Communication Breakdown Part 3

In the last two blog articles, we’ve been thinking about the problem of the “insider language” that Christians habitually use in talking about the things of God, and the extent to which that fails to communicate—at least outside of church circles, and often within them as well. In this final instalment of what has become a trilogy, we’re going to look at what it means to be “saved” and its counterparts of “salvation” and “saviour.”

The base premise of all three articles is that if we are to communicate effectively, the words and ideas we use must point the listener to something they can meaningfully relate to—the words and ideas have to "signpost” it well.

These insider words and ideas are not themselves the truths, they’re pointers to truths. They’re tools that serve as a means to an end—which is that people “get it,” that what we’re talking about “makes sense.” We don’t have to use particular words (even “biblical” words) unless they’re also the most helpful for achieving that. But, of course, changing them to something that communicates better means that we must first understand them well ourselves!   

In any field of enterprise, there is a technical vocabulary that those who work within it use as a shorthand for communication. Every specialisation has its insider language, which is necessary and appropriate. In the Christian context, however, things are slightly different. Firstly, the church is not made up solely of theologians and biblical scholars—the vast majority of the church is lay people. Secondly, the church has been described as the only club that exists for the benefit of its non-members. That may be more cute catchphrase than profound truth, but there is an underlying point that the church’s target audience is outsiders as much as insiders. Hence, to habitually speak an insider-only language is profoundly unhelpful (dare I say, somewhat lazy?) and not least because, as we’ve previously noted, there’s plenty of confusion even amongst the insiders about what many of these religious words and ideas mean.      

So, what about “salvation,” “saved,” and “saviour”? They come from the NT Greek sōtēria (“salvation”) word group, from which we get “soteriology” (the theology of salvation). They reflect a range of meaning, including rescuing, delivering, protecting, keeping safe from harm, and making well—restoring to health and well-being. Throughout the Gospels, they are used in those senses. At the beginning of the Gospels, Jesus is prophesied as the Saviour (sōtēr), who will save (sōzō) his people.

An obvious question is “saved from what?” Evangelicals often take that to be “saved from God’s wrath,” reading John 3:16 as saying: “God so hates sin that he sent his Son to suffer and die on the cross so that anyone who prays the Sinner’s Prayer will go to heaven instead of eternal conscious torment in hell.” But there are some serious problems in how a “good news” framed that way comes across. One is that it starts from God’s wrath and his hatred of sin rather than his love. Another is that it’s framed in the negative (avoiding hell). Another is that it’s “all about me” and me going to heaven when I die. And another is that all I have to do is say “Amen” to the Sinner’s Prayer one time and then (as evangelicals will usually pronounce) it’s “once saved, always saved.”

Another problem with this version of “good news” is that it sounds like God graciously finding a way to save us from himself. In other words, Jesus came to save us from the “bad news” of a hell that God himself put in place as the eternal destiny of everyone who doesn’t become a Christian. Hmmm . . . 

Scaring people into heaven with dire threats of hell if they don’t pray the Sinner’s Prayer to “get saved” has serious limitations in terms of the quality of the relationship with God that gets founded on such a platform—not least in the nature and character of the God that it’s reflecting. I have heard nationally known evangelical leaders saying (privately), “But if hell is not eternal conscious torment—non-stop torture forever, in the fiery flames—then how will we get anyone to become a Christian?” Just think about that for a moment . . .     

Here's something else to think through: it’s one thing to say that Jesus’ death on the cross enabled God to forgive us our sins, it’s something else to explain—in ways that people can grasp—why God was otherwise prevented from doing so. After all, in the Lord’s Prayer, we flawed humans are expected to “forgive those who sin against us”—unlimited times, according to Jesus in Matthew 18:21-22.  

One of the strengths of evangelicalism (at least on paper) is its desire to simplify things for people. That’s good, but only if we’re simplifying things well. To explain something simply, we first need to understand it profoundly—and what we’ve just been talking about is not an example of that. We really do need to think through the “good news”—and equally, the corresponding “bad news” to which it responds—in deeper and broader ways. There is no point in us presenting Jesus as “the answer” to questions unchurched people are not asking. There is no value in presenting Jesus is “the solution” to problems they don’t recognize. Answers and solutions that only resonate within an unquestioning evangelical ghetto will not extend the Kingdom.    

The New Testament speaks of being “saved” in three senses: that we “have been saved” (we’ve begun a relationship with Jesus), that we “are being saved” (we’re being transformed into his image and likeness), and that we “will be saved” (into the life of the age to come). All three of these aspects are part of “salvation” in both present and future senses.

Salvation is relational, not transactional. It’s not something we “get,” it’s a transformed life that we enter into. Eternal life is not just a quantity of life that begins when we die, it’s a quality of life that begins now—centred on a personal relationship that begins now. Jesus asked and answered the question: “What is eternal life? It is knowing you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.” (John 17:3). To be saved is to have entered into the life of God through Christ; becoming immersed—“Christ in us” and us “in Christ,” as the Apostle Paul characterises it. It’s a transfer of affections from the things of this world to the things of God—in which, increasingly, day by day, his divine nature and character shape what our behaviour looks like, what our ambitions and priorities look like, and what our relationships look like. Nor is it all about just “me and Jesus,” in a private little one-on-one thing. It's also becoming joined to his “body”—the community of his people—in a tangible way. Part of an actual local church—joined to it as to Jesus—not just “technically” part of some nebulous universal church. These are the fruits of a salvation that begins now. 

I completely understand why evangelists want to “simplify” their “gospel invitation” to a cost-free “Do you want to go to heaven when you die?” It’s no wonder they can get good numbers responding—after all, where’s the downside to saying “yes” to that? Who wouldn’t want to have a “Get Out Of Hell Free” card in their back pocket in case they need it when they die (in case Christianity turns out to be true)?

To truly understand “salvation,” we have to look backwards from the future. What we call “heaven” for short is more accurately spoken of as the “new heavens and earth”—the “new creation,” or renewed creation, that we see foretold in Revelation 21 and elsewhere; when God completes the job of “saving” his once “very good” creation (Genesis 1:31). It’s a “saved” version of that original creation in which every enemy that has invaded it—and every consequence of that invasion that has damaged and destroyed people’s lives, that’s stolen life from people and killed life in people (John 10:10)—is removed and eradicated. These enemies are recognized biblically as Satan, sin, and death. Once those enemies are removed from human experience, what is left? Life! Eternal life. Hence, the new creation is spoken of as one in which there will be “no more death, or mourning, or crying, or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” (Revelation 21:4). One in which, as in the beginning, “God’s dwelling-place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.” (Revelation 21:3).

This removal and eradication of all of the “bad news” that has invaded God’s once “very good” creation is pictured by Jesus in his Parable of the Wheat and the Weeds (or, Tares), in Matthew 13:24-30. “Salvation” is rescuing, healing, and restoring—“saving”—that creation, such that God’s enemies do not win. All that was good about the first creation will remain; all that would damage and harm it will be gone. 

Back to that “hell-centred” version of the gospel for a moment. It’s self-evident that if a place of eternal conscious torment (the standard evangelical understanding of hell) for those who did not “pray the prayer” in this life will exist concurrently with heaven in the new creation, then either Satan and his demons will eternally be kept alive and well to administer it on God’s behalf, or God himself will be doing so directly. I am not suggesting that "everyone automatically gets to go to heaven” (that is swinging the pendulum too far); I’m simply raising the question of whether hell (understood as eternal conscious torment) can credibly have a place in the kind of new heaven and earth that Revelation 21 describes; whether God overseeing that kind of eternal hell (in parallel with an eternal heaven) is compatible with the nature and character of the God we see in Jesus.      

If the new creation, then, is “the future of salvation,” what are the implications for the present? The main one is that God’s people should want to align themselves with that future vision of the “then” in the “now.” We should want to be people who bring a foretaste of that “life in the age to come” into people’s lives today, especially the suffering, the disadvantaged, and the marginalised in this world. People who want to join Jesus in his John 10:10 mission: “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full”—or as some versions say, “abundant life.” We cannot solve everyone’s troubles, but we can help some people in some of their troubles. Fullness of life, and abundance in life, insofar as that is possible for people in a broken world, is God’s desire for them and should be our desire, too.

“Well done, good and faithful servant” (Matthew 25) will not be measured at the end of this life by how faithfully we’ve applied evangelical doctrines but by how faithfully we’ve loved people and helped them to flourish.        

We should not be content to bring only “spiritual” good news—good news information for when people die. That is not what we see Jesus doing in the Gospels, so it’s not what we should be doing either. Everything Jesus did was part of the “good news”—reflecting a foretaste of a holistic future “salvation.”