Christian’s understanding of salvation
I wish there was such a thing as Christian’s understanding of salvation. Salvation is certainly not as simple a thing as we see. The reason we say it is so simple is because we simply do not understand it. Indeed salvation is not only very complicated but also a very serious matter. It is a life and death matter not only for Jesus who died on the cross but also a life and death issue for every one of us on earth. It is not a child play and should not be treated as such.
Salvation is not a simple act of bowing down our head, admit out sin and confess Jesus as our Savior. Matthew 7:21 says "Not every one who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the Kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven". Admitting my sin, Believing Christ is my Lord and Confessing by trusting my life in Him is a good beginning of salvation known as justification.
You can not have salvation simply by committing the beginning phase of justifying salvation. There is a second part of salvation known as sanctification. Jesus said to them all, "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For who ever wants to save his life will lose it, but who ever loses his life for me will save it." Luke 9:23-24
Do not be so certain about the so called ABC salvation for Hebrew said further in 6:4-6. "It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift (Salvation), who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the power of the coming age, if they fall away, to..". We need to continue on the d, e, f, g of our sanctifying salvation journey.
Jesus in Revelation says, "Because you are lukewarm neither hot nor cold I am about to spit you out of my mouth. It is harsh word from God but He would spit me out as a Christian if I do not live a life as I admit, believe and confess when He first justified and gave me freely the salvation.
The salvation process does not end here until we come to xyz part of the glorifying salvation. We will not discuss glorification here as it would not be relevant to our earthly salvation discussion and it might complicate our understanding of the salvation further.
Salvation is complicated not because it is a religion (or God fearing as defined by the advanced learner’s dictionary of current English) or a lame traditional issue but an act of God. And an act of God is certainly complex and tortuous to the point that no human mind can understand. I must admit many of His acts make me speechless not to mention understanding and all I could say is "WOW how great thou art". Salvation is one of the greatest WOWs I have in experiencing Christ.
Catholic emphasizes salvation on both the Bible and church tradition. Calvin looks to the predestination of the Bible passages such as Ephesians for salvation. Luther scrutinized Rome to come out with justification by faith of salvation. Armenian goes all the opposite direction of the free will for salvation.
All these great theologians and church fathers have not only unable to shed light to my understanding of Christians’ salvation; they have quite in the opposite confused me more to the issue. But again, I can understand them since salvation is, as I said, an act of God that requires no understanding. God never asks us to understand it.
John says, "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever BELIEVES in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life". God never asks to understand to gain salvation. He says "BELIEVES". There are numerous occasions in the Bible revealing God’s salvation through believe or trust or faith but not once by understanding. "And faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see", Heb 11:1
How can we understand Salvation if we do not even see it? And the best I could do is to wish there was such a thing as Christian’s understanding of salvation. Meantime, all I can do is to have faith in salvation not understanding.
I think before we move on with the discussion, we should first make clear the meanings of the words we are discussing.
· Christianity is a Christian belief and practice.
· Survive is to remain alive or in existence.
· Bible is the sacred scriptures comprising the Old and the New Testament.
And base on this mutual understanding of the words, I will pursue my reasoning in areas as follow:
First is from the historical fact. We all know Christianity started in around A.D. 36 as recorded in the book of Acts 11:26. The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch. In the history class, we learned that the term outside the Bible was first used when Tacitus recorded that Nero blamed the "Christians" for the Great Fire of Rome in AD 64. As we read on the history, we see that Christians have been facing with tremendous persecution of some kind somewhere right from the first day at Antioch until this very moment I am writing this article. Yet, Christianity prospers throughout all these difficult years. Is Bible the source of the survival?
We will not go into length to discuss the Hebrew Torah or the Greek Pentateuch or Latin Vulgate of the Bible history. Bible etymologically means the papyrus roll and first printed in English by Coverdale in 1535. From the time the first papyrus roll Bible was scattered in 2nd century Christian churches until Coverdale, history had witnessed that Bible never did play a major role in the survival of Christianity. When the Latin Vulgate was the main Bible edition used in the Catholic Church, Christians were not allowed to own or read Bible. The interpretation of the Bible was solely in the hand of the Church leaders. The Bible was never used as the sole authority of God’s word. Church teaching was based on both the Bible and Church Traditions.
Worse, Bible was intentionally or negligently misinterpreted to the benefit of some Priests. The situation deteriorated so badly to the point where Martin Luther protested the Indulgence Decree initiated by the Pope with his 95 thesis on the church door at Wittenberg. Was Christianity survived during this period of Biblical abuse and scandal? Again history told us “yes”, it did.
During the Chinese Cultural revolution from 1963 to1969, China was under the iron-hand communist ruler Mao Se-Tung. His communist economic policy known as “The great leap forward” turned out to be a total disaster. Ten and thousand of people died out of starvation. Christian was brutally persecuted. There were no meeting, no praying, no worship, no church and certainly no Bible. Was Christianity survived?
“Yes”, it did. But not only survived, it multiplied. Christians in China actually tripled during this time known as the silent period. We were praying for them at the time. We could not do anything much besides praying in tears for we heard some of our brothers in Christ were gunned down for leading house meeting secretly to worship God..
A few years ago, our Cambodia neighbor ran into the Chinese style Christian persecution. At least 1 million people were killed under the communist Poi pot regime. We were gathering money to buy Bibles to dump into the sea coast in hope that fishermen will pick them up for their Christian family. The idea was pulled back for fear that Christian may suffered harsh penalty if our activity was discovered by the Cambodian authority. Christians in Cambodia today are still suffering persecution. They do not enjoy the luxury of Christianity you and I do. But they have survived and thriving. History again tells us that Christianity could survive without the Bible.
The Bible itself confirms that God never intends the Bible to survive Christianity. Our survival depends on God Himself. For “the wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them. For since the creation of the world, God’s invisible quality – His eternal power and Divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse – Rome 1:18-20
Jesus Himself clearly stated that He is the One, not the Bible, who survives Christianity. “I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish, no one can snatch them out of my hand – John 10:28. Paul further echoed Jesus’ teaching in Ephesians 1:11-12, “In Him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of Him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of His will…”
The purpose of the Bible has never been to make or to give or to restore or have any thing directly to do with the survival of Christianity in the sense as to remain alive or in existence as defined earlier. The purpose of the Bible has many folds and chief among them is the revelation of God Himself.
Paul said in Ephesians 3:3-6 that Christ revealed Himself and His Gospel to us in writing. God intends His Words – Himself – Bible as Good News He has made in the 2 Testaments for “those who ever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life”. Paul again said that the Holy Scripture has a purpose to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus – 2 Timothy 3:15. Simply put, it is to let you have the wisdom, knowledge and make you understand the revelation of salvation by faith.
The subordinate purpose of the Bible is to teach, rebuke, correct, and train in righteousness so that man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work, 2 Timothy 3:16-17. And we should obediently let the Bible do the works as such as intended by God. Thus, I would conclude that Christianity could certainly survive without the Bible.