Saved, but saved from who or what, and if we are saved “from” we must be saved “to”.
After he prayed, the man declared, “I’ve been saved!” Everyone clapped and cheered amid encouragers to the man about his new life in Christ.
Saved from what? Is it more than being delivered from bad guys on earth or from bad guys in hell? Being saved from them is no small thing in itself, but does God mean something larger than that? i think when we say we’re “saved” we have a partial understanding of that.
The Lord wants us to re-understand His heart, re-imagine Heaven, re-grasp His words, His meanings, and the ramifications of the words we use in our “dialogue about our conversations with God” (theology). We dribble God’s words around like salt on our food, without really understanding what our mouths are saying (or not saying). It is becoming more and more apparent that there is a great divide between what this world thinks and what God preferences and standards are.
i’m very pleased to say, it is more than just being delivered from bad guys on earth or from bad guys in hell. It is more than simply being delivered from really terrible things which hunt us in the dark. It is a literal changing of blood lines. The earth and my biological parents are not my relatives, other than my flesh relates to them, and poorly at that. i changed blood lines and the Son of God is my inheritance and bloodline now. Wrongness of character (iniquity) and sin have caused all things to become in-animated from God, our very source of life, and that includes being alienated from each other too, from birth, and is the root cause behind the decline of the universe. Rocks become pebbles then dirt, water starts as fresh and becomes stagnant, living flesh declines to non-living flesh, etc, etc, everything declines.
i am from earth, i was born here. i have earth eyes, earth ears, earth mouth, earth tastes, earth touch, and earth emotions. i hear in a limited range of audible frequencies, my eyes see a limited number of colors, and the horizon is the limit of my distance vision. My mouth of flesh can only speak sounds which don’t have enough momentum to go very far. Everything about me is earth oriented due to sin. When Adam and Eve pulled the trigger on the cosmic release of sin in the universe, death and dying became a real thing for all of us and everything else. We die, trees die, things rot, there is decay, sound dies out, hope fades, satisfaction fades in and out, there are sounds and colors we do not see and hear anymore, tastes that are no longer in a frequency spectrum we recognize … all from sin, everything about us, as pertaining to flesh, is damped … in the Godless present state of the universe, we are inclined to decline.
Our flesh and this world has a destiny it cannot escape, which is decay and death. But, because of Jesus, our spirits can reap a different harvest through Jesus Christ.
In Heaven there will be no dead trees, no stagnant water, no rotting anything, no fading flowers, no sadness, no hatred, no fading hopes, no terminal illness. In the beginning, before death, there was only life and everything was relational. When sin entered in, death became a real thing and all relationality was divided. In the end when God resolves all things unto Himself, once again death has no place there. If we take death, as a whole, OUT of the picture, what are we left with? At present, death reaches further than just things of earth declining to a state of subatomic dust. Sin and death influence the entire cosmos (cosmos being Greek for “world”). It even influences the attitude of “the world”, which says it is a self-existent entity, it’s own mother & father, it’s own beginning and end, and has no need of anyone else. The limited view is due to sin and death. We assume because we breath we are alive, but that is not true according to God.
We are animated (made alive) by Christ alone, and without Christ we are inanimate, earth beings, made of dirt and the cosmos, with no clue why we need to be different, unless God intervenes, drawing close to us so we can be made animated again. The closer He gets to all things, the more all things become like Him. In Christ alone is wisdom, knowledge, and understanding, and anything or anyone who is not connected to Him by the Blood of Christ, is not participant to those things, unless God gives it to them … which is why God gives wisdom liberally to those who ask. From Him are all things and to Him are all things, Romans 11:36. If, in His mercy, He didn’t extend Himself to us, we would be darkness also, void, and without insight or understanding, not able to even think to breath to save our own lives. But !Now!, we who believe in Christ, are “saved”, and it is MORE than just saved from bad guys.
“Saved” and “Salvation” have been grossly understated, watered down to nearly lose the concept. Like “repent” … it’s been watered down by many to merely mean “change your mind”, which is shallow and thin and misses the heart of God. But in Hebrew “repent” is much larger, more accurately meaning, “Come Home”, which makes more sense considering man left home due to sin, and it has been God’s effort to bring us home, more than merely change our mind. Remember, change without transformation is simply not enough.
Romans 10: 9 “If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. For the Scripture says, “Whoever believes on Him will not be put to shame.” What do you think?
i’m Social Porter for Living In His Name.