christainitychristian'sunderstandingofsa
Christianity
Christian's Understanding of Salvation
Christian's understanding of salvation
I wish there was such a thing as Christian's understanding of salvation. Salvation is certainly not as simple a thing as we see. The reason we say it is so simple is because we simply do not understand it. Indeed salvation is not only very complicated but also a very serious matter. It is a life and death matter not only for Jesus who died on the cross but also a life and death issue for every one of us on earth. It is not a child play and should not be treated as such.
Salvation is not a simple act of bowing down our head, admit out sin and confess Jesus as our Savior. Matthew 7:21 says "Not every one who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the Kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven". Admitting my sin, Believing Christ is my Lord and Confessing by trusting my life in Him is a good beginning of salvation known as justification.
You can not have salvation simply by committing the beginning phase of justifying salvation. There is a second part of salvation known as sanctification. Jesus said to them all, "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For who ever wants to save his life will lose it, but who ever loses his life for me will save it." Luke 9:23-24
Do not be so certain about the so called ABC salvation for Hebrew said further in 6:4-6. "It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift (Salvation), who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the power of the coming age, if they fall away, to..". We need to continue on the d, e, f, g of our sanctifying salvation journey.
Jesus in Revelation 3:16 says, "Because you are lukewarm neither hot nor cold I am about to spit you out of my mouth. It is harsh word from God but He would spit me out as a Christian if I do not live a life as I admit, believe and confess when He first justified and gave me freely the salvation.
The salvation process does not end here until we come to xyz part of the glorifying salvation. We will not discuss glorification here as it would not be relevant to our earthly salvation discussion and it might complicate our understanding of the salvation further.
Salvation is complicated not because it is a religion (or God fearing as defined by the advanced learner's dictionary of current English) or a lame traditional issue but an act of God. And an act of God is certainly complex and tortuous to the point that no human mind can understand. I must admit many of His acts make me speechless not to mention understanding and all I could say is "WOW how great thou art". Salvation is one of the greatest WOWs I have in experiencing Christ.
Catholic emphasizes salvation on both the Bible and church tradition. Calvin looks to the predestination of the Bible passages such as Ephesians for salvation. Luther scrutinized Rome to come out with justification by faith of salvation. Armenian goes all the opposite direction of the free will for salvation.
All these great theologians and church fathers have not only unable to shed light to my understanding of Christians' salvation; they have quite in the opposite confused me more to the issue. But again, I can understand them since salvation is, as I said, an act of God that requires no understanding. God never asks us to understand it.
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 everlasting life". God never asks to understand to gain salvation. He says "BELIEVES". There are numerous occasions in the Bible revealing God's salvation through believe or trust or faith but not once by understanding. "And faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see", Heb 11:1
How can we understand Salvation if we do not even see it? And the best I could do is to wish there was such a thing as Christian's understanding of salvation. Meantime, all I can do is to have faith in salvation not understanding.