What is Salvation?

Salvation is a word used in evangelical Christian circles to describe an event in a person's life that saves him/her from an eternity of separation from God while being tormented in a place usually called hell.

"Have you been saved?" is a question often asked of a new acquaintance when inquiring if that person has made the vital decision to be saved.

In summary, in these circles, salvation is a singular decision-making moment that provides a get-out-of-jail-free card to avoid spending an eternity in hell.

How Biblical is this view?
We may get a clue from the event that introduced sin into the world.

And the Lord God commanded the man, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.” (Genesis 2: 16 - 17)

Clearly, the consequence of sin is death, not eternal torment in a place called hell.
As Paul reminds us, " ... the wages of sin is death." (Romans 6 : 23)

Indeed, I can't find anywhere in the Bible that says what evangelical preachers teach, as paraphrased above.  There are some spots where that view could be read into the text, if that is your intention, but nowhere that directly says that the penalty for sin is everlasting torment in hell.

Let's take a fresh look at this.
Salvation has two major aspects.
When God made mankind, he created us in his image (Genesis 1 : 27) and breathed his life into us (Genesis 2 : 7).

When sin entered the picture, we lost both - his life in us (we became mortal) and his image (we no longer reflected a true image of God).
So to save us from this situation, salvation needs to restore both aspects of our original making - immortality and Christ-likeness.

Let me illustrate with a little "Barry story".
Suppose you have a friend who dies of a serious illness.
And you have the power to do absolutely anything for your friend.
What would you do?

Suppose you choose to raise your friend to life.
What would be the result?
Your friend would be alive, but still seriously ill, and so would die again.
Not the best result.

Let’s start again.
Suppose this time you choose to heal your dead friend.
What would be the result this time?
Your friend would be well, but still dead.
You’d have a healthy dead person on your hands.

Clearly the best choice would be to heal your friend and bring your friend back to life.
Only then would you have a living, healthy friend again - only then would you have saved your friend.
Two things need to be done for your friend, not one.

We too are dead and have a serious illness.
We need to be brought back to life (re-gain immortality) and be healed of our disease (have the image of God re-formed in us).

In a nutshell ...
Salvation is a journey of restoration that starts with re-gaining life and is completed when we return to being God's true image bearers, as was Jesus.

And this is definitely not a one-moment event of accepting a get-out-of-jail-free card.

Blessings, Barry