First Presbyterian Church
Salvation Definitions
Sermon for March 22, 2009
by Pastor Susan Barnes

The letter to the Ephesians was a general letter to gentiles living in Asia Minor, part of the Greek world. Today's text is in three parts: one, it tells what we are saved from; two, how God remedies that; and three, the awareness and activity of those being saved. Listen for the word of God as it is found in Ephesians 2:1-10.

1 You were dead through the trespasses and sins: 2 in which you once lived, following the course of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient.

3 All of us once lived among them in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses, and we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else.

4 But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us

5 even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ— by grace you have been saved--

6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,

7 so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

8 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God-

9 not the result of works, so that no one may boast.

10 For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.

This ends our reading of God's word.

The Bible speaks of salvation in a variety of ways. For this sermon, I am indebted to a chapter in Marcus Borg's book The God We Never Knew. It's called “Salvation: What on earth do we mean?”

Our text from Ephesians uses three strong images: the corpse, the person dead through trespasses and sins; the slave, who follows the course of the world and serves the ruler of the air; and the condemned prisoner, who is a child of wrath, that is, a gentile, one who is ignorant of God. The corpse, the slave, and the prisoner are helpless to change their situations. 1

And so the letter reviews these hopeless situations—where the Ephesians were before they knew Christ. To the corpse, God saves us by making us alive through Christ. To the slave, God elevates and frees us by seating us with Jesus Christ in the heavenly places. To the prisoner, God saves through grace.

Another way to translate that line about grace is to say “By grace you were and are being saved.” 2

Here are other ways the Bible speaks of salvation.

Salvation is liberation. There's the exodus story of Israel's liberation from bondage in Egypt, where they were slaves under Pharaoh. For Paul, we were in bondage to the law. Ephesians spoke of being enslaved to the ruler of the air. That's another way of saying the status quo, the economic and political system we live under. Some of us feel enslaved by taxes or poverty or rules governing social security or government assistance or disability claim procedures. Some of us are in bondage to wounds inflicted by others; our families were cruel to us as children, and we continue to behave as mistreated children long into adulthood. And then there's the bondage to addiction; we are slaves to alcohol, illegal drugs, prescription painkillers, pornography, the internet, gambling. Those are like the ruler of the air, the course of the world, the way things are. God saves us from that.

According to Luke, Jesus' mission “is ‘to proclaim release to the captives and let the oppressed go free.' Paul also said, ‘for freedom Christ has set us free; do not…submit to slavery's yoke.' For Paul, God in Christ has defeated the powers… the other lords in our lives,” 3 the other idols we worship.

Salvation is reconciliation. When ancient Hebrews were exiled in Babylon, they felt abandoned by God; they mourned and grieved for Zion. “To be in exile [is to be away from home,] in an alien land under an alien lord.” 4 People in exile are often oppressed and powerless, and live with grief, sadness, anger, and hostility. To be in exile means to feel foreign, as if you don't belong. Sometimes we become exiled by circumstances out of our control. Sometimes it is a result of our own actions. “Salvation as reconciliation is the experience of being reconnected to God.” 5 It is homecoming

“According to Paul, God in Christ was reconciling the world to God, making our reconciliation with God possible.” 6 That “also brings about reconciliation with one another, breaking down the walls of separation and hostility.” 7

Salvation is enlightenment. The blind see, the deaf hear. Arise, shine, for your light has come. The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. Thy word is a lamp unto my feet. I am the light of the world. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine upon it, for night shall be no more; they need no light of lamp or sun. Once I was blind, but now I see.

Salvation is forgiveness. Salvation overcomes our sin and guilt. This is what we usually think about salvation; we sinned against God, Jesus saves us, and so God forgives us. There are two kinds of sin and guilt; there is the critical voice in our heads that we fail to measure up. It is as if God is a judge who will let us off if we say we're really sorry.

Then there is authentic sin and guilt. “We wound each other and ourselves through both deeds of commission and omission. We do terrible things to each other.” Some are willful acts' we do it on purpose to cause harm. Sometimes we do it as a “result of our blindness, bondage, and alienation.” 8

The meaning of salvation as forgiveness is “you are accepted. This is one of the central meanings of grace in the Christian tradition. God accepts us just as we are. No “if” statement follows. “You are accepted, period, full stop.” 9

Unconditional grace is hard for us, because of the world's wisdom: “you don't' get something for nothing.” It is in the air. It is the way the world is. But with God, you get grace and love for nothing.

Salvation as forgiveness has powerful meaning for us. Knowing “God's unconditional acceptance…changes our sense of ourselves and our sense of what our lives are about. God loves me, in spite of what the critical voice within me says. God loves me in spite of my sense of sin and guilt.” 10

“The Christian life is not about meeting God's requirements; that has been taken care of. Rather, the Christian life is about living our lives in a relationship with….God.” It's about letting God's “transforming power… work in our lives.” 11

Which brings me to “salvation as experiencing the love of God….Some people have sense of being worthless, of little account, unlovely and loveless.” In Isaiah, the God who created us says, “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine….you are precious in my sight and honored and I love you.” 12 to know that we are beloved is a salvation experience. Theologian Roberta Bondi says, “to know that God is besotted with us changes everything.” 13

And then there's our text in Ephesians: salvation as resurrection. The letter tells the gentiles they were ‘dead in their trespasses and sins.' They had to die to their old way of being, of living without hope, of pleasing the powers of the air, imprisoned within the cycle of ‘you will never get ahead because of your low status; you will not be honored because you are a slave and a prisoner; you do not get to choose for yourself, we will choose for you.'

Salvation is entering into a new way of being. Paul said, “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” And so salvation means we get to walk in this newness of life. Salvation is not limited to going to heaven, it is about line new, now, here.

And so salvation is to be our way of life, as Ephesians said. We are so grateful to God for salvation, we do what God created us to do: good works. We don't do them because we must in order to be saved; we do them out of gratitude and joy. God created us not just to do good works, but to know the deep grace of salvation in all its fullness: liberation, reconciliation, enlightenment, forgiveness, and love. Amen.

1 Brueggemann, et al., Texts for Preaching, Year A, p. 226.
2 Brueggemann, et al., p. 227.
3 Borg, The God We Never Knew, p. 159.
4 Borg, p. 159.
5 Borg, p. 160.
6 Borg, p. 160, 2 Corinthians 5:19.
7 Borg, p. 160.
8 Borg, p. 162.
9 Borg, p. 162.
10 Borg, p. 163.
11 Borg, p. 163.
12 Isaiah 43:1,4.
13 Bondi, Roberta, In Ordinary Time, p. 22-23.