Salvation: We’re Not Missing the Point

ALL – Psalm 123:1-4
ALL – Proverbs 29:2-4
OT – Daniel 11:36-12:13
NT – 1 John 4:1-21

Interesting passage for the day: Furthermore, we have seen with our own eyes and now tell all the world that God sent his Son to be their Savior. – 1 John 4:14, The Living Bible

Thought: I was reading a book recently called Adventures in Missing the Point, and the authors were discussing what it really means for us to call Jesus our Savior. The one writing this particular chapter said that salvation in the Bible was not really about being set free from sin—at least, not until after Israel and Judah were sent into exile. Before being sent into exile, salvation was about being freed from oppression, slavery, famine, starvation, and threats—mostly about other people’s wickedness and often simply about hard times. The author wrote that it was only after the exile that the Jews, struggling to understand why God had given them over to their enemies, came up with the answer: our sin. And that it was then that they began to seek to be saved from their own sinful ways.

I agree with the authors on the point that salvation is about much more than our sins. God has sent His Son to be our Savior not just from our own personal sins, but from the hostilities of other people’s sins and from the curse that has fallen upon creation because of our sins. And I agree that more of us need to realize that when we talk about salvation, we’re talking about more than just being set free from our sins.

But I disagree that the Jewish people’s cry for salvation wasn’t really about salvation from sin until after the exile. Or at least, I disagree that the kind of salvation God was revealing to His people ever since the first sin was more about their personal well-being in the face of systemic and pervasive sins than about their freedom from personal sins.

Following Adam and Eve’s sin, God Himself performed the first sacrifice, killing some sheep to provide clothing to cover the shame of their nakedness. And He promised a time when their descendant would crush their tempter’s head—I’m pretty sure this was all about destroying not only sin’s consequences, but also sin itself. Going down the pages of history a bit, but still right at the start of the Bible, we come to Noah’s story. Noah wasn’t being oppressed by his neighbors and calling on God for salvation, but God judged them for the sinful inclination of their hearts. So Noah was saved from the flood, yes, but more importantly, he was saved from God’s judgment against sinners by having been kept pure in his heart. Joseph’s story shows God’s work to keep Abraham’s descendants alive so that the promised descendant, not just of Adam but now of Abraham, too, could come one day to crush the serpent’s head. No sooner were the Hebrews saved from the sinful oppression of their Egyptian masters than God led them to Mt. Sinai and commanded them not to sin on penalty of destruction and death. During that same journey, God gave them His instructions on how to be saved from their sins via the sacrificial system—a system that pointed them to their ultimate Savior from sin, Jesus Christ. So it through the pages of Israel’s biblical history: over and over, when God saves them from some external curse, He is also calling them to find salvation in Him from the internal curse of sin. Even in Esther, a book about how God delivered the Jews from the threat of extinction in the Persian empire, the question of personal sin arises: Will Esther sinfully and selfishly seek only to save herself while the nation faces annihilation, or will she be faithful and sacrificial to God and His people? And it is through her submission to the divine providence of God that she avoids sin and its destruction, not just for herself, but for multitudes of Jews.

God has sent His Son to be the Savior of the world. Jesus died to save us from our sins and from their curse. So we who have been set free from our sins should be more and more a part of defeating sin’s curse in this lifetime. But we look forward to the day when our Savior comes again to complete the salvation He began two thousand years ago.

We’re not missing the point when we think that Jesus died to save us from our sins. We might not be seeing all the implications of this salvation perfectly yet, but we’re not missing the point. Our Savior has saved us to be His people—and His people are people who have been freed from sin. We may need to step further into His salvation, but we’re not missing the point.

Question: Have you been saved from your sins? Has your salvation been a blessing to anyone else, saving them from being under-provided for, abused, or otherwise sinned against? What has it meant for you and those around you that God’s Son Jesus Christ is our Savior?


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