Salvation is a comprehensive idea covering the process of God calling a person to a reconciling relationship, leading to repentance, forgiveness, new birth, and a life of following and learning from Jesus. This includes participating in his values and his mission. The culmination of this good life is stepping into the eternal state of an active life with him.
Salvation is the plot of history; it is a rescue mission. Salvation is God’s action, his project, and it includes the entire creation. The world’s alternative is to put the world right by good deeds and so to leave God out. To the secular mind, for God to conduct himself in the way he sees fit, even though great human minds cannot fathom it or agree with it, is scandalous. Many think of God as a megalomaniac because he violates their modern sensibilities (Isaiah 55:8-9; 1 Corinthians 1:18-25). But what it takes to turn around the world, save it, and rescue its people is a strong stomach and an absolute commitment. Salvation requires bloodshed. Can we agree then not to trivialize salvation by reducing it to whether a person is safe and secure in the arms of Christ based on a prayer or religious ritual prescribed by the priestly class?
Salvation is the plot of history; it is a rescue mission. Salvation is God’s action, his project, and it includes the entire creation. The world’s alternative is to put the world right by good deeds and so to leave God out. To the secular mind, for God to conduct himself in the way he sees fit, even though great human minds cannot fathom it or agree with it, is scandalous. Many think of God as a megalomaniac because he violates their modern sensibilities (Isaiah 55:8-9; 1 Corinthians 1:18-25). But what it takes to turn around the world, save it, and rescue its people is a strong stomach and an absolute commitment. Salvation requires bloodshed. Can we agree then not to trivialize salvation by reducing it to whether a person is safe and secure in the arms of Christ based on a prayer or religious ritual prescribed by the priestly class?
- Bill Hull & Brandon Cook,
The Cost of Cheap Grace: Reclaiming the Value of Discipleship, 2020.
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