Salvation
One Sheet
Salvation is the application of God’s atonement to fallen humans on the basis of each image bearer’s individual faith. The applied atonement eradicates the human’s guilt for sin activity and overcomes the judgment received of separation for sin status. The application is effected through God’s forgiveness and redemption, and it restores the human to the creative purpose of everlasting love relationship with God and the righteous community of fellow faithful image bearers.
Salvation’s Foundational Principles:
#1: The Fall: The Fall occurred when Adam chose relationship with physical creation rather than relationship with God as the more desirable means to satisfy his own passion for truth, goodness, and beauty. Immediately, Adam’s choice brought guilt of sin—missing the mark of humankind’s covenant with God for pure love relationship. A second obstacle to relationship with God was also formed at the time. Adam was of the first pair of image bearers to whose spirits were given possession and rulership of physical creation. Therefore, by his choice, Adam effected the separation of physical creation from God, causing (1) it to be cursed and (2) his spirit, along with all human spirits, to become enslaved to their shared cursed essence.
#2: Sin’s Dominion: As described in the fall, image bearers are separated from God by sin, the missing of the mark of relationship with God. The enslavement to the dominion of our shared and cursed physical essence holds sway over our individual spirits so that we continue to make choices for sin. It is impossible for the human spirit to extract itself from the enslavement to the cursed flesh so as to live in relationship with God. Thus, image bearers are destined by this shared status of cursed essence to separation from God—everlasting death.
#3: Forgiveness and Redemption: God’s restoration goal is the return to love relationship with his image bearers. Restoration requires reconciliation, and reconciliation requires justification—the proving or pronouncing a person free from sin. That reconciliation is accomplished through forgiveness and redemption. God forgives individual guilt of sinful activity by his own mercy extended by grace to those who desire relationship with him. God will redeem the cursed human essence at Christ’s return when applied to all physical creation. Glorification is that state of forgiven and redeemed human.
#4: Faith Condition: To receive God’s forgiveness, wiping out by his gracious mercy the guilt for sins committed, and to receive redemption, Christ’s atoning work accomplished by his death and resurrection, God’s image bearers must put their trust in God as Savior. Placing trust in God as Savior means believing he alone is the source of truth, goodness, and beauty; he alone can rescue from the death-induced curse of sin; and he alone provides hope of everlasting life through the love relationship based on who he is. God has provided to everyone the necessary revelation of who he is so that everyone may believe, rendering everyone without excuse (Romans 1:18–20). Without faith, it is impossible to receive salvation because without faith, it is impossible to please God (Hebrews 11:6). God will not coerce faith, which action would make a mockery of his goal for love relationship. Thus, faith born of the believer is a condition God requires for reconciliation. Yet salvation is through and through the work and gift of God, from his initiated revelation of himself, to his initiated atonement made possible, to his initiated application of that atonement to the believer.
#5: Restoration: Trusting human spirits may take part in the atoning work of Christ that freed human essence from the curse. In this age, only Jesus’s body (as firstfruits) has been reclaimed from the physical-essence curse. However, believers (those who desire relationship with God and trust in his salvation) hope for his return at which time all physical creation will be reclaimed to life as the shared essence of the believing community taking part in everlasting love relationship with God.