How Are We Saved? What Is Salvation?

The Bible has at least 2 views on this.

1. The most prominent understanding goes like this:
   We have all sinned and deserve God's judgment. God, the Father, sent His only Son to satisfy that judgment for those who believe in Him. Jesus, the Creator and eternal Son of God, who lived a sinless life, loves us so much that He died for our sins, taking the punishment that we deserve, was buried, and rose from the dead according to the Bible. If you truly believe and trust this in your heart, receiving Jesus alone as your Savior, declaring, “Jesus is Lord.” you will be saved from judgment and spend eternity with God in Heaven.
   
2. Here is another understanding:
   We are saved by turning our back to the world and our old self, accepting the teachings of Jesus and following Jesus into God's mission to love the world back into harmony with God's good intentions for all His children and all His creation from the beginning of creation.
   
   This is not a simple prayer formula that secures my ticket to heaven and leaves me to go about the rest of my life as I please.  This invites me into a new life that is lived for the common good of all people as God intended from the beginning.  This calls me to be not just a recipient of God's love and grace but a dispenser of the same as well.  This is a call not to escape the world some day to be with God but to be with God now and become part of His redeeming process in the world.  This calls me out of my little self and my immediate circle and even my nation to embrace all people everywhere as God's children.
   
   

The first focuses on human sin and God's judgment, and fear of punishment.

The second focuses on God's goodness and purposes and draws all people into the overwhelming love of God.

The first focuses on the individual.

The second focuses on all creation, living and non-living.

The first lacks any purpose after dealing with individual sin except to spend eternity in heaven.

In the second, humanity is called upon to take part in all of God's good intentions for His creation.

The first deals only with individual sins to the neglect of sins of systems and society, sins of nations.

The second leads to a remaking of all society to be in harmony with God's good purposes for all people.

Finally, there is something else very important, yet hard to describe. No matter how we might understand or explain salvation, it is finally an act of God. Think of the first disciples of Jesus before and after Pentecost. Whatever happened there caused a transformation in their lives from cowards to courageous, from fearful to daring, and in Peter's case, from being an arrogant bully to a person of humble love. Which of the two ways of salvation is more likely to lead to this kind of transformation of the heart? Pick your choice, but if this transformation does not happen, then I have to ask what does it matter?

If the church's dominate teaching is about a prayer that secures my eternal life in heaven, then we are missing out on an even more compelling invitation to join God's salvation for the whole world, including myself.  The gospel invitation of Jesus is so much more than getting to heaven!

Judgment Day

I'm marching up to that Great White Throne and I know I'm ready.  I've been looking forward to this all my life.  I've believed God's word just like it says, every word, yes sir!  I've defended the faith against people who were against it.  I've spent the equivalent of years in church, singing Lord, Lord with the best of them and waving my hands for Jesus.  I just knew Jesus would return any moment and kept myself ready.  O, I know I'm ready to meet Jesus.

And now, it's my turn.

How many cups of water did you give in my name?
How many of my gifts to you did you share with my other children
  and how many did you keep for yourself, just you and your family?
When you died, how many coats were in your closet?
How much food was left in your pantry?
How many of my downtrodden little ones did you lift up?
How many of my sick ones did you visit?
Why don't I see these things that I told you about?

How Are We Saved?

This post is replaced by the one above.
I'd delete this if I could figure out how!