Salvation is the story

I was thinking about time a couple of nights ago. Time is odd, it’s very real and at the same time very ethereal. I recognize my ability to comprehend all the ins and outs of time is non-existent, and I realized I try to explain things that can’t be explained within the constraints of time and I fall short.

Take salvation for instance. I remember the first time I felt inclined to raise my hand in a church service; I was 15 years old, didn’t understand anything but I wanted to raise my hand, so I did. I don’t know exactly what it all meant, the preacher just asked if anybody wanted to know Jesus and invite Him to be their Savior (he was much more eloquent but that was the gist of it), and I did, so the hand went up. For the following 8 years that decision did nothing to change who I was. The 15 year old girl who prayed a prayer that day was actually kind of a better person than the 23 year old college student that was cheating on her boyfriend and drinking on Tuesday nights.

I never ever again raised my hand after that first time when I was 15 years old. My life has changed a lot in the last 20 years, I am not the 15 year old clueless girl, nor am I the 23 year old with questionable morals. But there is something the teenager, college student and I have in common. Today, I am a 35 year old that needs to raise her hand upon the invitation of getting to know Jesus and letting Him be her Savior as much as I did at any point in my story. At 15, 23 or today I am in need of a Savior, I am not quite saved yet and I am totally saved too.

I have learned that salvation isn’t a dot in the linear understanding of time in my story. I used to see it that way because well I don’t understand time the way God does. Salvation isn’t a moment in my story, Salvation is actually THE story. I am in need of a Savior today as much as I was before I even knew He existed for me. That may seem silly and banal to think about, but see that changes everything. Because what I have understood is that viewing salvation as a moment in our story causes us also to see ourselves as the ones possessing something others need, and not something we ALL need. The hindi/atheist/muslim/catholic/whatever person needs salvation today as much as I do, we are all on a journey in search for a freedom, and meaning, and belonging, and significance. I don’t get to flaunt a badge I don’t really have. I don’t need salvation any less today than the day I raised my hand, in fact the closer I get to Jesus the more aware I am of my absolute desperate need of salvation.

With that understanding then I recognize that I don’t get to lead anybody to salvation, but I do get to walk my salvation with everybody, as they walk out theirs. Some days I’ll be used to save them, others they’ll be used to save me. There are no heroes here, just Jesus, the only One who can actually save. So see the difference is not banal at all but quite significant; it’s changes our pursuit, our relationships, our understanding of self.

When I was in Turkey earlier this year I had the best conversation with someone. She is a Christian woman who lives in a 99% muslim country. She told me she didn’t engage with her neighbors in order to lead them to Christ, she engaged in order to love them. Whatever came from that love wasn’t for her to determine, but love never disappoints.

As long as we think we have salvation and we can dispense it, we will never be able to engage in relationships with people who don’t believe the same things we do with pure motives. We’ll be no different from a sales man trying to get people to buy into what we are selling. And neither salvation, nor Jesus are things to be sold or things that we have, but they are something we appropriate and someone we become more like every day.

Being the hands and feet of Jesus then becomes a much more complicated issue, it requires that we understand we need Him to be Him! it requires us to surrender every second of every day and call out to Him so that we truly love people and show them how much they indeed are loved by Him. It requires we appropriate salvation today and search our freedom because only free people can lead captives to freedom. But whatever Jesus does with the love we freely give is between Him and the recipients of that love, our job is to simply give it because it has been given freely to us.

God is the holder of time, and He looked at me the day I was born with the same adoration He looked at me when I raised my hand at 15. He looks at me through the eyes of what He knows I will become, through the eyes of heaven. He knows what lies ahead, and He knew when I was born I’d love Him back one day. Perhaps if we could learn to see people like God sees them then we’d stop treating others like projects we are saving, or badges of honor we carry, and we’d understand their salvation and ours is still being walked out, and the story is developing but not much of it is really in our hands.

 

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My intention is certainly not to have a theological discussion on whether one is saved for good or if one can lose her salvation. Whatever you believe in that respect is fine with me, honestly. Biblically speaking, I see a solid case for both stances so stand where you may, I am cool with that. That is not what I am talking about. I am referring to the fact that I am well aware of my need of a Savior today! His need to redeem me didn’t disappear the day I chose to follow Him, I need Him, as much as the person next to me at the movies or at church, I need Him today!