Missional Viewpoints 2: Mission as Salvation
Caught up in the Christian understanding of mission and particularly evangelism, is this concept of salvation and what it means. In recent times, the Church’s understanding of salvation has been fairly straightforward and in some ways quite a shallow image. Will a deeper image of salvation help to propel us towards a deeper understanding of the mission of God?
Defining Salvation
Salvation is a particularly divisive concept within Christian belief, with real potential to divide between Evangelical and Liberal. It’s my understanding that when asked about salvation or what it means to “be saved”, the vast majority of Christians would reply something like gaining eternal life or going to heaven when you die. However, when we delve deeper into salvation and what it means, and how it fits into the biblical narrative, I think we find a much deeper wealth of meaning.
When looking at Mission as Liberation, I made the argument that the Exodus narrative is of prime importance when understanding how the people of Israel develop their understanding of God. Salvation and Liberation are very closely linked, I believe, in that they both draw their roots from God’s actions in delivering the people of Israel out of Egypt.
To what extent are Liberation and Salvation the same concept, and how are they different?
According the the IVP Bible Dictionary, the Hebrew word for Salvation (‘Yesa’ – from which we get the Hebrew name for Jesus ‘Yeshua’, meaning Saviour) means “to bring into a spacious environment”, carrying a sense of “freedom from limitation” – as well as the process of being delivered/liberated from things that confine and constrain.
The idea of a God of salvation, or God the saviour is at the heart of who the Hebrews understood God to be.
I love this quote a little later in their definition:
“Thus to know God at all is to know him as a saving God so that the words ‘God’ and ’saviour’ are virtually identical terms in the OT.”
Within the New Testament, the word for Salvation is “Soteria” – meaning deliverance or liberation. Jesus’ name itself marks him out as the saviour, who will free his people. However, as we looked at in the previous post – his idea of liberation is very different to the liberation that the people of Israel expect him to deliver.
The God of the Israelites – Yahweh – is a God who saves. To be a God of salvation is to be a God who liberates us from the things that limit us or oppress us. In this way, Salvation and Liberation seem pretty identical.
And, if this God is a God of Salvation who acts to save thoughout the whole story of his people, then this salvation must be something that God has been involved in, is involved in now, and will be involved in. It can’t just be a role which he will only fulfil at some point in the future. We have been saved, are being saved, and will be saved – and God has acted and is acting in all three.
Salvation and Prosperity
I think it is this idea of “freedom from limitations” which has led to an understanding of Old Testament Salvation to mean “Prosperity”. Obviously this idea smells slightly of the prosperity gospel – and has the potential to be dangerously over-used.
However, for the Israelites the liberation from Egypt was also a liberation to a new, different future. For them, that future meant settlement in the promised land – a land “flowing with milk and honey” – a land of prosperity. It’s important that for the Israelites, salvation meant a new alternative, prosperous future – a new glorious vision for what could be which is given to the people of Israel from the heart of God.
But, I don’t believe that this land of prosperity was:
- A land free from sacrifice
- A land for the fulfilment of the individual.
If we look closely at the Israelites’ journey through the desert, and at the law which is given for them to prosper in this new land, we can see that this prosperity is gained from the sacrifice, surrender and obedience of the individual towards God.
In the desert, as God feeds the people with mana – daily bread – we see him teaching them a reliance on him to provide for them. God is teaching them a prosperity that comes from being liberated from the need to worry about tomorrow, and from the desire to stockpile more than each individual needs. This is a liberation from the physical, but also from an oppression which has a spiritual and emotional dimension.
Looking at the Jubilee laws in Leviticus 25, we see God teaching that individual prosperity isn’t the point at all, the point is for the whole community of God to prosper – and to be a shining light to other nations of what it means to prosper together, prefering others, rather than at the expense of others.
Salvation for our Culture
I touched on how we can understand Salvation to have both a physical or outward, but also an inner dimension – and perhaps this is the root of the problem we now find ourselves with as a Church and as a culture. I think perhaps, in trying to produce a clear definition of our terms, we’ve managed to create a dichotomy where we’ve split our understanding of salvation into two categories:
- Liberation is the word we use for a deliverance from physical restraints.
- Salvation is the word we use for deliverance from spiritual/emotional restraints.
And so, if salvation is to with the spiritual and the divine, then it must have to do with heaven and what happens after you die.
And if it isn’t about the physical – the body – then it must concern our spirits or our souls.
This is only half the story. Only half the picture.
Perhaps, if we bring back together these two words, and understand the vital part that real, physical liberation has in salvation – then we end up we a more joined-up, more holistic, more healthy understanding of what it means for God to be our salvation.
Practical Salvation
So, what does it mean practically for us to embody and inhabit this picture of salvation – and what impact does it have for the way we live, the way we act out God’s mission?
What does it mean for us to join in God’s mission of salvation?
I believe that this deeper understanding of salvation calls for us to understand our role in partnering with God as one which is holistic, concerned with whole human beings. This means an equal weighting of inner spirituality expressed through physical action. It means that as God’s people we need to be concerned with not just an inner prosperity or salvation, or with an outward liberation, but with both.
And the Church is uniquely positioned to be able to provide this – to be able to address people’s physical, emotional and spiritual needs all together in one go. No other agency, government or voluntary organisation quite has a vision or a solution which looks at all three of these areas together.
It also means understanding salvation as a constant process of returning to God, looking back to him for guidance and for our salvation (“working our salvation out” as Paul writes). This means having a collective humility, allowing ourselves to re-align ourselves as the whole Church when things have gone wrong and look back to God for guidance. And it means understanding salvation as a gift to the whole community of God, and to the whole world, as something we receive together – for us to all prosper together or not at all.
If we truly embody this deep picture, this deep, rich story of salvation, then it brings us to a place of being able to truly love people, to serve them, to liberate them.
