Rethinking Salvation
The term salvation is often associated with a passive "going to heaven when I die." But over the years I have developed a more active, justice-minded approach to salvation.
Lately I have been rethinking the concept of “salvation” as it is typically understand within evangelical vocabulary. As I understood salvation at 17 years old, Jesus died on the cross for my sins so that I will go to heaven. This was essentially the one-sentence definition of the gospel that was etched in my brain.
How I lived my life mattered, but it had nothing to do with living out the teachings of Jesus. Rather, the things I did were merely benchmarks for personal and corporate security. Doing good things was the quantifiable measure that my salvation was secure. Period. This way of understanding salvation, the gospel, the teachings of Jesus, and learning to be an adult (again, I was only a teenager when this journey began) caused a bit of confusion and exhaustion. Justice, violence, politics, etc. were never a part of my evangelical upbringing unless they briefly described evangelical assumptions about those topics.
For example, as it pertained to politics, the message was something to the effect of: “We vote Republican because God loves unborn babies and does not want them murdered.” Or when I became a committed pacifist around 2012, the topic was either met with glazed eyes, or judgment. I thought the teachings of Jesus were clear on that one. I was wrong.
Needless to say, after 26 years of following Jesus my views of salvation have drastically changed. I believe the New Testament has much to say about the topic, just nothing at all like how it was described to me growing up. I take a position that salvation is more about an invitation to participate with what God is doing in this life, not about waiting for entrance into an amorphous afterlife.
REDEFINING SALVATION
Utilizing the work of Michael Gorman, I understand salvation as descriptive of a “cruciform” frame work, or cross-shaped paradigm. As Gorman suggests,
“I want to suggest that for Paul there is one soteriological model: justification is by crucifixion, specifically co-crucifixion, understood as participation in Christ’s act of covenant fulfillment.”[1]
Words like salvation, justification, and righteousness have become so saturated in the evangelical vernacular that I think the weight of their meaning has not provided the imagination necessary to show their true physical impact. I agree with Gorman that any discussion around these terms begins and ends with the cross. As a part of most evangelical teaching about the cross, it describes the unfortunate details of Jesus’ death sentence but does not serve much of a purpose for his followers otherwise. However, the cross is the central hub for where the benefits of salvation occur. It is where the “righteousness of God” occurred. It is where Jesus’ followers form their way of life and create environments of human flourishing and reconciliation.
The results of the cross, thus, form a much denser understanding of salvation that involves how we live today, not as something we await postmortem. Again, Gorman explains,
Salvation in Paul is the fulfillment of Israel’s story, the calling of a new people composed of both Gentiles and Jews, being made children of Abraham as they are formed into the image of the Jewish Messiah (Gal 3:29; 6:16)… And human salvation in Paul is one dimension—the one that Paul stresses—of the cosmic drama of liberation (Rom 8:18-25), reconciliation (Col 1:19-20), and victory over all evil powers (1 Cor 15:24-26, 54-57), which includes the universal acclamation of Jesus as Lord (Phil 2:9-11)…[2]
In other words, the concept of salvation and the Protestant emphasis of justification is not limited to Western ideas about Christian spirituality. Rather, a more robust soteriology is cosmic in scope and participatory in nature. For Paul, the vision of justification is not individualistic, rather, it is fundamentally about God’s people as a community participating in God’s present and future activities.
RIGHTEOUSNESS, JUSTIFICATION, OR JUSTICE?
A brief analysis of the word often translated “justification” or “righteousness” might help ground this a little better. From my perspective, Paul seems to be placing an emphasis on “justice” when we read these words in our English New Testament.
For example, one of the prominent texts for explaining justification in Paul is found in Galatians 2:16. Paul uses the Greek verb diakaoõ, translated as “justification,” to describe the position by which someone has “faith in Christ.”
“Know that a person is not justified by the works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law, because by the works of the law no one will be justified.
However, in texts like Romans 1:16-17, Paul uses the Greek noun dikaiosynè (same root word) to describe the “righteousness” of God.
“For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile. 17 For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed—a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.”
There is a “linguistic link” between “justification/justice” and “righteousness” known as the dikaio- family of words. However, our English translations often miss this link when they translate dikaiosynè as “righteousness” instead of “justice” as the linguistic link might suggest. There is no dichotomy for Paul between justification and justice. They involve two sides of the same soteriological coin. They both involve a commitment to following Jesus, and their participatory function in the life of the church is formed through the cross.
Simply stated, the justification that comes from Christ means that Jesus is the justice of God. Looking at 2 Corinthians 5:21, Gorman concludes,
“Justification makes the unjust into the just; that is, as 2 Corinthians 5:21 puts it, justification is the divine act of transforming people into the justice of God. They become capable, by God’s grace and power, of practicing the justice of God displayed on the cross.”[3]
BECOMING AGENTS OF DELIVERANCE
Salvation and justification, as cross-shaped doctrines, require the church to understand that it is participating in God’s redeeming program—either by receiving the participatory justice of other followers of Jesus, or extending the justice to those who are most vulnerable. They are terms that require social and material application in our life and world today.
Abstract definitions of justification involving the inner work of God within the individual is a fraction of God’s justifying processes. This is largely why I reject the popular notion of salvation as a thing that I am saved from. Salvation is about what I am invited to participate in. These are two very different things. One is passive, the other requires action. To believe in salvation as a spiritual benefit for my belief in Jesus requires nothing of me.
Additionally, the word often translated as “salvation” is soteria which can also be translated as “deliverance” or “preservation.” Don’t misunderstand, sometimes salvation may better convey an idea the biblical author is trying to make. However, deliverance requires a physical or material application. If one is experiencing physical or emotional pain, deliverance has real world impact. As a follower of Jesus, I am invited to participate with Jesus in this deliverance work. Yes, there is a resurrection hope that we as Christians hope for. But is this what the biblical authors mean by “salvation?” I’m not as convinced anymore.
What I suggest above absolutely has political significance. The way we structure society, or structure the community of the church as having a positive impact on human flourishing, is the result of the suffering of the cross. It both invites others to join in this community, and also invites the community to engage in the brokenness of this world. This is what justice does, and I believe the term deliverance helps define the functions of justice. This is what Jesus-informed political witness ought to entail. When we hear calls for the church to be engaged in works of justice, foundationally we should hear a call to deliverance.
I do realize “deliverance” has a “cast out demons” tone to it. This is why I think justice is still a better word. But we do understand the active nature of deliverance. It is an all-hands-on-deck type of activity. Justice is not different, after all, this is the salvation we were called to. When I imagine Jesus washing the feet of his disciples, or raising Lazarus from the dead in the Gospel of John, these are not merely spiritual images. They conveyed the message of salvation through deliverance and justice. These two actions overturned the power of death and the other overturned the concept of power and coercion. Liberation was at hand! How might we reimagine these concepts working in our own day?
[1] Michael J. Gorman, Inhabiting the Cruciform God: Kenosis, Justification, and Theosis in Paul’s Narrative Soteriology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), 43-44.
[2] Ibid., 172.
[3] Ibid., 237.