Soteriology
By Jerry Batson, Th.D.
Special to The Alabama Baptist
Salvation not only has a definite point of beginning and a continuous period of development throughout one’s lifetime, it also has a point of completion or perfection. Christians have commonly referred to this culmination experience as glorification.
We might think of this whole process in terms of how God works in the Christian experience in relation to the fact that we’re all sinners. At conversion or the beginning point of salvation, God forever saves us from the penalty of sin. As we noted several weeks ago, salvation viewed as justification speaks to the removal of the penalty due us because of our sins.
During the span of a Christian’s life, God works in us to deliver us increasingly from the practice or power of sin. Since such deliverance is always a work in progress, we must continually experience God’s ongoing forgiveness for our sins. These sins cause us to come short of doing and becoming all God wants us to do and be. We need to practice regular confession.
Salvation ultimately is pointing toward the finish line when God receives us into His eternal presence, and we know for the first time deliverance from the very presence of sin, both our own and the sins of all who are around us.
The Bible speaks repeatedly of salvation in terms of the future. That being so, we can speak accurately and biblically about “having been saved” (conversion) as well as “going to be saved” (glorification).
‘Our salvation is nearer’
For example, this future sense of salvation finds expression in 1 Peter 1:5 where Christians are described as those “who are kept by the power of God through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.” This same chapter a few verses later speaks of Christians “receiving the end of your faith — the salvation of your souls” (v. 9). Viewing salvation in its future aspect, Romans 13:11 reminds us “now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed.”
Similarly, Hebrews 9:28 tells us “Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many. To those who eagerly wait for Him, He will appear a second time apart from sin for salvation.” Thus we think of glorification as the final phase of a great salvation, a phase that is initiated at the return of Christ. At that return He will raise the bodies of believers for a reunion with their souls, which will have been with Him during the time between death and His return. Those believers yet living at Christ’s return will experience a transformation of their earthly bodies. Together all believers through all the ages will have perfect bodies like Christ’s own resurrection body. This will then be glory for us all.
Final phase
Philippians 3:20–21 summarizes the prospect of final glorification in these words: “Our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ … who will transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to His glorious body.” In its final phase, salvation will include bodies suitable for inhabiting the “new heaven and a new earth in which righteousness dwells” (2 Pet. 3:13).
When we see salvation in its broadest sense of involving justification, sanctification and glorification, we understand how our Christian testimony can assert, “I have been saved, I am being saved and I will be saved.”
EDITOR’S NOTE — Jerry Batson is a retired Alabama Baptist pastor who also has served as associate dean of Beeson Divinity School at Samford University and professor of several schools of religion during his career.
Share with others: