If we are faithful to the Scriptures, we will recognize that the words saved and salvation are flexible. They can refer to different kinds of salvation. GES has many articles pointing out how the word is used in various ways in the NT.
Sometimes, this presents a problem. Many Evangelicals almost automatically assume that when the Bible uses the word saved or salvation it must mean salvation from an eternal hell. If you point out that these words often mean something else in the NT, people will think you are a heretic.
It shouldn’t be that way. Even in English, we use these words in different contexts. One of my favorite movies, The Shawshank Redemption, powerfully illustrates this. One of the characters is a corrupt, cruel prison warden named Horton. He even murders a man who threatens his finances. Horton is also a self-righteous deacon in a local church.
Andy is an inmate, and Horton uses him for illegal financial gain. When they first meet, Horton gives Andy a Bible. He encourages Andy to read it because “salvation lies within it.”
Horton doesn’t know it, but Andy obtains a tool sort of like a miniature pickaxe. Over a period of twenty years Andy uses it to dig a tunnel that leads out of the prison. Andy is set free.
During those twenty years, Andy hides the pickaxe in his Bible. After the escape, Horton opens Andy’s Bible and sees the outline of the instrument, dug out of its pages. Andy has left Horton a note: “You were right, warden, salvation lies within.”
Both Horton and Andy used the word salvation. But they meant very different things. Horton meant that Andy could experience salvation from hell if he read the Bible. Andy meant that the pickaxe stored in the Bible for twenty years would lead to his salvation from prison. Andy’s Bible had two different kinds of salvation!
The NT uses the words saved and salvation in the same ways. In Acts 16:30, a jailor asks Paul, “What must I do to be saved?” When Paul tells him to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, he means that believing in Christ will result in the man’s receiving salvation from the lake of fire.
But in Rom 5:10, Paul uses the word in another way. The believer has been declared righteous because of Christ’s death. Now, the believer can be saved by Christ’s life. Paul goes on to explain that this salvation is salvation from the power of sin. The believer no longer has to be imprisoned by the power of sin because the power of the risen Christ lives within him (Rom 6:22). Since Christ is alive, the believer can be set free.
So, Paul uses the word saved in different ways. To an unbeliever like the jailor in Philippi, he uses it the way Horton does in the movie. When Paul speaks to people already saved from the lake of fire, he uses it the way Andy does. The believer has experienced salvation from the lake of fire. He will live in Christ’s kingdom forever. In this life, through the power of the risen Lord in him, he can experience salvation from sin. This latter kind of salvation is very prominent in the NT.
When Andy is set free from prison in The Shawshank Redemption, he stands with his arms outstretched towards the sky. Rain is falling on him, but his face is filled with joy. He has not felt the rain this way for twenty years. He is enjoying his “salvation.”
As believers, we already have salvation from hell. May we also seek the joy of the salvation that comes from walking by the power of the Spirit.
