No static salvation

The Scriptures challenge our long held impressions. That's as it should be: "All Scripture is for … correction" (2 Timothy 3:16).

Consider the word "salvation." My notion of my personal salvation as a static, fixed, and abstract thing is crumbling before the evidence. An open-minded and "Berean" perusal of the Word is uncovering a concept of salvation as something like a living organism. It comes to you from God, and then it evolves, and you "work it out with fear and trembling" (Philippians 2:12).

Also, salvation is bigger and more encompassing than I had thought:

"… your deeds of salvation … their number is past my knowledge" (Psalm 71:15).

Here we see that salvation is not merely a forensic judgment rendered on a person's eternal destiny. Salvation is also a thing dispensed in "deeds," and many deeds at that.

"Our God is a God of salvation, and to GOD, the Lord, belong deliverances from death" (Psalm 68:20, italics mine).

Here "salvation" is paralleled to "deliverances." Note the plural form on "deliverances": God, and his angels (Hebrews 1:14) are busy delivering us from all kinds of scrapes, not just that initial deliverance from hell on the day we were converted.

"His salvation is near to those who fear him" (Psalm 85:9). This certainly does not depict something static but a reciprocity or dynamic in which those who actively fear God in their comings and goings particularly experience His nearness and deliverances.

"The LORD is my strength and my song; he has become my salvation" (Psalm 118:14). This declaration comes in the midst of a song about very gritty, earthy, physical warfare with earthly enemies. This man's salvation is not only of his soul someday in heaven. He sings of being rescued from scoundrels-this week!

How can someone who is already saved long for salvation? It doesn't make sense by the old way of thinking of salvation as a static thing that admits of no growth or increase. Yet here is a saved man saying:

"My soul longs for your salvation. … My eyes long for our promise. … When will you comfort me?" (Psalm 119:81-82).

This is a living salvation, not a by-and-by one.

Paul is pleading with professed Christians to not have received grace in vain when he says, "now is the day of salvation" (2 Corinthians 6:2). That is, do not be complacent, as if your salvation is "in the bag." The time to grab salvation is now.

The author of Hebrews pleads similarly. He says to people who have already had a conversion experience: "How shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation?" (Hebrews 2:3).

The wonderful thing about your personal salvation is that it is not a fixed amount but is meant to keep increasing in quantity or in dispensation:

"Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him …" (Romans 5:9).

How can you be "more" saved if you have already been saved? Isn't it all or nothing? Evidently not. There are degrees of your salvation to be enjoyed. There is increase:

"He is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him" (Hebrews 7:25).

I love being saved. Now I want to be saved "to the uttermost."