The Biblical Background of Salvation

We have used the word “salvation” in the overall sense of what the word means to us now as followers of Jesus Christ. We will begin this lesson with some background of the concept as we find the idea develop through the “progressive” revelation of scripture.

In the Old Testament the salvation of the Lord is recognized by the people in the historical experience of the people of Israel being redeemed from Egypt. In Exodus 14:13 we see the exodus as the “salvation of the Lord.” When God is seen as a God who saves, the historical and prophetic writers often refer to the exodus as how they understand what that salvation looks like. It is God delivering His people from the consequences of their behavior and freeing them from the oppressive darkness that occurs when the consequences of that sin overtakes them.

As this idea developed, the Old Testament writers attribute righteousness to the people who are delivered. That is, when God delivers it is because the people have been restored to some form of righteousness. You see this often in the stories of the kings of Israel and Judah. When evil kings reign over the land the people move away from God. They worship false gods and practice pagan activities that are an abomination to God. When a new king comes in who does “what is right” it means that he returns the people to the Law, to the ways of God and to the proper form of worship. It often means the tearing down of the objects of false worship that the people had moved toward. This restores the land to its proper “glory” with God. Often it means the wealth returns to the land, the wars are won and peace is achieved.

While the repentance of the people was key to this salvation, it was clearly brought out by the writers that the work of salvation was God’s doing. So, we have lines like Psalm 118:14 – “The Lord is my strength and my song; he has become my salvation.”

When Israel went through its greatest judgment and lost its lands for good, the idea of salvation did not change much. It simply became a future expectation that God would one day restore and deliver Israel. The prophets saw that this work would be brought by one who was anointed by God as the deliverer. This anointed one is who we call the Messiah (anointed one is what the word means). The promise is expressed clearly in Zechariah 9:9 and following.

Rejoice greatly, daughter of Zion!
Shout in triumph, daughter of Jerusalem!
Behold, your king is coming to you;
He is righteous and endowed with salvation,
Humble, and mounted on a donkey,
Even on a colt, the foal of a donkey. (Zechariah 9:9, NASB)

This salvation was seen as coming through Israel, but the prophets also were quite clear that it would extend to the nations. Isaiah 49 shows this to us:

It is too light a thing that you should be my servant
to raise up the tribes of Jacob
and to bring back the preserved of Israel;
I will make you as a light for the nations,
that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth. (Isaiah 49:6, ESV)

The prophets also extended the nature of this salvation to go beyond the immediate historical situation. Rather than the current work of bringing a nation to its righteous place before God (Israel’s deliverance from oppressors) the prophets also included the idea that this salvation was permanent and eternal.

But Israel is saved by the LORD
with everlasting salvation;
you shall not be put to shame or confounded
to all eternity. (Isaiah 45:17, ESV)

Listen to me, you who know righteousness,
the people in whose heart is my law;
fear not the reproach of man,
nor be dismayed at their revilings.
  For the moth will eat them up like a garment,
and the worm will eat them like wool,
but my righteousness will be forever,
and my salvation to all generations. (Isaiah 51:7-8, ESV)

The New Testament took seriously the expectations of the prophets and applied them directly to the work of Jesus Christ. Jesus did this in both his words and actions and the writers of the gospels and epistles clearly saw the connection.

And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him. (Hebrews 5:9, ESV)

For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep we might live with him. (1 Thessalonians 5:9-10, ESV)

How did Jesus accomplish this salvation?

Now we need to get back to where we left off in the last lesson.

The apostle Paul, more than any other writer in the New Testament, made it very clear that the hoped for salvation came through Jesus, and that it came about by dealing with our sin issue. Paul explained that in order to experience this promised salvation we must understand our own sin and our inability to deal with that sin under our own effort. Note Ephesians 2:8-9 and Titus 3:5.

So, as Paul states in Romans 6:23, “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” death is our lot unless we receive the gift of life from Jesus.“

The question is how did He do this? Paul tells us that “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21).

Peter also tells us “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed” (1 Peter 2:24). And, he wrote: “For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive by the Spirit” (1 Peter 3:18).

What these verses teach us is that the death we deserved was covered by the death that Jesus died. In theological language we call this substitutionary atonement. Jesus died in our place. His substitution made possible our reconciliation.

Again, as in the Old Testament, the work of our salvation is God’s doing. The only role we have in this salvation is to receive it by faith. By believing that what Jesus did accomplishes the forgiveness of our sins we become participants in that amazing work.

Once we understand how this work is accomplished the next step is to grasp fully the meaning of this salvation for our lives.

We need to pull all this together.

We have learned that salvation comes from the Lord. We know from the Old Testament that salvation involves being delivered from the consequences of our sin and placed into a new and right relationship with God. We also have learned that this salvation when finally accomplished by God was designed to be an eternal solution, not just a temporary fix in our historical context. We learn from the New Testament that this salvation that was promised came through Jesus Christ and it comes to us not by anything that we do, but by what He did on the cross.

The final lesson will look at the implications of being saved. We will look at the meaning of regeneration, justification, sanctification and glorification.