the point of salvation

What is the point of the cross? What was the point of Jesus’ death? What is salvation? Is it simply the forgiveness of sins? Is it God blotting out all the bad things I’ve done in life? While it is true that Jesus’ death accomplishes the covering over of my sins, I no longer believe that was the point of His death. Instead, I believe the point of Jesus’ death - the reason for salvation – is the restoration of mankind to a right-relationship with God.

I’ve known for a long time that salvation is one word encompassing two concepts: justification and sanctification. Justification is the being-set-right-with-God idea, the forgiveness of sins. Sanctification is the ongoing partnership (fellowship) with the Holy Spirit in my life, such that I stop committing sins and become holy as He is holy. Justification, for me at least, is easy to understand: it is the work that Christ did for me, once and for all on the cross – He gets what I deserve, I get what He deserves. Sanctification, on the other hand, although I understood bits of what it was about, it always seemed a little fluffy, a little tagged-on-to-the-end of salvation, fairly poorly explained.

When I’d hear people talk about it, they always said that we were to sanctify ourselves because we are to be like God. Yes, I affirm that… but before now that explanation didn’t make sense. But, why? my mind would always scream. Is it just a lesson in imitation? God exercising control – I-say-you-do kinda thing? That didn’t cut it with me because there was no purpose to it, that I could see. I don’t believe God does things just because; rather, everything has purpose (that purpose being the glorification of God).

“I once was blind, but now I see,” goes the song.

The point of Jesus’ death is restoration – that is, mankind living more and more in harmony with creation and the Creator. I’m currently reading Velvet Elvis (Rob Bell, 2005) and in it he talks about salvation being holistic – that is, it takes in the whole person, body, mind, soul, strength. Therefore, by entering into salvation, one receives not only the work of the cross for us (the legal covering over of sins, justification), but one also receives the work of the cross in us (the purification of one’s life, sanctification).

The point of the cross isn’t forgiveness. Forgiveness leads to something much bigger: restoration. God isn’t just interested in the covering over of our sins; God wants to make us into the people we were originally created to be. It’s not just the removal of what is being held against us; it is God pulling us into the people he originally had in mind when he made us…

It is one thing to be forgiven; it is another thing to become more and more and more and more the person God made you to be…

Salvation is the entire universe being brought back into harmony with its maker.

(Velvet Elvis, Rob Bell, Zondervan, 2005, Movement Four: Tassels/Restoration)

I now see that the purpose of obeying God’s Laws and of trying to be like Him is not to simply play pretend or to make others see Him in me or to give God some sort of perverse pleasure in seeing me conform; rather, it’s to be restored to the way I am meant to be.