Word 36 – Salvation

“How much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!” (Romans 5:10)

In Major League Baseball, a team will often bring in one of their best pitchers at the end of a close game. If this hurler succeeds in shutting down the opponents’ bats and securing the victory, he is credited with a save.

Ove a brilliant nineteen-year career with the New York Yankees, Mariano Rivera was the best at this, amassing 652 saves-and prompting signs to pop up in the stands that said, “Only Jesus saves more than Mariano.”

Rivera, a man of deep faith, was probably embarrassed by that statement, but he’d surely agree that Jesus is the all-time “saves” leader.

Hebrew has a family of words for “save”, “savior,” and “salvaation” (yasha, moshiya, yeshua). These words are related to other terms for health and well-being. So God is hailed as the Savior who looks out for the welfare of His chosen people in various ways.

Safe on the far shore of the Red Sea after a miraculous escape from Egypt, the Israelites sang, “The Lord is my strength and my defense; he has become my salvation (yeshiva)” (Exodus 15:2). Throughout the Old Testament, salvation refers to help in times of trouble. At a national level, God saves His people Israel from foreign armies-like that Egyptian battalion swept away by the sea.

In New Testament Greek we find a similar word family (soso, soter, soteria), but the meaning is significantly different.

“Today salvation has come to this house,” Jesus said at the home of Zacchaeus, a tax collector who had just repented of his fraudulent ways (Luke 19:9). Clearly this was a personal conversion, not a defeat of enemy armies. Jesus went on to recite His own mission statement: “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”

The saving is not just a cure for a plague or a bumper crop to end a famine. It’s more than physical welfare It’s spiritual. Lives are changed. When people are lost like Zacchaeus, the Savior finds them and reconnects them with God. After an encounter with Jesus, a group of Samaritans said, “We know that this man really is the Savior of the world” (John 4:42).

Not just Israel. The world.

The whole story of Jesus is wrapped up in this language of salvation.

“Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you,” an angel announced to a band of stunned shepherds (Luke 2:11)). An old prophet at the temple took the baby Jesus in his arms and prayed, “My eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the sight of all nations, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of your people Israel”. Even then, the promise of salvation extended beyond the one nation of Israel.

In the months and years after Jesus’s death and resurrection, the apostles made it clear that these events brought salvation to the world. “Salvation is found in no one else,” Peter preached, “for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.” (Acts 4:12).

Paul and Barnabas described how God had commissioned their ministry: “I have made you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth” (Acts 13:47).

On this journey to Easter, we are reminded of our spiritual need and how we, on our own, are lost. We need saving. But we come to understand the death and resurrection of Jesus not only as momentious, miraculous events but also as saving events, the extraordinary rescue mission God has engineered to save us, whom He loves.

Preparing Your Heart for Easter

Lord God, in this season of remembering the death and resurrection of your Son, help me deeply embrace the full meaning of salvation.