Salvation: The entire person
If you time travelled and met a God-loving
and righteous psalmist and asked him, "And why are you so happy?" he
might say, "Because God saved me." If you came across a lovely Christian
today and asked, "What has you so pleased with life?" she might say,
"Because God saved me." Same words but almost certainly meaning
something different.
An ancient man of God, a psalmist, might easily say God
"saved" him and think of rescue from disease or enemies that sought his
life (physically or socially). This would be perfectly legitimate speech
and the nation would sing that kind of thing in their assemblies.
A modern Christ could easily use the same speech and on
occasions he or she would mean something similar. But almost always when
a modern Christian says, "God saved me" he or she means that God in and
through Jesus Christ took away his/her sins and restored them into full
life and fellowship with himself.
It makes good sense that a modern Christian would do
that because we tend to think of salvation almost altogether in terms of
sins forgiven and hope of heaven. While it is right and proper that we
should make forgiveness a central element in our experience, we
nevertheless lose something that ancient psalmists possessed. We
tend to draw too severe a distinction between what is spiritual and what
is material but that wouldn't occur to a devout and an enlightened
Israelite.
Still, it's a mistake to think that enlightened lovers
and servants of God in ancient Israel thought only of material
blessings. They didn't believe their relationship with God was only
about the physical and earthy blessings (crops, flocks, health and
material prosperity). They believed that these were the token of a
relationship they had with God. Behind the gifts was God. Behind the
crops was the God who committed himself to them. There was a meeting of
hearts and lives! Give Psalm 119 a slow reading when you have the time.
"Oh how I love your law!" he breathes. "I think about it all day every
day."
Salvation from enemies or disease wasn't the whole
story! These people were embraced by God and in turn embraced him in a
covenant relationship. Their relationship was one of friendship (their
father, Abraham, was God's friend)—holy friendship and the open-eyed and
open-hearted in the nation found that astonishing! That God, the
sovereign Lord of creation would commit in love to them (and see Psalms 8
and 67, which relate to humanity at large). But there it was. And when
he healed their diseases or delivered them from enemies (and maybe even
delivered them to enemies) he was being faithful to his commitment to them (and, of course, through them to the all nations).
This use of the word "saved" or "salvation" continues in
the Gospels when it is used of healings or deliverances from death in a
storm, for example.
But just as surely as the wicked and thankless get rain
and sunshine from God and aren't at peace with him, so an ancient
Israelite could be "saved" from disease or enemies and not have peace
with God at the personal relationship level. Nevertheless, we don't need
to be drawing false conclusions because that's true.
Because God's enemy gets many of God's blessings,
proving that you can be blessed without being reconciled with God in its
fullest sense, it doesn't follow that material blessings are mere
material blessings. God keeping his commitment to his enemy is not the
same as his keeping his commitment to his elect; but the elect aren't
God's pets. As sinful humans they are loved and God takes them
to his heart but as "the elect" they have been called to God's task of
bearing witness to a world that has in so many ways given up on itself
that God hasn't given up on it.
In any case, all of those who will enjoy salvation in
and through Jesus will know that "salvation" is about the redemption of
the entire person. And when God has completed that salvation in a coming
day they will discover that nothing that was an essential part of them as humans will have been jettisoned!
[Is there a text more ignored than Matthew 8:16-17 that links human suffering to the redemptive life and death of Jesus Christ?]
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
Many thanks to Ed Healy, for allowing me to post from his website, theabidingword.com
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