separated by the curtain) to make sacrifices to atone  for the sins of the nation as a whole. When Jesus Christ died on the cross, the curtain of the temple tore in half from top to bottom, signifying our free access to God because of Jesus’s death. No longer did people have to approach God through priests and sacrifices. Jesus Christ’s blood was shed and He died for the penalty of our sins once and for all. It is through Jesus Christ that we can now reach God directly.

 

(This is why you may hear someone say, “Jesus shed His blood for us” or “We were saved by the blood of Jesus”.)

 

Jesus didn’t stay dead though. Remember, Jesus Christ is both man and divine. Please note that religious leaders, who plotted to have Jesus crucified, remembered Jesus’s teaching about His resurrection.

            Matthew 20:17-19:

[Jesus predicts His death] “We are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be betrayed to the chief priests and the teachers of the law. They will condemn him to death and will turn him over to the gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified. On the third day he will be raised to life!”

 

Because of His claims, they feared that Jesus would do exactly what He said He would (after all, He has already done everything He has promised). So the religious leaders (who were against Jesus because He refused to accept their interpretation of the oral law) took steps that they thought would prevent Jesus’s resurrection. They tried to take every precaution that His body would remain in the tomb. If His body didn’t remain in the tomb, it would prove that Jesus Christ in not merely human, He really is the Son of God who has come to save us.  So, here is what the religious leaders did:

            Matthew 27:62-66:

“The next day, the one after Preparation Day, the chief priests and the Pharisees went to Pilate. “Sir,” they said, “we remember that while he [Jesus] was still alive that deceiver said, ‘After three days I will rise again.’ So give the order for the tomb to be made secure until the third day. Otherwise, his disciples may come and steal the body and tell the people that he has been raised from the dead. This last deception will be worse than the first.”

“Take a guard,” Pilate answered. “Go, make the tomb as secure as you know how.” So they went and made the tomb secure by putting a seal on the stone and posting the guard.”

–

Okay, so the religious leaders are sweating bullets now. Remember, Jesus explained that He would “suffer many things at the hands of the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life. (Matthew 16:21/ Matthew 20:17-19). Everything happened as Jesus said, and now the third day approaches. The religious leaders wanted to take every precaution to try to keep Jesus in that tomb.

–

The NIV Life Application gives more information regarding the tomb’s design:

“Because the tomb was hewn out of rock in the side of a hill, there was only one entrance. The tomb was sealed by stringing a cord across the stone that was rolled over the entrance. The cord was sealed at each end with clay. But the religious leaders took a further precaution, asking that guards be placed at the tomb’s entrance.

[Spoiler Alert!] The Pharisees failed to understand that no rock, seal, guard, or army could prevent the Son of God from rising again.

–

Jesus indeed rose from the dead, and He said:

            Matthew 28:18-20

“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of age.”

–

Jesus ascends back into Heaven.

            Mark 16:19-20

“After the Lord had spoken to them, he was taken up into heaven and he sat at the right hand of God. Then the disciples went out and preached everywhere, and the Lord worked with them and confirmed his word by the signs that accompanied it.”

–

When Jesus rose from the dead, He proved that He was God, that He could forgive sin, and that He has the power to change our lives. By trusting in Him for forgiveness, we can begin a new life with Him as our guide.

Remember,

John 3:16-17

“For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him. Note:Red Highlighting Mine

–

That is why Jesus says in John 14:6:

John 14:6:

“I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

 

Jesus prepared a way for us to be able to have a personal relationship with the Holy God.

 

HOW do I have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ?

 

Well, it is really quite simple. Often times one may think that to have eternal life in heaven and internal power through Jesus on earth; one must jump through some holy hoops to get it. Or at least prove ourselves first with as close to heavenly behavior as possible before we even consider approaching the Almighty God. BUT that’s not the case.

Remember, as Bible teacher Beth Moore has stated so precisely, “Jesus already spent that time, energy, and unimaginable turmoil when He went to the cross for us.” All He wants you to do is receive the gift He has offered you purely because of His love and grace. It is not something we deserve or something that we can earn. Unlike society’s conditions, there are no strings attached. This invitation is from Christ alone. He has been pursuing you for years, wanting to pour His unconditional love on you, and reserve a place for you in heaven.

You just make a simple, sincere prayer of faith asking Jesus Christ into your life and accepting Him as your Lord and Savior. Once you have accepted this gift of grace, you never need to doubt your salvation again. The very moment that you accept Christ as your Savior, you receive His Holy Spirit to guide you (See also John 16:5-15), and when you die, you will go to heaven. Let this matter be settled once and for all.

Romans 10:8-13 gives every seeker the steps to becoming a Christian.

            Romans 10: 8-13:

“The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart,” that is, the word of faith we are proclaiming: That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved. As the scripture says, “Anyone who trusts in him will never be put to shame.” For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile—the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him, for, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

–

Beth Moore wrote, “The most prized possession God gave humankind when He formed Adam from the dust of the earth was the power to choose. Nowhere do we bear the image of our Creator more forthrightly than in the ability to exercise our free will. Before God ever spoke the words, “Let there be light,” He had determined to let there be choice. God knew every implication of the human will in advance and that the gift would enable us to accept or reject the very One that gave it to us. But he sought relationships, not robots. He designed our intricate souls to flourish where they are free and to recoil when they are forced.”

You have the power to choose. I hope from the bottom of my heart that you choose to accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. In doing so, you choose hope, you choose joy, you choose peace. You choose love. God is love (1 John 4:16).

 

 

If you have made that decision today, and you would like to accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, then tell Him so! 🙂

Express your belief and trust in Christ through prayer. Prayer is simply talking to God. Don’t worry about making a “fancy” speech, God knows what a person means even when it is difficult to express. What matters is the attitude of the heart. You can ask Jesus Christ for forgiveness for your sins, and to come into your life as your Lord and Savior in your own words, or you can pray a prayer like this:

Dear God, I believe with my heart and confess with my mouth that Jesus is Lord. I believe that He died on the cross to save me from the penalty of my sins and was raised from the dead. Because I have sinned and need forgiveness, I ask Jesus to come into my heart. I am willing to change the direction of my life by acknowledging Jesus as my Lord and Savior, and by turning away from my sins. Please begin to direct my life. Thank you for giving me forgiveness, eternal life, and hope. In Jesus’s name, Amen.

–

If you prayed that prayer with a willing, sincere heart, you have just become a child of God! I am always at a loss for words to express just how amazing God is and how much He loves us. He gave us His Son so that we could know Him personally. I am humbled and thankful for His grace and love. I pray that we continue to grow each day in our relationship with the Lord. It is a constant and wonderful journey; let’s continue to get to know Him. Talk to Him through prayer, reading the Bible to learn more about who He is, and how we should live. Find a church and fellow Christians to grow with. Having accepted Christ today doesn’t mean you won’t have questions. It does, however, mean you have the ultimate answer. Spend time seeking and learning.  Like any relationship, it grows when we put time into it.

If you haven’t decided to accept Christ today, I encourage you to read the book of Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John from the New Testament.I suggest this because you will get to know more about who Jesus is when you read about His life and His teachings. I consider this important because Christianity is about a relationship with Him, and I simply want to introduce you.

Finally, THANK YOU for taking the time to read my post. If you would like a New Testament Bible (which has the scripture I shared with you today and more), I would love to send you one for free to any United States address (Just send me an email).  Also, if you would just like to email me or you would like to share with me that you have accepted Christ, I would love to celebrate that as well. 🙂 Please feel free to contact me at Contact@AshleyLynchHarris.com.

God Bless!

With love, Ashley

 

P.S

 

Earlier, in the introduction of this post, I listed four statements that I felt had the potential to leave a person curious about their meaning. I answered two of the three in blue font throughout the post, but the third I had not explained. It read: “I am here to spread the gospel.” To clarify, what I’ve shared with you today is what is referred to as “the gospel”.

 

The Holman Illustrated Bible Dictionary writes, “The term “gospel” occurs frequently in the NT [New Testament] in both noun and verb forms, literally meaning “good news” or “proclaiming good news.” Later it goes on to say:

 

“The gospel in the NT can be summarized as the message about the kingdom of God established in life, death, and resurrection of Jesus the Messiah, who is enthroned as Lord of all. The good news describes events to which all scripture points and declares that all principalities and powers are defeated once and for all by Jesus the Messiah. Finally, all of humanity will be judged according to their reception or rejection of this good news.” 

 

Well, I hope you have left this post with more answers. Thanks again for reading. -Ashley

 

Extras:

 

SONGS:

“He Loves Me Anyway” by Sidewalk Prophets

“Beloved” by Tenth Avenue North

“Be Born in Me” by Francesca Battistelli

“Nothing but the Blood” by Jesus Culture

“Savior to Me (Sing Glory) by Kerrie Roberts

–