Investigating the Bible: Salvation today

James Keller wrote of an airplane making a bombing raid over Germany in WWII. An army chaplain had joined the crew. Soon their airplane was attacked with anti-aircraft fire and enemy planes. Trying to calm the men, the chaplain said quietly on the intercom, “It’s all right men. Have no fear. God is with you.” The tail gunner shouted back, “He may be with you guys up front, but He’s not back here!” Seconds later, a shell burst through the tail turret and out the top without exploding! “There was a moment of stunned silence, and then the tail gunner hastily added: “Correction, please. God just walked in.” Sometimes, in the difficulties of a believer’s life, God seems absent. The Bible has help.

Soon after Jesus healed a lame man on the Sabbath, Jesus made a surprising offer: “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life. Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.” (John 5:24-25). This is likely a reference to Lazarus, raised after being dead in a tomb four days (John 11:38-44).

The New Testament was written in Greek, a language used throughout the Roman empire. In some ways, it is more precise than English. The present tense of ancient Greek verbs describes an action in the present and it also implies that the action continues. When Jesus said with a present tense verb, that a person “has eternal life,” he meant it was an immediate transaction that continued. An amplified translation of verse 24 is, “Truly, truly I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes in God who sent me has right now and continues to hold onto eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has completely left behind a dead place and has moved into a vibrant, living place.” It is a new spiritual life, a rebirth. Earlier, Jesus had explained this to Nicodemus when he told him: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” (John 3:3). And then he gave the promise, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16).

The apostle Paul asked a question about this possession of eternal life that many have: “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?... No, in all these things, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:35, 37-39).

In the 1800’s, Horatio G. Spafford was a wealthy lawyer, a businessman, and a Christian. His wife and four young daughters booked passage on a ship crossing the Atlantic Ocean, where it collided with another. Two hundred died, including Spafford’s four daughters. When his wife sent him a telegram with the terrible news, he immediately boarded a ship to join his grieving wife. As he traveled across the sea, the captain pointed out to Spafford the place where the ships collided and his daughters died. That evening, he somehow wrote the words of a hymn beloved by many: “When peace like a river, attends my way, when sorrows like sea billows roll, whatever my lot, You have taught me to say, It is well, it is well with my soul.”

David Carlson Pastor (yes, that is his last name, not his profession) is a Polk County resident and graduate of Bethel Theological Seminary in Minnesota (M.Div., M.Th.).