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"Have you placed your salvation in Jesus?" She laughed and asked, "What do you mean?" "I mean, are you saved?" More perplexed now, she asked, "What are you talking about?" I responded with a question, "If you were hit by a car and died right now, would you go to heaven or hell?"
That was a snippet of one of the first conversations I had with the woman who has now been my wife for 18 years. It was 2005, I'd been a Christian for all of 7 seconds, and I had recently reconnected with an old school friend. She was attending college in Texas, and I served in the Navy in Hawaii. I knew I liked this woman. I even thought she might be the one I wanted to marry.
As a new Christian, I knew that even if our relationship never became anything more than a friendship, God put me in this woman's life for one primary reason: to make sure she heard the gospel of Jesus Christ and that her salvation was secure in the savior of the world.
As a new Christian, I knew that even if our relationship never became anything more than a friendship, God put me in this woman's life for one primary reason: to make sure she heard the gospel of Jesus Christ and that her salvation was secure in the savior of the world.
My Indoctrination into Fundamentalist Understandings of a Savior
My then friend, but eventual wife, was gracious and patient with me as she navigated the months of awkward spiritual conversations we had. The last time we saw each other, the campus police escorted me out of our 11th-grade English class. Now, just a few years into the future, I was relentless in my pursuit of making sure she was damned to hell unless she surrendered her life to Jesus.
We didn't know it at the time, but I was indoctrinating my wife into the same Christian exclusivism I was learning as a new believer in Jesus. Ironically, what led me to a relationship with Jesus wasn't the threat of hell. I was invited to read the gospels for myself and experience Jesus firsthand. I don't know when exactly, but soon after I became a Christian, my love and desire for a relationship with God through Christ transformed into a religious Ponzi scheme peddling timeshares to heaven in an unknown future.
Almost immediately after openly sharing that I wanted to be in a relationship with Jesus and follow him, my indoctrination began. My relationship with Jesus meant I experienced salvation by putting my faith in Jesus as my savior.
Salvation explicitly meant that when I died, I was guaranteed entrance into heaven due to my association with Jesus. This definition of salvation was even backed by passages in the Bible, such as Galatians 2:20,
*"*I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." (NRSVUE)
My salvation (ticket into heaven) was guaranteed because I was a new creation in Christ. Because of this, when I died, God wouldn't see dirty, rebellious, sinful James. Instead, God would see the perfect Jesus whose blood covered all my sins.
Accepting Jesus as my savior was closely tied to the concept of salvation. Like salvation, savior has a very specific definition. Jesus, as my savior, means he saved me from my sins. In more theological terms, salvation refers to Jesus's atonement for my sins. And atonement always meant substitutionary atonement.
Like hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Christians, I was taught that Jesus came to 'save' sinners and that every human needed 'salvation' found only in the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. It's been almost 20 years since I was first taught these concepts, and I wholeheartedly started trying to save as many people as possible. I now understand how much words matter. In hindsight, I wish I had a better appreciation for this truth as a young Christian, especially when it comes to understanding what the Bible means when it uses words like savior and salvation.
A Historical Understanding of 'Savior'
The book of Genesis describes the lives of many Jewish, Christian, and Islamic patriarchs. We have people like Adam, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Ishmael, and Jacob. However, Israel's origin story doesn't start until the book of Exodus.
It is through Moses and God's saving of Israel from Egyptian slavery and oppression that the story of Israel begins. The question we have to ask ourselves is, what did it mean to the Israelites for God to be their savior? Did the original Jewish people understand God's role as their savior to tell someone who would come to save them from their sins?
Reflecting on the origin story of Israel and God as Israel's savior, let's look at three passages from different periods in the Hebrew Bible:
Psalm 106:21-22
"They forgot God, their Savior,
who had done great things in Egypt,
wondrous works in the land of Ham,
and awesome deeds by the Red Sea." (NRSVUE)
Hosea 13:4
"Yet I have been the Lord your God
ever since the land of Egypt;
you know no God but me,
and besides me there is no savior." (NRSVUE)
Jeremiah 14:8
"O hope of Israel,
its savior in time of trouble,
why should you be like a stranger in the land,
like a traveler turning aside for the night?" (NRSVUE)
None of these passages is God's work as a savior synonymous with being saved from sin. The definition of savior is far more 'earthy' in the ancient Hebrew understanding. God's work as a savior explicitly refers to injustice, trouble, and marginalization experienced in this life.
The earliest Christians were Jewish, so this is the understanding of the Savior. They would also have Jesus as their savior. This is not to say that Jesus, as savior, has no bearing on the sins we commit. It does make clear that focusing the saving work of Jesus on sin is a truncated and far too narrow view of the term.
We are not left to guess if Christianity took the Jewish understanding of the savior and changed it to focus on sin. In the book of Luke, the gospel author shows how the early Christian community viewed Christ as a savior. We see Zechariah, the father of John the Baptizer. As soon as Zechariah recovers the ability to speak after the birth and naming of John, he breaks into a hymn (Luke 1:71-79) where he praises God as a "mighty savior" who "guides our feet in the way of peace."
This hymn foreshadows the savior Jesus is. Like God in the Hebrew Bible, Jesus is a savior who saves people from domination systems, injustice, trouble, and marginalization. This is why Jesus doesn't merely show up in history preaching a message of repentance and forgiveness of sins. Instead, Jesus has shown up in history, preaching the Kingdom of God and manifesting this kingdom through a vibrant healing and teaching ministry.
Furthermore, like the God of the Hebrew Bible, Jesus, as a savior, guides his people in the way of peace. This peace is brought through the kingdom into the here and now; it is not a peace experienced in an unknown future.
The Meaning of 'Salvation'
Much like the concept of savior, salvation has been given an overly narrow reference. Where the savior forgives sins, salvation makes primary going to heaven. In the same way that mainstream Christianity has lost the 'earthiness' of the term savior, it has done the same thing with salvation. New Testament scholars Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan explain;
"the word has much more this-worldly, here-and-now meanings, including rescue, deliverance, liberation, protection, healing, and being made whole." (The First Christmas: What the Gospels Really Believe About Jesus's Birth, pg. 187)
At the heart of biblical ideas of a savior who brings salvation is what the New Testament refers to as Jesus being a King and light to the world. The light brings salvation, which is about bringing about God's ideals for the world. Jesus's salvation is about making God's dream for the world a reality.
Jesus as our savior has both personal and corporate implications. In a hyper-individualistic society, we emphasize the personal by completely forgetting the corporate. To see Jesus as a savior the way the ancient Israelites saw God as a savior requires us to see both the individual and corporate implications of not just what we are saved from but what we are saved to in the here and now.
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Thanks for stopping by and reading this article! If my work has served you or you want to contribute to creating authentic faith connections, consider becoming an Authentic Faith Advocate.
Thanks for stopping by and reading this article! If my work has served you or you want to contribute to creating authentic faith connections, consider becoming an Authentic Faith Advocate.