salvation Archives - Page 5 of 6

What the Bible says about repentance is quite controversial.

Repent and Believe to Receive Eternal Life?

In some circles, repentance is a necessary first step to conversion, usually preceding faith. Those who hold this view often say things like “Repent and believe.” The idea, of course, is that in order to receive eternal life, people must first repent of their sin, and then secondly, believe in Jesus. Passages such as Mark 1:15 where John the Baptist calls on people to “repent and believe the gospel” seem to support such a view.

Is Repentance a Synonym for Believing?

However, since turning from sin as a precondition for faith is a form of good works, many Christians are uncomfortable with defining repentance this way, and so think of it instead as a synonym for faith. They note that the Greek word for repentance (metanoia) literally means “to change the mind” and so those who hold this view argue that repentance is simply the process of changing the mind about the source of one’s eternal life.

While previously we might have thought that we could gain or earn eternal life through our own merit and good works, once we recognize that we are sinners in need of God’s grace, we change our mind about how to receive eternal life (that is, we repent), and believe in Jesus for eternal life instead. In this way, repentance and faith are two sides of the same coin.

What Repentance is and Is Not

I am convinced that both views are partially right and partially wrong. While it is true that repentance literally means “to change the mind,” the term is almost always used in reference to sin and so it is accurate to think about repentance as a turning away from sin and back toward God.

When we repent, we change our mind about our behavior, and in so doing, actually change our behavior as well. Yet despite the fact that repentance refers to a turning from sin and turning toward obedience, this does not in any way mean that repentance helps us earn or merit eternal life.

Eternal life is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. Turning from sin is not required.

It is probably best to think of repentance as an aspect of discipleship. Both believers and unbelievers can understand God’s instructions in Scripture, see the devastating consequences of sin in their own lives, and as a result, repent of their sin and seek to follow God instead.

If unbelievers do this, such repentance may help bring them to the place where they believe in Jesus for eternal life, but if this happens, such repentance does not in any way contribute to their eternal life.

Of course, once a person believes in Jesus for eternal life, they can still (and should) repent of sin that they commit so that their lives can be transformed more and more into the image and likeness of Jesus Christ.

So what is repentance?

Repentance is a turning from sin and returning to the life God wants for us.

This turning from sin does not help us earn or keep eternal life, but does help us follow Jesus on the path of discipleship. Repentance helps us gain freedom from the damaging and addicting power of sin in our lives.

Remembering this will help clarify the scores of passages in the New Testament which talk about repentance. These passages on repentance are not calling people to make changes to their behavior so that they can receive eternal life. No, passages on repentance are calling all people to change their lives so that they can avoid the negative and physical consequences of sin and live the life of joy and freedom that God wants.

Repentance is vitally important for living life with God and with each other the way life was meant to be lived, but repentance is not one of the conditions for receiving eternal life from God. Thankfully, eternal life is a free gift of God to anyone and everyone who believes in Jesus for it.

Salvation Confusion

By Jeremy Myers

34 Comments

If there is one word which causes the most confusion in Christianity today about the nature and conditions of our eternal life, it is this word “saved.”

Once Saved, Always Saved

Take for example, the debate over “Once Saved, Always Saved.” Those who teach this view have some verses which seem to indicate “salvation” lasts forever, but those who are opposed to “Once Saved, Always Saved” point out numerous verses which say that “salvation” depends on continued obedience, faithfulness, and good works.

The debate over “Once Saved, Saved Saved” is easily solved, however, when we realize that almost none of those verses which talk about “salvation” are actually talking about eternal life. We can hold to eternal security while still affirming that most verses that talk about “salvation” affirm a conditional deliverance from some sort of temporal and physical calamity.

James 2 – Faith Alone Does Not Save

Then there is the whole debate which rages over the statement in James 2 that faith alone does not save. What a confusing text! But it is not nearly as confusing once we realize that to be “saved” in James 2 has nothing whatsoever to do with gaining eternal life and going to heaven when we die.

Women Will Be Saved Through Childbearing

And we must not forget the statement by Paul in 1 Timothy 2:15 that women will be saved through childbearing. Due to a misunderstanding of the word “saved” this verse has been tragically used by some misogynistic authoritarian male religious leaders to require women to remain barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, because otherwise, they cannot be “saved.”

Key Calvinist Texts Misunderstand the word “Saved”

As we study Calvinism, we will see that a large number of the texts used to defend Calvinism depend on a faulty understanding of the word “saved.”

Due to the fact that it is understood to be referring to eternal life and going to heaven when we die, numerous texts are misinterpreted and misapplied so that what should be understood as a passage that encourages and instructs us on how to live our lives so that we can experience God’s life now becomes a passage on how to live our lives so that we can prove that we will have eternal life in the future. We will see this as we go through the various texts in future posts.

What does it mean to be saved?

What then is the definition of “save” or “salvation”? It means “deliverance.” Most of the time, this deliverance has nothing to do with gaining eternal life or going to heaven when we die, but instead, refers to some sort of temporal deliverance from calamity.

This deliverance might be physical, psychological, emotional, relational, spiritual, or financial. There are, of course, eternal consequences which we can be delivered from as well, such as a loss of reward at the judgment seat of Christ, but we will reserve this discussion for a later post.

Have these three posts on the words saved and salvation helped you understand what the Bible means by these terms? Are there any texts which mention “salvation” that you have questions about? Let me know in the comments below and maybe I can write a post on these passages later.

I hope I get saved in this post (and you get saved too)

By Jeremy Myers

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When I was a pastor, Dr. Earl Radmacher once came and spoke in my church. I introduced him as the author of numerous Christian books, the editor of the best-selling NKJV Nelson Study Bible, and the president emeritus of Western Seminary. At that time, one of his most recent books had been Salvation, which is part of the Chuck Swindoll Leadership library, and is a book I highly recommend.

After this introduction he got up to teach and began with a word of prayer. He said this:

Father, I thank you for bringing me to speak to these men and women today, and I pray that as I speak to them, many of them would be saved this hour, and I pray also, that you would save me this hour as well. Amen.

I knew this was coming because this is something Dr. Radmacher often did when he spoke in churches, but it was still enjoyable to glance around at the people in the church and watch them open their eyes and blink in confusion at each other. You could almost hear their thoughts: “Did I just hear what I thought I heard? Did this author, preacher, seminary president, and Bible scholar just ask to get saved? Did our pastor invite one of those unsaved liberal Bible scholars we’ve heard rumors about into our pulpit today?”

Dr. Radmacher went on to explain that his prayer was not only genuinely spoken, but was also an opening illustration for what he wanted to teach.

He truly did want to get saved that hour as he spoke—saved from preaching or teaching anything that might be in error. He also wanted his hearers to get saved—saved from believing some wrong things about the word “salvation.”

He went on to show what the words “save” and “salvation” mean in Scripture, and how many tricky and confusing passages can be immediately cleared up simply by recognizing that when the text talks about “being saved” it is not talking about gaining eternal life or going to heaven when you die, but has some sort of other deliverance in view.

We looked at this idea yesterday, and I have one more post about it tomorrow, but having read this post today, can you say that this post saved you from believing something wrong about the word saved?

As for myself, I hope I was saved in this post from including any typos… There always seems to be one or two in every one of my posts… 🙁

It’s possible to believe in Jesus but not be saved…

By Jeremy Myers

14 Comments

Like the word “gospel,” the word “salvation” means much more and much less than usually assumed.

Just like the word “gospel,” the way the word “salvation” is often used today is very different from the way the word is used in Scripture.

When people talk about “salvation” today or “being saved,” what they most often have in mind is the idea of receiving the forgiveness of sins so we can escape hell and go to heaven when we die.

But in biblical usage, the noun “salvation” (Gk., sōteria) and the verb “save” (Gk., sōzō) very rarely have anything to do with receiving eternal life or going to heaven when we die. Instead, the words are most often used in connection with some sort of temporal or physical deliverance. We can be saved from enemies, saved from sickness, saved from drowning, saved from suffering, or even saved from a premature physical death. While “salvation” is sometimes used in connection with sin, this is only because sin often has devastating physical and temporal consequences in our life. To be saved from sin means to be delivered from the destruction and damage of sin in our lives.

One resource that shows this quite clearly is Vine’s Complete Expository Dictionary. Under the entry for “Save, Saving,” the dictionary includes the following options:

(a)    Of material and temporal deliverance from danger, suffering, etc., e.g., Matt 8:25; Mark 13:20; Luke 23:35; John 12:27; 1 Tim 2:15; 2 Tim 4:18; Jude 5; from sickness, Matt 9:22; so Mark 5:34; Luke 8:48; Jas 5:15

(b)   Of the spiritual and eternal salvation granted immediately by God to those who believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, e.g., Acts 2:47, 16:31; Rom 8:24; Eph 2:5, 8; 1 Tim 2:4; 2 Tim 1:9; Titus 3:5; of human agency in this, Rom 11:4; 1 Cor 7:16; 9:22

(c)    Of the present experiences of God’s power to deliver from the bondage of sin, e.g., Matt 1:21; Rom 5:10; 1 Cor 15:2; Heb 7:25; Jas 1:21; 1 Pet 3:21; of human agency in this, 1 Tim 4:16

(d)   Of the future deliverance of believers at the second coming of Christ for his saints, being deliverance from the wrath of God to be executed upon the ungodly at the close of this age and from eternal doom, e.g., Rom 5:9

(e)    Of the deliverance of the nation of Israel at the second advent of Christ, e.g., Rom 11:26

(f)    Inclusively for all the blessings bestowed by God on men in Christ, e.g., Luke 19:10; John 10:9; 1 Cor 10:33; 1 Tim 1:15

(g)    Of those who endure to the end of the time of the Great Tribulation, Matt 10:22; Mark 13:13

(h)   Of the individual believer, who, though losing reward at the judgment seat of Christ hereafter, will not lose his salvation, 1 Cor 3:15; 5:5

(i)     Of the deliverance of the nations at the Millennium, Rev 21:24

Though I would not state this list of various definitions quite this same way, and would put many of the references from definition (b) into other categories, it nevertheless shows that the words “save” and “salvation” in the Bible have a wide variety of meanings.

To help the reader of Scripture know what sort of “salvation” is in view when they are studying it, I recommend that whenever you comes across the words “save” or “salvation” in Scripture, you stop, replace it mentally with the word “deliver” or “deliverance” and then ask yourself, “Deliverance from what?” If you look in the surrounding context, you will quickly discover that the deliverance in view has nothing to do with gaining eternal life or going to heaven when you die.

Doing this will drastically help your understanding of numerous difficult passages in the Bible that many have thought of as referring to receiving eternal life, but refer instead to some sort of temporal deliverance.

It is possible, as the title of this post says, to believe in Jesus for eternal life (and of course, receive eternal life as a result), but still not be “saved” from many of the temporal and physical consequences of sin, or from sickness, or from enemies, or from many of the other negative things that can happen in life.

Have you ever heard this taught before? Has it helped your understanding of some of the tough texts in the Bible?

52 God Memes that will either make you laugh or angry (depending on your theology)

By Jeremy Myers

31 Comments

As I write about the violence of God in the Bible and have conversations about this with various people I interact with during the week, I often tell people that one of the reasons this is such an important topic is because Christians need a better answer to provide the world than the ones we have always given. Usually, the stock Christian answer to the violence of God in Scripture is “God is God and can do what He wants.”

I am not fond of that answer.

In fact, let me go so far as to say that if what God wants to do is slaughter people because they don’t do what He wants, then I don’t mind it so much if people decide not to worship a God like that.

Anyway, one of the objections I occasionally get (but not too often, thankfully) to this whole series on the violence of God is that we don’t really need a better answer to give the world, because the world isn’t too concerned about the violent portrayals of God in the Bible.

I think I understand what people mean when they say this. I think they mean that most people in the world aren’t thinking too much about whether or not God is violent. That’s probably true. Maybe.

Yet in my conversations with people who do not believe in God or who want nothing to do with Him, it seems that more often than not, the issue of His violence in the Bible is often mentioned in the first few minutes of the conversation about why they cannot believe in the God of the Bible. Maybe it’s just who I talk with…

Anyway, I was looking for some images recently for one of my blog posts on the violence of God in the Bible and came across a whole series of internet God memes, and guess what? A large number of these God memes are about the violence of God in the Bible.

Frankly, I found most of these God memes quite humorous, but also quite telling. If one of the common themes in this God meme is about God’s violence in the Bible, doesn’t this imply that people are thinking about it? Maybe it’s just atheist trying to mock the Bible, but even if so, don’t we need a better answer than “God is God and can do what He wants”?

I think so.

Anyway, I though I would include some of the God memes I found online for your viewing enjoyment. Some of you might get upset at some of these. Don’t. If we cannot laugh at ourselves, or of we are too thin-skinned to allow others to laugh at us, then we should not be doing theology and should not spending time online.

Here then, are the 52 God Memes I found online. Most follow the same “meme” pattern, but there’s a few at the end I threw in for good measure.

And yes, there may be some repeats. Deal with it.