Salvation is an experience that all Christians must have in order to walk with God. It is a gift of God. The oft quoted scripture of John 3:16 says: �For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life�. Salvation is eternal life and a lot more.
In principle, salvation is very easy to receive. The only requirement to receive it is: �that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; (Romans 10:9).
Thus there are only two requirements: BELIEVE in your heart and CONFESS with your mouth. Simply mouthing the phrase won�t help. You must really believe in your heart. Then by the confessing of that belief you immediately receive God�s eternal gift. It doesn�t completely manifest itself at that time but you do receive all God�s gift.
The word salvation is used in both the New and Old Testament. In the New Testament, the Greek word is �Soteria�, which means deliverance, preservation and salvation. In the New Testament the word is used in many contexts but always denotes the personal and eternal deliverance granted by God, through His Son, to those who accept His conditions of salvation (Acts 4:12) (Vine�s Expository Dictionary).
Surprisingly, the term is used more frequently in the Old Testament than the New. This proves that salvation was not suddenly initiated by Jesus physical appearance on the earth, but was available throughout Biblical history. The Hebrew words for salvation are �yasha� meaning �to deliver� and �yesha� denoting deliverance, rescue, salvation, safety, welfare. These words are used in the Old Testament well over 150 times�it may mean save, saved, saves, savior, deliver, avenger, safety and victorious. Jesus name came from Yasha and Yesha. His name Yehoshua or Yehoshua literally means �the LORD is salvation� or �Messiah� (New American Standard Hebrew-Aramaic and Greek Dictionaries: Updated Edition).
Salvation is the basic tenant of Christian faith. Receiving salvation is the beginning of a believers walk with God. But basic salvation is only that: a beginning. Salvation is an ever expanding experience, for those who want to go on with God. Hebrews 7:25 says, �Wherefore also he is able to save to the uttermost them that draw near to God through Him, seeing he ever lives to make intercession for them�
Therefore there is basic salvation and there is being saved to the uttermost. Basic salvation means that by your faith and confession you will be saved from the condemnation that comes upon the evildoers or those who do not believe. Salvation to the uttermost means you will manifest the entire gift from God which includes resurrection life and being conformed to His very image.
Thus God�s plan of salvation goes far beyond the initial salvation we receive when we are babies in Christ. His plan is to bring many Sons to glory and to give those as it pertains to life and Godliness. 2 Peter 1:3-4 says: �seeing that His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence. For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust�.
Through the true salvation experience we will come to �know the Lord�. In God�s mind, He is looking for a marriage relationship with us, just as we come to �know our wife/husband� in the natural realm. God says: �And I will make them lie down in safety.
�I will betroth you to Me forever;
Yes, I will betroth you to Me in righteousness and in justice,
In lovingkindness and in compassion,
And I will betroth you to Me in faithfulness.
Then you will know the Lord� (Hosea 2:19-20).
�So let us know, let us press on to know the LORD.
His going forth is as certain as the dawn;
And He will come to us like the rain, Like the spring rain watering the earth� (Hosea 6:3).
Receiving full salvation means a �pressing on� to know Him more. Every day we seek the Lord to expand our salvation experience. As we do so, He provides more and more light to show us the way. Isaiah 28:13 describes how the Lord will lead us:
So the word of the LORD to them will be,
�Order on order, order on order,
Line on line, line on line,
A little here, a little there.
God wants us to return to Him with all our hearts.
�Yet even now,� declares the LORD,
�Return to Me with all your heart,
And with fasting, weeping and mourning; And rend your heart and not your garments.�
Now return to the LORD your God, For He is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in lovingkindness and relenting of evil� (Joel 2:12-13).
We must be diligent every day to seek the Lord. He is happy when we do this: �I love those who love me; And those who diligently seek me will find me (Proverbs 8:17).
We must seek Him with all our hearts in order to get this entire great gift of salvation.
You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart.
�I will be found by you,� declares the LORD, �and I will restore your fortunes and will gather you from all the nations and from all the places where I have driven you,� declares the LORD, �and I will bring you back to the place from where I sent you into exile.�
Therefore there are actually many levels of salvation; there are many mansions in the house of God. Wherever you stop seeking the Lord for more, you will stay where you are. Dying is not a magic way of receiving salvation. What you have obtained on earth will go with you, be it good or bad. By continuing to expand your salvation experience you are eligible to receive and manifest, as Christ, everything pertaining to life and Godliness.
A word about the phrase used in most mainline Christianity today-that of being born again. Basic Christian thought is that once you have received Christ you are immediately born again once and for all. On one level this concept has some truth in it. However, being born again is not a one-time experience. It is a continual, daily experience. Actually being entirely born again is the day we become mature in Christ and stand with His entire nature perfected in us. This happens as our spirit is continually perfected by the working of God in our lives. The obvious difference is that when we initially accept Christ, we are mere babies in the things of Christ. There is a maturing process that must go on throughout our lives. The baby must grow up.
Too many feel the initial acceptance of Christ is enough for us to be reborn and then receive our reward in heaven when we die. So many feel entitled to simply wait for that time confident they will appear prefect in Heaven. That is not the truth. There are many in Heaven right now who are not perfected and are waiting for their full fulfillment. Hebrews 11:30-40 makes this clear. After remembering all the great men of God who died in faith, not having receiving the promise, says: And these all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise: God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect.
Also the Book of Revelation speaks of the souls of the dead in Christ crying out for fulfillment from under the altar. When He opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the testimony which they held. And they cried with a loud voice, saying, �How long, O Lord, holy and true, until You judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?� 11 Then a white robe was given to each of them; and it was said to them that they should rest a little while longer, until both the number of their fellow servants and their brethren, who would be killed as they were, was completed. (Revelation 6:9-11).
Dying and going to Heaven is obviously not the ultimate answer. Until we on this side of the veil of death must become perfect before those in heaven can have their fulfillment. This goes beyond simple salvation. It involves a process of becoming perfect which can happen here, right on earth. If you doubt this remember the words of the Lord�s Prayer: Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Right here, right now on earth. We need not wait. We should press on to the full calling of Christ, until the veil of death is rent and the spiritual and earth realms become one. That is salvation. That is fulfillment.
But there was more to Christ�s gift of salvation than we immediately see. What Christ did was actually a two part gift. Salvation is the forgiveness of sin. The second part He accomplished was the actual removal of the sin of mankind.
Salvation is actually a 2-step process leading to complete perfection. The first part is the part of salvation that forgives sin. 1 John 2:1-2 says: �My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate [intercessor] with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and He Himself is the propitiation [satisfaction] for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world�. Therefore under the first part of salvation, we can commit sin, even inadvertently and God will forgive us through Christ. (Note correctly the true fact He has already forgiven us for all the sins we have committed and will commit in the future if we remain with Christ and continual repentance is not required for forgiveness, better we recognize the act was done once and for all and receive it once and for all).
However, there is a second part of salvation which goes far beyond this initial salvation experience. To understand this we must examine what occurred to Christ on the cross. Christ�s purpose was described in John 1:28-29, speaking of a statement made by John the Baptist: �These things took place in Bethany beyond the Jordan, where John [the Baptist] was baptizing. The next day he saw Jesus coming to him and said, �Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world�! Jesus not only died to forgive our sins; He died to completely remove the sin from us. All of the sin of the world was actually laid upon (transferred to) Christ and thus sin was totally removed from the world by that one act. As Isaiah says (53:6): All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and Jehovah hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. Thus Christ not only forgave our sin, he removed it completely from us giving us the opportunity to have a nature which is utterly incapable of sin.
In order for us to fully understand this principle we must look to the Old Testament for the type and shadow of what Christ was later to fulfill in His flesh. Tom Kipper or the Day of Atonement, which occurs within the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles, is a type and shadow of the roles of sacrifice and the removal of sin. Christ was the ultimate sacrifice in that in one act He removed the sin of the entire world. In the Old Testament forgiveness and removal of sin was no less real but was only a temporary measure.
Yom Kippur is the most significant day in the Jewish experience. It is mandated by God in Leviticus 23:26 and described fully in Leviticus 16. The literal translation of Yom Kippur is �Day of Atonement�. Biblically and liturgically it is also known as Day of Judgment and Sabbath of Sabbaths.
Atonement literally means reconciliation to God after the bond had been broken by sin. It means, in a broader sense in Hebrew, �purge,� �cleanse,� �expiate,� �purify,� �wipe on or off,� �cover,�, �justify� etc. The literal meaning of the word is simply �at-one-ment�, i.e., the state of being of one or being reconciled, so that atonement is actually reconciliation to God.
The most important ceremonial aspects of the manifestation of atonement in the days of the Old Testament law involved the High Priest, two goats and a bull. This ritual helps us understand what Christ actually did on the cross.This has great significance to us today. At that time the Jews had constructed a temple (tabernacle) in the wilderness as a prelude to the great temple that was to be built in the Promised Land by Solomon. The temple was constructed into three main areas or divisions: the �outer court�, the �Holy Place� and finally the Holy of Holies, the most Holy place. No one entered the Holy of Holies except the High Priest once a year on the day of Yom Kippur (for a fuller description of the Holy of Holies see quote from Hebrews below). A veil separated this most Holy place from the rest of the temple.
A ritual occurred on the Day of Atonement which literally cleansed the Jewish people from all sins they had committed the previous year. This Old Testament ritual is actually a representation or type and shadow of the eternal sacrifice that Christ was to initiate. As we can see below, salvation, as represented by the Day of Atonement, included the two aspects of Christ�s sacrifice for us. The following are a summary of the events which led to the Atonement in Old Testament times.(see Leviticus 16 for a description of the entire process).
As we said there were two goats and a bull involved. The bull was slain as Atonement for Aaron the high priest so he would be ritually pure to carry out the rest of the atonement. After that the first goat was sacrificed for the defilement of the temple by Israel. This represents the first part of Christ�s sacrifice for us. The first goat was slain and sacrificed as a forgiveness for the sins of Israel. Forgiveness is only the beginning of what Christ did for us. It is the first step.
As to the second goat it remained alive. It was brought before the Lord where Aaron the priest became the vehicle of God to transfer all of the sin of Israel for the previous year to that goat. This was an actual occurrence. The actual sin of the people was taken by Aaron and transferred to this second goat. The goat was then led outside the camp and disposed of in some way. This is a type and shadow of what Christ did on the cross. While on the cross God (the Father) transfered all of the sins of mankind onto Christ. By the actual sin being transferred onto Christ it was in reality removed from mankind. Once and for all.
This transference of the sin of Israel to the goat was also real occurrence. Just as all the sin of the world was transferred to Christ on the cross, on the Day of Atonement, the sacrifice transferred to the live Azazel goat the sin of the people. The goat was then banished into the wilderness never to be seen again. God also made this ceremony a permanent ordinance which means it was to occur eternally. This command was fulfilled in Christ who �ever lives� as the Lamb of God who took away the sin of the world. Today it is carried on as a celebration of the Lamb of God (Christ) who bore the sins of all humanity. In short it shows us that only being forgiven of sin is not enough. We must also have the experience of having the sin removed completely so that we do not have to continually come back to God to seek forgiveness as the Israelites did.
However, in our current existence, we ask why if the sin was removed does sin continue to torment us as if it were still here. The answer has to do with the ruler of this world called Satan. Satan is also aware of the principle of transference God used to transfer mankind�s sin to Christ. When the sin of the world was removed, Satan was not removed. He was condemned. Although he was defeated on the cross he remained on the earth and retained all the evil and sin which had been transferred to Christ. Knowing that His time for his inevitable destruction was near, he set about to delay this from occurring. He did this by trying to transfer his own sin, condemnation and evil back to man and try to convince man he was still sinful. This is perhaps his most successful scheme in delaying the manifestation of the Kingdom of God. If man, although already made sinless by Christ, accepts Satan�s evil as his own he is identifying and bonding with the devil and is at risk of experiencing Satan�s own eternal condemnation. Therefore mankind must realize that they have been made totally clean and sinless by Christ and realize that the lie that we are still sinful beings or have sin, is a lie of the enemy accomplished by the transference principle. The sin we think we still have is not actually us but is a lie of the enemy.
The Apostle Paul realized this and expressed it in the Book of Romans. Paul states: �For we know that the Law is spiritual, but I am of flesh, sold into bondage to sin. For what I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate. But if I do the very thing I do not want to do, I agree with the Law, confessing that the Law is good. So now, no longer am I the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not. For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want. But if I am doing the very thing I do not want, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me�. Romans 7:14-20.
To break down what Paul is saying is that in his own fleshy nature he is unable to do the Law (the commandments of God) or please God. He knows the law is spiritual since Christ said He did not come to abrogate the Law but to fulfill it (Matthew 5:17-18). So Paul finds this duality in himself in that he desires to be righteous but still finds himself constantly warring within himself between the two natures. However he finally realizes that the sin that he struggles with on a daily basis is not his own sin he but comes from an exterior source, the sin dwelling within him separate from his own being.
Paul goes on to say: �I find then the principle [law] that evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good. For I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man, but I see a different law in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin which is in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, on the one hand I myself with my mind am serving the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh the law of sin� (Romans 7:21-25). Paul ultimately sees that the sin with which he struggles is not his own sin but sin which has been transferred to him from the outside, from the accuser, and does not belong to him at all.
Thus salvation is a 2-step process. When the second step is accomplished the sin will be entirely removed from us and we will no longer be capable of sin. Then we will have the divine nature of Christ which was what He intended from the outset.
