Salvation
We are being saved from sin and death. Death is not the end of life, it is merely the dividing line between two aspects of one reality, life itself is continuous and eternal. We can do nothing to add to our salvation, it is upon faith alone. Saint John writes "We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death." 1 John 3:14. And like James says, "faith without works is dead." Although good works cannot save us, it is present in our Christian lives or how can we truly say that we have been truly saved? If we give food to the hungry, drink to the thirsty, welcome to the stranger, clothes to the naked, relief to the sick, kindness to the prisoner, we are being saved. When we fail to live as if the family of God is a present reality we are being lost.
The concept of salvation has been historicized to the point where one has to ask the question: Saved in this world or the next? The struggle for a just society is fully and rightfully part of saving history through the creation of the new man. By virtue of this fact he places himself inside the process of saving history, it is integrating oneself fully in a saving process that embraces all mankind. More and more the Latin American Church is coming to regard Christian salvation in terms of liberation.
Watchman Nee writes "Thus in the first eight chapters of Romans two aspects of salvation are presented to us: firstly, the forgiveness of our sins, and secondly, our deliverance from sin. When we were saved, we were saved from hell in an instant. It seems to take longer, however, for us as saints to be saved from ourselves, to be emancipated from our own self-righteousness - in a word, to unlearn self."
Salvation is the saving of the soul from sin and death. Salvation is not an act, it is a process. The Bible teaches us that we are not saved but that we are being saved, we grow into redemption. Sanctification is not the same as salvation but part of that same process.
[86, 172, 189, 201, 313]
