Salvation, Grace, Faith, Good Works

Salvation is walking in good works by grace through faith.

What does it mean to be saved? In a nontheological sense, to be saved means to be brought out of a less than desirable situation, to a desirable situation.

For example, imagine being lost at sea and floating about for a day and a half. This would be the undesirable state and salvation would be the person who came and threw out a life preserver and brought you into his boat. And the salvation would continue all the way until you were on dry ground again.

In order to understand it in the realm of Christianity, one must understand two opposing state of existence. Both of which have been explained by Paul already. The desirable circumstance is to be blessed by God with all spiritual blessings and for us to be blessing God as a proper response. The less than desirable is the dead state of Ephesians 2:1-3 in which we were cut off from blessings from God and lived for the passions of the flesh; or instead of receiving blessings and giving praise, we are cut off from such blessings and so we worship the desires of the flesh instead. Salvation does not entail just one of these aspects but brings them both together. To be once in the dead state, but brought into the alive state is the essence of salvation.

This is important to understand because there has been an erroneous understanding of what salvation is that has been prevalent in our evangelical culture that abhors any remark of the blessed word and doctrine: works. Therefore, a truncated understanding of salvation is to suck the blessing of works from it. And so all salvation became is to not receive eternal wrath after death. To be saved simply meant that after your heart stopped beating you would not go to hell. Therefore, very little thought is placed in the life lived now, and therefore, very little understanding of what Paul means here when he says we are saved.

In short, you cannot divorce works from salvation without having a salvation made up in the human mind, and not the blessed mind of the Creator overall, blessed forever.

Going back to the analogy, lets say you were the person saving the poor soul adrift at sea. After throwing the life preserver what work would you expect from him? That he would grab hold of it. The work of ignoring it would show salvation is not happening, since the person is refusing. Once you had the saved man on your boat, you would expect his works to be to ensure he is safely in the boat and not to jump off. And once on land, you would not expect to see him jump right back into the waves to go back to his prior condition. You would expect his works to be in keeping with the salvation you have brought him.

So it is not a matter of cutting any works from the topic of salvation, but properly putting it in its proper place so that you understand how salvation comes, how it is maintained, and how it is enjoyed.

If the existence God found in you that was not desirable was living a life of walking after the desires of the flesh and following the world and devil in so doing, and then saved you by bringing you out by the life raft of Jesus, the expectation is that your works would reflect the salvation brought; or else salvation was not really brought. Thus, salvation is a walking in good works, and it happens by grace through the workings of faith. This begins today, and is completed in heaven.