Mrs Bassey taught English Literature at a girls’ secondary school in Calabar for thirty-one years. Former students still greet her in the market and call her “Ma” with real affection. When I visited her one afternoon, she was sitting in her front room with the curtains half drawn, a walking stick leaning against the arm of her chair, and a small electric fan turning slowly on the side table because the power had just been restored.
Her husband had died four years earlier. Her only son lived in Houston and had not called since a quarrel the previous Christmas. Her knees were bad, so she rarely made it to midweek fellowship any more. She had stopped reading her Bible in the mornings, she told me, because she kept falling asleep over it. Most days she watched television, prayed briefly before bed and waited for Sunday.
She was not bitter. She was polite, warm, even cheerful in her way. When I asked how she was doing in her walk with the Lord, she smiled and gave an answer I have heard from many believers in many different settings. “Pastor, at least I know my sins are forgiven. That is enough for me. Whatever else there is, I will see it when I get to heaven.”
She meant it as an expression of gratitude, and it was. Forgiveness of sins is no small thing. But as I walked back to my car, I could not shake the feeling that she had just described the whole of her salvation as a ticket, kept safely in a drawer until the day of travel. Everything between now and then was simply waiting.
I have come to believe that many of us think about salvation in the same way. We are deeply thankful that our sins are forgiven. We are rightly confident about heaven. But we have very little sense that the salvation God has given us has anything to say about our loneliness, our bodies, our broken relationships or our Tuesday afternoons.
A word bigger than we thought
The New Testament word for save is sozo, and the noun salvation is soteria. In ordinary Greek these words were used far more widely than most church people realise. They described rescue from danger, recovery from illness, preservation from harm and the restoration of something to soundness. A doctor could sozo a patient. A ship’s captain could sozo his passengers from a storm.
The Gospels use the word in exactly that broad way. When the disciples were caught in the storm on the lake, they woke Jesus with the cry, “Lord, save us: we perish” (Matthew 8:25). They were not asking for forgiveness. They wanted to be rescued from drowning. When Jairus begged Jesus to come to his dying daughter, he asked Him to lay hands on her “that she may be healed; and she shall live” (Mark 5:23). The word translated healed is sozo. When blind Bartimaeus received his sight, Jesus said to him, “thy faith hath made thee whole” (Mark 10:52). Again, sozo. When the man from the region of the Gadarenes was set free from the demons that had tormented him, the people who saw it told others “by what means he that was possessed of the devils was healed” (Luke 8:36). Sozo again.
Then there is a striking moment in Acts. Peter and John have been arrested after a lame man was healed at the temple gate. Peter stands before the council and speaks of “the good deed done to the impotent man, by what means he is made whole” (Acts 4:9). A few sentences later he says, “Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). In the original, made whole and saved are the same verb. Peter moves from a healed body to the salvation of the soul without changing his vocabulary, because for him it was one great work of the one name.
Paul uses the word for preservation through the trials of life. Near the end of his life, facing execution, he writes, “the Lord shall deliver me from every evil work, and will preserve me unto his heavenly kingdom” (2 Timothy 4:18). Preserve is sozo. Salvation is the Lord keeping His servant safe all the way home.
So when the Bible tells us that we have been saved, we should hear a word that is large enough to include rescue, deliverance, healing, preservation and wholeness. God’s salvation is aimed at the whole person.
Forgiveness at the centre
PunchlineBefore we go further, we must be very clear about one thing. Forgiveness of sins is not a minor part of salvation, and we never move beyond our need for it.
When the angel announced the birth of Jesus to Joseph, he explained His name in these words: “thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21). Sin is the root problem of the human race. It separated us from God, brought death into the world, and lies behind the brokenness we see everywhere else. A salvation that dealt with our circumstances but left our guilt untouched would not be the salvation of the Bible.
That is why the cross stands at the centre. Jesus did not come primarily as a healer, a teacher or a social reformer, though He healed, taught and transformed communities. He came to bear sin. Every other blessing of salvation flows from that work. We are healed, adopted, renewed and preserved because we have first been forgiven and justified through His blood.
So Mrs Bassey was right to treasure her forgiveness. The problem was only that she thought the treasure ended there. Forgiveness is the door into salvation. It is not the whole house.
Rescued from one kingdom into another
Paul’s letter to the Colossians opens with a prayer of thanksgiving that shows how much larger salvation is than a cancelled record:
Giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light: Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son: In whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins.
Look at the movement of these verses. First, the Father has made us fit to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. Second, He has delivered us from the power of darkness. Third, He has translated us into the kingdom of His dear Son. And only then does Paul mention redemption and the forgiveness of sins, as the means by which this great transfer was accomplished.
The word translated could be used of moving a whole population from one territory to another. Ancient empires sometimes did this after a conquest, relocating entire communities to new lands under new rulers. Paul says God has done that with us. We used to live under the authority of darkness. Now we live under the rule of the Son He loves.
That changes the way we should think about our daily lives. Forgiveness deals with the debt we owed while we lived in the old territory. But the transfer means we now have a new address, a new King and a new way of life. The habits of darkness may still be familiar, but they no longer have the right to rule. The kingdom of the Son brings its own resources: His word, His Spirit, His people and His peace.
Many believers live as though they have been forgiven for living in the old kingdom but are still expected to live there. They have the pardon but not the passport. Colossians tells us that God has done both. You have been forgiven, and you have been moved.
The kindness of God our Saviour
Paul gives one of the fullest descriptions of salvation in his letter to Titus. He has just reminded believers of what they were before Christ: foolish, disobedient, deceived, enslaved to passions, living in malice and envy. Then the light breaks in:
But after that the kindness and love of God our Saviour toward man appeared, Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost; Which he shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Saviour; That being justified by his grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.
There is a whole theology of salvation in these four verses, and every part of it begins with God.
The source is the kindness and love of God our Saviour, His philanthropia, His love for humanity. The ground is His mercy, which excludes every work of righteousness we might offer. Then Paul names what God has actually done.
He saved us “by the washing of regeneration.” Regeneration means new birth. This goes deeper than a fresh start or a moral reform. God has given us a new life at the root of our being. The washing speaks of cleansing, but the regeneration speaks of creation.
He saved us by the “renewing of the Holy Ghost.” The Spirit has been poured out on us abundantly, not in a careful ration, through Jesus Christ. Renewal is the ongoing work of that Spirit, refreshing and reshaping the life He has begun.
He justified us by His grace. This is the legal side of salvation: God has declared us righteous in His sight, on the basis of what Christ has done.
And He has made us heirs according to the hope of eternal life. Heirs are family members. Salvation includes adoption into God’s household, with all the security and inheritance that brings.
Notice how many dimensions are held together here. New birth. The Spirit’s renewal. A righteous standing. A family inheritance. A living hope. If you had asked Paul whether salvation was only about forgiveness, he would have pointed you to this passage and asked which part you wanted to leave out.
And then he adds a sentence that is easy to skip: “This is a faithful saying, and these things I will that thou affirm constantly, that they which have believed in God might be careful to maintain good works” (Titus 3:8). The fullness of salvation is meant to produce a life of useful goodness. The more a believer understands what God has done, the more fruitful that life becomes.
Reconciled and saved by His life
In Romans 5, Paul adds another dimension. Having spoken of justification, he goes on to speak of reconciliation:
But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. And not only so , but we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement.
Justification and reconciliation are related, but they are not identical. Justification is a courtroom word. It describes the judge’s verdict: not guilty, righteous in the sight of the law. Reconciliation is a relationship word. It describes enemies becoming friends, estranged people being brought back together.
A judge can acquit a defendant without ever inviting him home for dinner. God does both. He declares us righteous, and He brings us near. Paul says that “we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement.” The goal of salvation is joy in God Himself. His gifts are wonderful, and the Giver is better still.
Jesus defined eternal life in exactly these terms on the night before His death: “And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent” (John 17:3). Eternal life is more than endless existence. It is a quality of life, the life of knowing God personally. John says the same in his first letter: “truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ” (1 John 1:3).
Now look at Paul’s remarkable phrase in Romans 5:10. “Much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.” We were reconciled by His death. We are being saved by His life. The death of Jesus dealt with our enmity. The risen life of Jesus now carries us forward, day by day, keeping us, strengthening us and bringing us home. Hebrews says He “is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them” (Hebrews 7:25). Salvation to the uttermost. All the way through.
For Mrs Bassey, this meant that her sitting room in the afternoon was not a waiting room. It was a place where fellowship with God was available. And reconciliation with God has a way of reaching sideways into our human relationships. Paul says God “hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation” (2 Corinthians 5:18). The God who reconciled us to Himself also makes us agents of reconciliation with others, including, sometimes, with our own children.
Made holy, wholly
NuggetSalvation also includes sanctification, which is God’s work of making us holy. Here the New Testament speaks in two ways at once, and we need both.
On the one hand, believers have already been sanctified. Paul writes to the Corinthians, a church with many problems, and reminds them of what had happened when they came to Christ: “but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Corinthians 6:11). Hebrews says, “For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified” (Hebrews 10:14). In Christ, we have been set apart for God. We belong to Him as His holy people. That is a settled fact.
On the other hand, God continues to work in us so that our character and conduct come to match that holy status. Paul prays for the Thessalonians:
And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful is he that calleth you, who also will do it.
Look at the scope of that prayer. “Sanctify you wholly.” Every part. “Your whole spirit and soul and body.” Paul does not imagine a salvation that touches the spirit and leaves the mind and body untouched. God is concerned with your inner life, your thoughts, emotions and will, and your physical existence. He wants all of you preserved blameless until the coming of Christ.
And then the promise that takes the pressure off: “Faithful is he that calleth you, who also will do it.” Sanctification is God’s work in us. We cooperate, we obey, we put off the old and put on the new. But He is the One who does it, and He will finish what He began.
This is why salvation that stops at forgiveness can leave believers stuck. If all I have is a pardon, then my growth in holiness is up to me. I am forgiven, but now I must improve myself by my own resources. That leads straight to either pride or despair. But if salvation includes the Spirit’s renewing work, then my growth is part of the salvation God is accomplishing. I can expect change, because He is faithful.
Wholeness for the body, with honest guard-rails
We have already seen that sozo is the word the Gospels use for healing. Mark tells one story that brings this out with particular beauty:
And a certain woman, which had an issue of blood twelve years, And had suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse, When she had heard of Jesus, came in the press behind, and touched his garment. For she said, If I may touch but his clothes, I shall be whole. And straightway the fountain of her blood was dried up; and she felt in her body that she was healed of that plague. And Jesus, immediately knowing in himself that virtue had gone out of him, turned him about in the press, and said, Who touched my clothes? And his disciples said unto him, Thou seest the multitude thronging thee, and sayest thou, Who touched me? And he looked round about to see her that had done this thing. But the woman fearing and trembling, knowing what was done in her, came and fell down before him, and told him all the truth. And he said unto her, Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace, and be whole of thy plague.
This woman had suffered for twelve years. Her condition made her ceremonially unclean under the law, which meant she was also excluded from worship and from ordinary touch. She had spent everything she had on doctors and only grew worse. She came through the crowd in secret, convinced that if she could just touch His clothes she would be made whole. And she was.
But Jesus would not let her slip away with only a physical cure. He stopped, turned and looked for her. When she came trembling and told Him everything, He spoke to her in front of the crowd that had shunned her. “Daughter.” It may have been years since anyone had called her by a family word. “Thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace.” Her body was healed. Her shame was lifted. Her place in the community was restored publicly. Her relationship with God was named. That is what sozo looks like when Jesus does it.
So let us say boldly what Scripture says. Jesus healed the sick, and God still heals the sick. Isaiah prophesied of the suffering Servant, “with his stripes we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5). Matthew applies the same chapter of Isaiah to Jesus’ healing ministry (Matthew 8:16-17), and Peter applies it to the cross’s healing of our sin (1 Peter 2:24). The psalmist blessed the Lord “Who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases” (Psalm 103:3). James instructs the sick to call for the elders of the church to pray over them, and he says that “the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up” (James 5:15). Save there is sozo once more. Believers should pray for healing expectantly and without embarrassment.
PunchlineAt the same time, we must handle this truth honestly, because it has often been used to wound people.
The New Testament itself tells us that faithful believers were sometimes sick and not immediately healed. Paul left his co-worker Trophimus “at Miletum sick” (2 Timothy 4:20). He advised Timothy to take a little wine “for thy stomach’s sake and thine often infirmities” (1 Timothy 5:23), which is practical medical counsel. Epaphroditus “was sick nigh unto death” (Philippians 2:27) before God had mercy on him. Paul himself carried a thorn in the flesh that the Lord did not remove, and received instead the word, “My grace is sufficient for thee” (2 Corinthians 12:9).
So the full redemption of the body belongs to the resurrection. In this age we receive foretastes, sometimes dramatic and often gradual, of a wholeness that will only be complete when Christ returns. That means several things for how we live and pray.
- Pray for the sick with faith, and keep praying.
- Use doctors, medicines and hospitals with gratitude. Luke, who wrote two books of the New Testament, was a physician, and Paul called him “the beloved physician” (Colossians 4:14).
- Never tell a sick believer that their illness proves weak faith or hidden sin. Jesus refused that reasoning when His disciples asked who had sinned to cause a man’s blindness (John 9:1-3).
- Never stop medication or treatment on the strength of a declaration alone. Let your doctor confirm what God has done.
Wholeness also reaches the mind and emotions. Depression, anxiety and trauma are real, and God cares about them. Salvation includes His comfort and renewal in those places too. That care often comes through prayer and the Word, and also through wise friends and trained professionals. A believer who receives counselling or psychiatric help is not abandoning the gospel. He is receiving one of the ways God extends mercy.
Salvation has a future tense
The last dimension of salvation is the one Mrs Bassey was most sure of: the future. But even here the Bible gives us more than a ticket to heaven.
And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.
Paul lists five links in an unbreakable chain. Foreknown, predestined, called, justified, glorified. Notice that he puts glorified in the past tense, alongside the others, even though our glorification has not yet happened. He is so sure of its completion that he speaks of it as already done. And notice the goal: “to be conformed to the image of his Son.” Salvation is heading somewhere. God’s purpose is a family of people who share the likeness of Jesus, with Him as “the firstborn among many brethren.”
This helps us see that the New Testament speaks of salvation in three tenses. We have been saved: “For by grace are ye saved through faith” (Ephesians 2:8). We are being saved: “unto us which are saved it is the power of God” (1 Corinthians 1:18), where the Greek describes those who are in the process of being saved. And we shall be saved: “Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him” (Romans 5:9). Paul can even say, “now is our salvation nearer than when we believed” (Romans 13:11).
Past, present and future belong together. If you only hold the past tense, you may become complacent, treating salvation as a transaction that has nothing more to do with you. If you only hold the present tense, you may become anxious, thinking that everything depends on your progress. If you only hold the future tense, you may become passive, simply waiting for heaven while the present goes by. Together, they give a settled, growing, hopeful life: forgiven for the past, empowered for the present, and secure about the future.
Glorification is also the final answer to the body. One day our mortal bodies will be raised and transformed. The arthritic knee, the failing eyesight, the scars and the chronic pain will not follow us into the resurrection. Every healing we receive now is a sign pointing to that day. Every illness we endure now is temporary in the light of it.
I went back to see Mrs Bassey several times over the following months. We read Titus 3 together, and Colossians 1, and Mark 5. One afternoon she stopped me halfway through the story of the woman with the issue of blood. “He called her daughter,” she said. “In front of everybody.” She was quiet for a long time after that.
Things began to change slowly. She started reading again, at eleven in the morning instead of six, when she was more awake. A doctor at the teaching hospital adjusted her medication, and the pain in her knees eased, though she still uses the stick. A group from the church began meeting in her front room on Thursday evenings, because she could not get to them, and so they came to her. Young mothers who had once sat in her literature classes now sit in her sitting room, and she teaches them Scripture with the same care she once gave to Shakespeare.
And one evening in March, after weeks of praying about it, she wrote a long letter to her son in Houston. He called her two days later. They talked for an hour. It was not the end of every difficulty between them, but it was a beginning.
The last time I saw her, I asked her the same question I had asked on that first afternoon. She smiled. “Pastor, I used to think salvation was a ticket I kept in a drawer. Now I think it is a house I am living in.”
If you have been living as though forgiveness were the whole of what God has given you, receive it again with gratitude. Then open the rest. You have been rescued and moved into the kingdom of His Son. You have been born again and renewed by the Spirit. You have been justified, reconciled and adopted. You are being made holy, spirit, soul and body. You will be glorified. Salvation is the life you live in now.
Teaching Companion
For Reflection
- How would you have described your salvation before reading this teaching? Which dimensions had you overlooked?
- What does the story of the woman in Mark 5 show you about the way Jesus saves the whole person?
- Where in your life do you need to experience being “saved by his life” in the present, and not only forgiven for the past?
- How can you hold faith for healing together with honesty about suffering, in a way that would comfort rather than wound a sick friend?
- Which of the three tenses of salvation do you tend to forget, and how has that affected your daily walk?
This Week
This week, read Titus 3:3-8 each morning and list the separate things God has done in saving you: mercy, regeneration, renewal, justification, inheritance. On each day of the week, choose one of these and thank God for it specifically, then ask Him to show you how that part of salvation applies to the day ahead. Before the week ends, take one practical step toward reconciliation in a relationship that has been strained, as an expression of the reconciliation God has given you.
A Prayer
Father, thank You for forgiving all my sins through the blood of Jesus. Thank You that You did not stop there. You delivered me from the power of darkness and moved me into the kingdom of Your dear Son. You washed me, renewed me by Your Spirit, justified me by Your grace and made me Your heir. You have reconciled me to Yourself, and You are saving me day by day through the risen life of Jesus. Sanctify me wholly, spirit, soul and body. Touch the places in me that need healing, and give me grace and patience where healing is still to come. Teach me to live in the whole house of Your salvation, and not only at its door. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Truth received brings freedom. Truth believed establishes the heart.
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version. · Illustrations using first names only are composites unless stated otherwise.