Salvation
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Salvation fulfills the soul’s deepest desire for truth, goodness, and beauty (TGB), restoring image bearers to everlasting love relationship with God. God invites reconciliation, and by faith, humans respond, entering the relationship that satisfies their yearning for life’s ultimate purpose and joy. Salvation eradicates guilt, redeems separation caused by sin, and brings everlasting life. To reject it is to remain separated from God, the source of life and love, resulting in everlasting death.
Salvation’s Foundational Principles:
#1: The Fall: The Fall occurred when Adam, driven by his innate desire for TGB, knowingly chose to elevate relationship with physical creation, represented by Eve, over relationship with God. While Eve’s sin brought her personal guilt through deception, Adam’s deliberate act, as one of the two image bearers given dominion over creation, extended the consequences of his choice to all physical creation. This act introduced two obstacles to restoration: guilt and separation. Adam’s sin not only broke the covenant of pure love relationship with God but also caused the physical essence of creation—including human bodies—to be cursed and separated from God. This enslavement to cursed physical essence now binds all humanity, distorting the soul’s desires and severing the relationship with the source of life and TGB.
#2: Sin’s Dominion: Fallen image bearers are separated from God by sin, which distorts the soul’s innate longing for TGB and directs it toward self and creation instead of the Creator. Sin manifests in two interwoven aspects: (1) activity—acts of self-directed faith, hope, and love that oppose relationship with God, and (2) status—the enslavement of the soul to cursed physical essence, which perpetuates sin’s activity. This enslavement binds humanity to the dominion of death, making it impossible for the soul to extricate itself and live in restored relationship with God. Without intervention, all image bearers are destined for everlasting separation from God—their source of life, love, and TGB.
#3: Forgiveness and Redemption: God’s ultimate goal is restoration—a return to love relationship with his image bearers. Reconciliation, necessary for restoration, requires justification: the pronouncement of being righteous. God accomplishes this through forgiveness and redemption. God’s merciful forgiveness removes the guilt of sin for those who repent—who desire relationship with him. Redemption frees human essence from its curse, a work completed at Christ’s return when he restores all creation. Through forgiveness and redemption, God reconciles and transforms, bringing his image bearers into everlasting life and love.
#4: Faith Condition: Salvation requires faith—trust in God as the only one who can rescue from sin’s curse and restore to everlasting life. Faith, accompanied by repentance, is the human acceptance of God’s offer of love relationship, enabling reconciliation through voluntary love. For love to exist, both parties must willingly engage without coercion, and faith fulfills this role. God has ensured that all image bearers have sufficient revelation to believe, leaving them without excuse (Romans 1:18–20). This faith, born of the believer’s desire for relationship, is the necessary response to God’s gracious offer of salvation and completes the relational dynamic, ensuring love remains voluntary and genuine.
#5: Restoration: Salvation culminates in restoration—the fulfillment of God’s plan to reclaim his creation for everlasting love relationship. Believers experience reconciliation with God in spirit now, but the full restoration of human essence, including the body, awaits Christ’s return. At that time, all creation will be freed from its curse, and believers will share in everlasting life through reclaimed physical essence. Jesus, as the firstfruits of this restoration, guarantees this renewal, uniting image bearers in perfect relationship with God and one another.