Chapter 10 Excerpt -- Savior

We now get to the final word about God in the book I plan to self-publish by the end of the week: God with Ten Words:

• Mystery
• Love
• Power (excerpt 1)
• Power (excerpt 2)
• Knowledge (excerpt 1)
• Knowledge (excerpt 2)
• Presence (excerpt 1)
• Presence (excerpt 2)
• Immanuel (excerpt 1)
• Immanuel (excerpt 2)
• Good (most of the chapter)
• Parent (excerpt 1)
• Parent (excerpt 2)
• Justice (excerpt 1)
• Justice (excerpt 2)

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God is our Savior. Although it may not fit with the way we normally think, salvation is part of biblical justice. Biblical justice is about putting things right, which means that God has “brought down the powerful from thrones and exalted the humble” (Luke 1:52). For a season, God may allow evil for reasons we have already seen. But evil is never the final answer.

God allows evil because it is better for us to freely choose the good rather than be forced to do the good. The corollary action of God is for salvation. Counterbalancing the constant presence of evil in the world is the constant action of God for salvation in the world. The culmination of this action was and is of course in Christ.

The thread of salvation runs throughout the Bible. Typically, we are well acquainted with God’s actions toward eternal salvation. We know the storyline of Scripture. Sin entered the world, and death through sin. Jesus came to destroy the power of Sin and death and free us to eternal life. This is the lens of salvation through which Christians predominantly read the Bible.

In much of Christianity, this story is read as a personal story. That is to say, it is a story about me and my individual salvation. It is also a spiritual story about my eternal, individual destination. Of course that thread of the story is true.

It also is only part of the story of salvation in Scripture. For one, this story of personal salvation in Paul’s writings is even more a story of corporate salvation. It is also a cosmic salvation, the setting right of all things. It is our culture that leads us to focus on our individual piece of that puzzle. The biblical world was a more group-oriented world. The story of salvation in Romans and Paul’s letters is thus more a story of God's people being saved together rather than mere individual salvation. Election in Paul is more about us collectively and God’s plan corporately than about any individual’s salvation.