What Is Salvation? A Biblical Study of Grace, Faith, and Security
If I have wronged someone, a good deed tomorrow will not make yesterday’s wrongdoing disappear. I may improve my conduct, but I still need forgiveness for what I have done. Salvation is God’s rescue of guilty sinners through Jesus Christ, who provides the forgiveness and new life we cannot give ourselves.
What God Does When He Saves a Person
Soteriology is the study of salvation. The related Greek word soteria refers to rescue or deliverance, and in this study we are considering the rescue God provides through His Son. Sin has left us guilty before Him and subject to death and judgment. We need to be brought out of that condition and into life with God.
Several words help us understand what that involves. Redemption concerns the price Jesus paid to set sinners free. Because of His saving work, God can forgive the person who trusts Him and declare that believer righteous in Christ. That declaration is what we mean by justification. The believer’s standing before God has changed because of what Christ has done.
God also does something within the person He saves. Through regeneration, or the new birth, the Holy Spirit gives actual spiritual life to someone who was spiritually dead. And through adoption, God receives the believer into His family. He does not simply improve the person’s reputation among the people who know him. He gives him life and a relationship with Himself that he did not have before.
That new relationship also has a continuing effect. Sanctification describes God’s work of setting His people apart and teaching them to live as those who belong to Christ. Glorification points to the future completion of salvation, when believers receive imperishable bodies and live with the Lord forever. These terms help us distinguish what God has already done from the growth taking place now and the completion still to come.
I find that distinction helpful when considering a new believer. God may already have justified him even though he has a great deal to learn. We should not make his acceptance before God depend on reaching maturity first. At the same time, justification belongs with the new life God gives, so we should expect that life to begin affecting his conduct.
Grace Gives What Our Works Cannot Earn
The need for forgiveness brings us back to the problem of guilt. A respected family name cannot remove it, and neither can years of religious activity. Keeping the law from this point forward would not erase the sins already committed. Baptism, church attendance, and a moving emotional experience cannot do that either. Our need goes beyond what any of those things can provide.
Paul explains how salvation is received:
For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.
The Greek word charis speaks of grace, or favor freely given. The word pistis speaks of faith, trust, or reliance. God gives salvation to a person who does not deserve it, and the sinner receives that gift by trusting Christ. Faith does not supply a missing part of the payment or give God a reason to regard the sinner as worthy.
When I trust the Savior, I am acknowledging that I cannot rescue myself. I am depending on Him to do what my own efforts cannot accomplish. That is why Paul rules out boasting. I cannot claim that my goodness earned God’s acceptance or that I contributed something that made His mercy unnecessary.
Paul then explains where good works belong:
For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.
Pay attention to the order. God makes us His workmanship in Christ, and He gives us a life in which we are to do good works. Those works follow from what He has done. I cannot reverse the order and produce the new birth by behaving as though I were already a Christian.
Attaching fruit to dead branches would not make a tree alive. In the same way, adopting respectable habits cannot give spiritual life to a person who lacks it. The conduct may look better to others, but the person still needs God to make him alive. Paul describes that work in Titus:
not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit regenerates and renews the person God saves. Paul attributes that salvation to God’s mercy, and he explicitly excludes our righteous works as its cause. The change therefore reaches deeper than a better reputation or greater discipline. God gives the life that those improvements cannot create.
I distinguish this inward work from water baptism. I reject baptismal regeneration, the teaching that baptism brings about the new birth. Baptism follows faith and publicly identifies a believer with Christ. A believer should obey Christ’s command to be baptized, but his trust belongs in the Savior. Directing his confidence toward the water would confuse an act of obedience with the saving work it cannot accomplish.
Repentance and Faith Are a Real Response
Saying that God gives salvation does not make His call to repent and believe meaningless. Scripture repeatedly addresses people as responsible for how they respond to Him. We can see that responsibility in an earlier setting, near the end of Joshua’s life.
Joshua, the leader who succeeded Moses and led Israel into the land God had promised, gathered the people and recounted what the Lord had done for them. The people were living in the land because God had helped them, yet they still needed to put away the idols competing for their allegiance. Joshua called them to respond to the God who had already acted on their behalf:
And if it seems evil to you to serve the LORD, choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve… But as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.
These were people already in covenant with the Lord. Joshua was not teaching them that the act of choosing could purchase salvation. He was confronting their divided allegiance and calling them to serve the God who had brought them there. What God had done for them made their response a serious responsibility.
The gospel likewise calls for a real response without turning that response into a payment. Repentance does not mean that I reform myself until God decides I am acceptable. The Greek word metanoia is often explained as a change of mind, but we also need to consider what the person is changing his mind about. A guilty sinner stops defending his sin and turns toward God. That change begins to affect the direction of his life because he is no longer treating his rebellion as something to protect.
Faith involves more than agreeing that Jesus lived or that certain events happened. The sinner receives Him and relies on Him as the Savior he needs. Paul describes that response in Romans:
that 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.
Earlier in Romans 10, Paul speaks about people trying to establish their own righteousness instead of submitting to the righteousness God provides. His answer directs them to Christ. The confession of the mouth acknowledges the Lord Jesus whom the person believes in his heart, including the truth that God raised Him from the dead.
I do not understand Paul to be giving us words that save someone simply because he repeats them. Confession expresses the trust of the heart. It is not an additional work that makes us worthy of forgiveness. A person can say the right words while still relying on himself, so the question is whether he has actually received the crucified and risen Christ as his Lord and only Savior.
Christ’s Blood and Death Accomplished Our Redemption
Faith rests in Jesus because of who He is and what He has done. He is the eternal Son, fully God and fully man. He was born of a virgin and lived without sin. His perfection qualified Him to offer Himself as the sacrifice for our sins, and He willingly submitted to being slain for us.
Wicked men betrayed and mocked Him. They beat and scourged Him, and they crucified Him. He shed His innocent blood and died for sinners, completing His sacrificial offering before He was buried and rose bodily from the grave. Paul connects the forgiveness we receive with that redemption:
for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith.
Paul begins with the guilt we share. All have sinned, so no one stands before God with a claim that he has no need of mercy. He then explains that justification is freely given by God’s grace because redemption is found in Jesus Christ. The gift costs the sinner nothing, but the redemption by which it comes was accomplished through Christ’s blood.
Paul calls Christ a propitiation by His blood, received through faith. Propitiation describes the sacrifice through which God deals with the offense of sin and receives the believer into His favor. As the passage continues, Paul explains that God remains just while justifying the person who has faith in Jesus. God has not declared sin harmless in order to forgive it. He has provided the sacrifice through which forgiveness comes.
Jesus did not have to persuade an unwilling Father to become merciful. The Father loved the world and sent the Son, and the Son willingly gave Himself for us. The Holy Spirit applies that completed work to those who believe. They are united in saving sinners.
The Father did not punish, curse, abandon, strike, bruise, or pour wrath on Jesus. Wicked men inflicted the torture and death, and they remained responsible for their wickedness. God had foreknown the saving purpose fulfilled through Christ’s death, but that did not make the men innocent of what they did. The sinless Son willingly endured the suffering as He bore our sins in His body.
who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness.
Peter points us to something Jesus actually endured. His body was wounded, His blood was shed, and He died on the cross. The sacrifice took place in history. It cannot be reduced to a picture meant to inspire kindness or a lesson about how to become better people. Sinners needed redemption, and He gave His life to provide it.
For the same reason, a religious ritual or a mystical experience cannot accomplish what His sacrifice accomplished. Romans identifies His blood, and Peter identifies His bodily bearing of our sins. Those passages direct our trust to His saving work. The study on life being in the blood develops that connection further.
His resurrection was also an actual event. The One who died rose bodily from the grave. He did not merely remain alive in the memory of His followers or become a symbol they could use to speak about hope. The Savior we trust is living, and His redemption is something He has truly accomplished.
Salvation Is Genuinely Offered to the World
Because Christ died for the world, I can call any sinner to receive Him without wondering whether that person was excluded from the provision I am describing. Jesus explains both the breadth of God’s love and the response through which a person receives life:
For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
God loved the world and gave His Son, and the promise of everlasting life is for whoever believes in Him. That does not mean everyone will eventually be saved. The same conversation explains that a person who does not believe is condemned already. The provision is real, but refusing the Son leaves the person without the life He offers.
Paul expresses God’s desire to save when he instructs believers to pray for others:
For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.
He continues in 1 Timothy 2:5-6 by identifying Jesus Christ as the one Mediator between God and humanity, and he says that Christ gave Himself as a ransom for all. I read that alongside Jesus’ words about God’s love for the world. Both passages give me reason to speak honestly to every hearer about the salvation Christ has provided.
That is why I reject limited atonement, the teaching that Christ’s saving death was provided only for the elect, those God has chosen to save. I cannot reconcile that restriction with the scope of these passages. I believe Christ has provided salvation for the whole world, so I do not need to qualify the invitation by suggesting that He may not have died for the person listening.
Peter also connects God’s patience with His desire for repentance. In 2 Peter 3, he answers people who mock the promise of Christ’s return because it has not yet happened. He explains why the waiting should not be mistaken for God failing to keep His word:
The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.
The Lord’s patience is not an indication that He has forgotten His promise or that sin no longer matters. He desires repentance. People can resist His appeal and remain in unbelief, but their refusal does not make the invitation insincere. It means they have refused the mercy offered to them.
I also reject irresistible grace. The Westminster Confession of Faith, in section 10.1, describes God renewing the wills of the elect and drawing them to Christ in such a way that they certainly come, willingly, by His grace. My understanding is that God’s grace draws sinners and calls them to faith, but that they can refuse His call. Their responsibility to respond remains real.
Giving God all the credit for salvation does not require me to narrow the people for whom Christ died or make their response unavoidable. God provides the Savior, gives the new birth, and keeps those who belong to Him. Faith does not earn any part of that work. The sinner who receives His gift has no grounds to boast that he saved himself.
This also affects how I proclaim the gospel. I should speak urgently because the need is real, but urgency does not justify manipulating someone into an outward response. I might persuade a person to come forward or repeat a prayer without that person trusting Christ. I cannot produce the new birth by obtaining the response I want to see. My responsibility is to explain the truth and call the hearer to repent and believe, trusting the Spirit to convict through His Word.
The New Birth Begins a Life of Growth
Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus in John 3 shows why the life God gives cannot be replaced by religious learning. Nicodemus was a teacher of Israel, yet Jesus told him that he needed to be born again. When he asked about another physical birth, Jesus explained birth by the Spirit. Neither Nicodemus’ family descent nor his standing among the people could bring him into God’s kingdom.
Paul describes the change God makes in someone who has come to Christ:
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.
The believer now has a standing before God and spiritual life that he did not have before. Christ is his rightful Master, and the old life no longer has a rightful claim of ownership over him. He may still have habits that need to change and convictions that need to be formed, but he is learning as someone God has already made alive.
I would therefore expect growth without demanding instant maturity. A new believer may grow unevenly and need serious correction. That does not reduce the new birth to a change of religious language or a decision to adopt better habits. God has done a real inward work, and that work begins to affect how the person responds to Him. I explain this further in the study on being born again.
The Spirit who gives that life also remains within the believer. He continues to teach him and produces spiritual fruit as he grows. Paul explains another part of His work when he addresses the Ephesians:
In Him you also trusted, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation; in whom also, having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise.
They heard the gospel, trusted Christ, and were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise. In the next verse Paul identifies the Spirit as the guarantee of their inheritance. God has marked them as His own, and His gift of the Spirit assures them that He will complete their redemption.
That is why assurance rests on God’s commitment rather than on the confidence I happen to feel today. Discouragement can affect how clearly a believer thinks about what God has promised. It does not change the promise or remove the Spirit who sealed him.
The Savior Keeps Those He Has Made Alive
Jesus describes this security through His relationship with His sheep, the people who belong to Him. He says that they hear His voice, that He knows them, and that they follow Him. He then explains why they are safe:
And I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand.
Jesus gives them eternal life and says that they will never perish. I do not understand that as a temporary arrangement that ends whenever a believer stumbles. In John 10:29, Jesus also says that the Father holds them and that no one can snatch them from His hand. The security comes from the Father and Son who keep them.
If that security rested on a believer’s determination to hold on tightly enough, it would be no stronger than the believer. Jesus directs our confidence to Himself. He is the Shepherd who knows His sheep and gives them life.
For that reason, I reject the Arminian view that a genuinely born-again person can lose salvation. God has made that person a new creation, sealed him with His Spirit, and placed him under Christ’s keeping. A child of God may need discipline, may grieve deeply over his sin, or may struggle with doubt. Those difficulties do not mean that God has abandoned the person He made alive.
At the same time, I would not take that promise and use it to reassure someone who permanently repudiates Christ. We have to distinguish the new birth from a profession of faith that was never real. John describes people whose departure exposed the truth about their earlier profession:
They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us.
The surrounding passage, 1 John 2:18–23 identifies opponents who deny that Jesus is the Christ. John explains that their departure from apostolic fellowship showed that they had never truly belonged. He is not describing every believer who struggles with a question or falls into a sin.
That distinction is necessary if we are going to apply the passage honestly. Permanently abandoning Christ can expose an empty profession; it does not show that God reversed a genuine new birth. A person may have inherited a religious identity or responded emotionally for a time without receiving the life only God can give.
Easy-believism offers false assurance when it treats repeating a prayer or making a superficial profession as sufficient proof that someone is saved. If I am defending deliberate dishonesty and refusing to repent, I should not be reassured simply because I once said the right words. True faith receives Christ, and the new life He gives begins to show in the way a person responds to His commands.
Those actions provide evidence of new birth. They do not earn salvation or keep the believer saved. We can take deliberate rebellion seriously while helping a weak believer who is struggling and wants to obey. He needs to confess his sin and receive correction, without being told that every failure has undone God’s saving work.
My Final Thoughts
My guilt required more than an effort to behave better, and Christ provided the redemption those efforts could never earn. He gave His blood and died for sinners, and He rose bodily from the grave. Everyone who receives Him in repentant faith is given new life and sealed by the Holy Spirit. Because His provision is for the whole world, His invitation can be offered honestly to anyone who hears it.
That leaves me with a reason to trust Him and a responsibility to live as someone who belongs to Him. I can confess sin and accept correction without pretending that my obedience purchased my salvation. The Shepherd who gave me life is also the One who keeps me. I want my response to His grace to be an honest willingness to obey, resting my assurance in what He has done and what He has promised.