A TREATISE ON THE NATURE AND

SCOPE OF SALVATION

THE SALVATION AVAILABLE TO US THROUGH CHRIST has both

present and future aspects. The death and resurrection of
Jesus inaugurated a new age in which the kingdom of God will
advance throughout the earth until the day when God judges
the world and makes all things new. Conservative evangelicals
tend to emphasize the future aspects of salvation over those
experienced in the present, and liberal Christians tend to
emphasize the present aspects of salvation over those
promised in the future. A coherent understanding of salvation
embraces both the present and future aspects of salvation and
brings them together into one sweeping movement. The
present aspects of salvation swirl around the Christian
teaching of the atonement, and the future aspects of salvation
involve the complete and irreversible renewal of all creation,
human beings included. Salvation is, at its heart, all about
rescue and renewal, and salvation’s scope is cosmic in the
sense that it involves much more than human beings; it
involves the rescue and renewal of the universe itself.

THE PRESENT ASPECTS OF SALVATION

THE CHRISTUS VICTOR APPROACH TO THE ATONEMENT

Technical words can dilute the work of Christ on the cross, so
that his victorious achievement becomes mired in the sinking
clay of theory, hypothesis, and conjecture. It’s easy to become
lost in the maze of theological nuances, lexicography, and
abstract formulae to which theologians so often subject
Christ’s sacrifice. The cross served as an apocalyptic turning-

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point in human history, the eschatological equivalent to the
Big Bang, the long-awaited fulfillment of what God promised
He would do: that is, to deal with the evil in the world by
overpowering and defeating it. The cross of Christ offers a
glimpse into the paradox of how God often does things: while
it seemed that the powers of evil were leading Jesus to the
cross in triumphal procession, in reality it was the other way
around. The Apostle Paul put it this way: “Jesus disarmed
those who once ruled over us—those who had overpowered us.
Like captives of war, He put them on display to the world to
show His victory over them by means of the cross.” (Col 2.15)
In evangelical circles the cross is often seen explicitly through
the lens of the atonement, and the atonement (one of the
most shocking, breathtaking, and stunning realities of what
happened on the cross) can quickly become detached from the
overarching purpose of the cross itself. The suffering and
death of Christ served as the point in time in which when evil
was defeated and dismantled, and when all things—not just
human beings through the atonement—found themselves
reconciled to God. The cross has a cosmic scope; Paul writes
that the cross was “God’s means of reconciling to Himself the
whole creation—all things in heaven and all things on earth.”
(Col 1.20b). That isn’t to say, of course, that the atonement
isn’t that big a deal after all.
“The Atonement” can be defined as the Christian teaching
referring to God’s forgiveness of our sins so that our harmony
with Him can be restored. Paul echoes the atonement when he
writes, “God has delivered us from the domain of darkness
and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in
whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” The
doctrine of the atonement must be kept intact in any biblical
theology of the cross, but when we make it the main point, the
cornerstone of what happened, we’re missing out on the
sweeping vistas which the cross opens up to us. The
atonement truly comes to life when it’s at home within the
framework of what’s been called Christus Victor. There are
various ways of approaching the atonement, such as at the

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outdated Ransom Theory, and the Satisfaction Theory, which
is the predominant understanding in western Christianity
today. Swedish theologian Gustaf Aulén popularized the
Christus Victor approach as he peeled through both the pages
of the New Testament and the writings of the early church
fathers to see how the cross was viewed early on. He came to
the conclusion that the early church perceived the cross to be
the moment and means by which God dealt decisively with
evil, destroying its power and thus dismantling it; or to put it
in Aulén’s own words, “[The cross] was a Divine conflict and
victory; Christ—Christus victor—fights against and triumphs
over the evil powers of the world, the ‘tyrants’ under which
mankind is in bondage and suffering, and in Him God
reconciles the world to Himself.” The cross is indeed God’s
wrath pouring out on Jesus so that we who stake ourselves to
Christ won’t have to bear it; but it is, at the same time, so
much more than that. At the cross Jesus faced-off with evil in
all its grotesque wretchedness. Evil, personified by sin and
death, by the principalities and powers, sought to lead Jesus
to the cross but soon discovered that Jesus had been leading
evil to its own defeat. Jesus’ resurrection dismantled evil’s
foothold over creation. At the least, Christ’s resurrection from
the dead reveals that evil has indeed been defeated, since the
ultimate consequence of evil (death) couldn’t hold down the
One who defeated it.
James Stewart of Scotland, reflecting on Psalm 68.18 which
the King James Version translates ‘He led captivity captive,’
captures the essence of Christus Victor when he wriets:

The very triumph of [Christ’s] foes, it means, He used

to their defeat. He compelled their dark achievements
to subserve His ends, not theirs. They nailed Him to
the tree, not knowing that by that very act they were
bringing the world to His feet. They gave Him a cross,
not guessing that He would make it a throne. They
flung Him outside the gates to die, not knowing that
in that very moment they were lifting up all the gates

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 of the universe, to let the King come in. They thought
to root out His doctrines, not understanding that they
were implanting imperishably in the hearts of men
the very name they intended to destroy. They thought
they had God with His back to the wall, pinned and
helpless and defeated: they did not know that it was
God Himself who had tracked them down. He did not
conquer in spite of the dark mystery of evil. He
conquered through it.

PROPITIATION, EXPIATION, & THE FORGIVENESS OF SINS

Propitiation means “to make favorable,” and in conservative
theology, it includes the idea of the cross being God’s way of
satisfying His wrath against sinners. Expiation means “to
make pious,” and it implies the removal of (or cleansing from)
sin. These two terms have different meanings, but they’re
connected, since expiation is the means of propitiation. To put
it in the terms of the English language, the object receiving
the action of propitiation is the sinner; the object receiving
the action in expiation is sin itself. “You propitiate a person,
but you expiate a problem,” as the old adage goes. Christ’s
death, in terms of the atonement, serves both as expiation and
propitiation. By removing the problem of sin (expiation), God
makes Himself favorable towards sinners (propitiation).
The backbone of propitiation is the Greek word hilasterion.
This word alludes to the Jewish sacrificial system. In the
Septuagint (the Greek Old Testament), hilasterion is the word
that refers to the “mercy seat,” the top of the Ark of the
Covenant. On the Day of Atonement, the blood of the sin
sacrifice was sprinkled on the hilasterion (Leviticus 16.14).
The cross of Christ has become the eschatological “mercy
seat,” to which the Ark’s hilasterion pointed to. The effect of
Christ’s blood satisfied the wrath of God against individual
acts of sin, so that when a person receives Christ, the debt of
that person’s sin has been paid in full. The wrath they deserve
has been extinguished on Christ. Because Christ has become

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the be-all, end-all Mercy Seat, God has dealt with the problem
of sin (expiation) and has thus made Himself favorable
towards sinners (propitiation).
The cross opens the door to forgiveness. Forgiveness does
not mean that God pretends sinners were never really that
bad. Nor does it mean that God ignores all the awful stuff
about us, or that He simply excuses all the evil we’ve done and
become. At the heart of forgiveness (and this is where
Christus Victor shines) is the destruction and dismantling of
evil. When God forgives a person, the evil within that person
(along with all the evil things the person has thought, done,
or become) isn’t ignored, excused, or turned into something
that’s really not that bad after all. The evil is defeated.
Because we not merely sin but also become sin, the
relationship God has intended to have with us from the
Garden has been broken. In forgiveness, that relationship is
restored, because that evil is destroyed. In the cross, evil has
been appropriately dealt with, enabling God, as it were, to
forgive us. Forgiveness takes place when the evil that’s caused
a rift between two sides of a relationship is named for what it
is, condemned for what it is, and then defeated for what it is.
The consequence of forgiveness is the restoration and renewal
of the formerly broken relationship. The reconciliation that
takes place between God and Man is a reconciliation forged by
Christ’s victory over evil on the cross, and those who put their
faith in Jesus partake in that victory for themselves.
At the cross, Jesus led the powers of evil in triumphal
procession and defeated them. The victory Christ won can be
experienced by us partly in the present and fully in the future,
in a restored relationship with God (not a lovey-dovey
romantic relationship but the relationship between the image-
bearers and their Creator). In propitiation and expiation, we
experience the forgiveness of sins and find ourselves
experiencing God’s divine favor (or in Christian slang, grace).
Our relationship with God is restored, and often this is where
evangelical programmes on salvation reach a halt. We’ve been
forgiven, our relationship with God is restored, what more

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needs to be said? Much more! There’s more to what happens
when a person experiences the victory of Christ for
themselves.

REDEMPTION, LIBERATION, & THE SPIRIT OF GOD

The Jewish people of Jesus’ day longed for the Messiah to
come and deliver them from the pagan powers lording over
them. They expected God to do for them what He did for their
ancestors in Egypt. They believed that when the Messiah
came, he would deliver them from the Romans and then make
Israel the world’s ruling nation. The early Christians
understood that all the geographical exiles experienced by the
Jewish people (the Egyptian exile, the Assyrian exile, and the
Babylonian exile; not to mention how many Jews felt that they
were “exiled in their own land” since their nation wasn’t
autonomous but under the boot of other nations) were but
sub-exiles, signposts and hints to a greater exile, and thus to a
greater Homecoming. The pagan nations, as cruel and evil as
they were, weren’t the worst enemies from whom Israel (and
all humanity) needed rescue.
When the New Testament talks about redemption and
liberation, we find these terms focused on rescue from the
powers of evil, rescue from sin and death. The Greek word
apolutrosis depicts a redemption for a ransom, and it was
used in common speech in the context of freeing slaves for a
monetary price. The early church embraced this word to
describe how the payment Christ made to God’s wrath enabled
liberation from sin and death. Liberation puts its emphasis on
how a person is changed from being under the power or
dominion of sin (“of the flesh”) to being freed from that
domineering power and, instead, indwelt by the Spirit of God
(“of the Spirit”). The New Testament teaches that all of
humankind has become enslaved to sin; when a person puts
his faith in Christ, Christ’s victory over sin is applied to him,
so that the power of sin is broken, and a new power (or,
rather, Person) takes its place: the Holy Spirit.

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 The New Covenant is the inauguration of the New Age,
which began at Easter and will be completed at the
Consummation, when God remakes the entire world,
eliminating evil once-and-for-all. Because Christians live
between Easter and Consummation, we experience a sort of
exile. Evil, sin and death have been defeated though not yet
eradicated; Christians are redeemed, awaiting the day when
everything will be made new. Paul uses exilic language in
Romans 8.12-30, where the Spirit of God is portrayed as the
Shekinah, the presence of God with His people as they made
that long and winding trek through the wilderness to the
Promised Land. Although they had been redeemed from
Egyptian bondage, they had not yet come to experience their
full inheritance in the land flowing with milk and honey.
Drawing the image of the Exodus around Christians, Paul
portrays the indwelling Spirit of God as our tabernacle. Three
times in his letters Paul refers to the Holy Spirit as the Greek
arrabon (2 Cor 1.22, 5.5; Eph 1.14). In modern-day Greek that
word means “engagement ring,” a sign in the present of what
is promised to come in the future. In ancient Greek the word
had a more economic meaning, but “engagement ring” echoes
the heart of what Paul’s stabbing at. The Spirit is a “down
payment” or “guarantee” of the Christian’s promised future.
The Spirit, the presence of God with His people in the midst of
their exile, is experienced in redemption and stands as the key
player in the life of the redeemed as he or she awaits the
completion of what began at Easter. The Spirit’s presence in
the Christian life is an active and working presence; the Spirit
enables the Christian to live as a redeemed person ought to
live, to live in the reality of the future while walking in the
reality of the present.
One of the key purposes of the Spirit is sanctification, the
transformation of a Christian’s heart so that he can keep the
commandments of God. To “walk by the Spirit” is to live a holy
life, a life pleasing to God and in obedience to His will. The
Spirit enables the redeemed to put to death the “works of the
flesh” and the “deeds of the body” (these are New Testament

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catchphrases referencing manners of living that are
dominated by sin and death). Those who are “in the Spirit”,
and who are consequently and subsequently transformed by
the Spirit, are echoes of what’s rising on the horizon,
signposts of God’s intentions and desires for humanity. The
church, led by the Spirit, is to be an ecosystem of God’s
renewed humanity, flourishing in a world that continues to
bow the knee to false gods.
As the Shekinah, the tabernacling presence of God with
His people, the Spirit is also our Guide. As the tabernacle
guided the ancient pilgrims from Passover to Promised Land,
so the Spirit serves as a guide in our present pilgrimage from
Easter to Consummation. The Spirit is the presence of God
with us, God dwelling in us and leading us, guiding us,
warning and rebuking us, grieving over our rebellions and
celebrating whenever we get things right, loving us with an
irrevocable love as we come closer and closer to the
Consummation.
Salvation isn’t just about what doesn’t happen to us at the
Final Judgment.
Salvation involves being brought back to life in the
present.
Salvation involves being made new creations in the
present.
Salvation involves being rescued from this evil world in the
present.
And through the Spirit, we participate in God’s new world
in the present.
In Romans 8.24, Paul says, “We were saved”, indicating
that salvation involves something that’s already come to pass.
This salvation in the present remains fixed “in hope” because
that salvation remains to be fully completed (though it’s
guaranteed). This future salvation is what Paul speaks of in
Romans 5.9-10: “Since, therefore, we have now been justified
by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the
wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled
to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are

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reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.” Paul thus
illuminates both the present and future realities of salvation.
In the present, we have reconciliation and justification (being
acquitted of the charge of evil and thus being declared by God
as being in-the-right); in the future, we will experience being
saved from the wrath of God. We who are saved in the present
—we who have put our faith in Christ, we who have
participated in his death and resurrection and thus in his
victory over evil, we who have experienced forgiveness of sins
and reconciliation to God, we who have been freed from the
domineering power of sin and who have received the Spirit of
God—we ought to place our hopes in the final and complete
salvation of our souls.

THE FUTURE ASPECTS OF SALVATION

THE COMING JUDGMENT

The coming White Throne Judgment isn’t in vogue these days.
Because the mere mention of “judgment” carries so many
negative connotations, many Christians, perhaps hoping to be
hip and welcoming, sweep it under the carpet, meekly talking
about it only when it’s brought out into open air by those with
disdain for the subject. Some Christians, trying to win over a
culture that delights in tolerance no matter what, have even
apologized for such a doctrine, as if it were a medieval
hangover soon to be done away with by modern sensibilities.
The scriptures, however, portray the Final Judgment as a
future moment in history that is to be celebrated. The Final
Judgment isn’t just about what happens to the wicked. What
happens to those who have consistently refused God, who have
persisted in arrogant rebellion, is a consequence of what the
Final Judgment is all about, namely the eradication of evil and
the recreation of the cosmos. Jesus’ victorious death on the
cross judged and condemned evil, sentencing evil to death,
and when the Final Judgment comes, that “death sentence” on

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evil is carried out. At the moment evil is bound and chained,
and when Jesus appears and the Final Judgment takes place,
evil will be escorted by Jesus and his saints to the guillotine.
The fall of the guillotine’s blade will result in unprecedented
celebration. All creation, human beings included, will dance
for joy, weep with gladness, and celebrate in the mountaintops
and valleys. The psalms depict creation shouting in joy at the
Final Judgment, for on that day, creation will be fully and
finally liberated from the death, decay, and corruption that
has infected it since mankind’s rebellion in the Garden.
The Final Judgment does indeed entail destruction of the
wicked. But those who are in Christ have nothing to fear,
because they have been justified. When God justifies a sinner,
He declares judgment on that sinner, declaring him to be “in-
the-right,” acquitting him of the charges leveled against him,
rendering him “free to go.” Justification in the present doesn’t
simply anticipate the verdict from the Final Judgment; it is
the verdict of the Final Judgment! The Final Judgment leaps
into the present, and those who are in Christ have already
“passed through the flames” from death unto life. “There is
therefore now no condemnation in Christ.” Any idea that
Christians will have their sins “put on the big-screen” at the
Final Judgment for all the world to see is nothing short of
poppycock. Such fears are misplaced, for the Christian’s sins
have already been dealt with, and God no longer holds them
against us. “For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness,”
God declares, “and their sins and their iniquities will I
remember no more.” (Heb 8.12) Dare we doubt God’s
promises?
What, then, does the Final Judgment entail for Christians?
Are we to hug the sidelines and simply watch as God deals
with all the evil in the world? Not at all. The Bible tells us
Christians will experience four things at the Final Judgment:
vindication, judgment according to works done in the Spirit,
glorification, and participation. Note that condemnation
doesn’t make the list!

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 VINDICATION. One of the trademarks of the classical Jewish
hope centered upon the vindication of the true people of God
over against their pagan oppressors and the “faithless
posers”, those who were Jewish by birth but unfaithful
towards God and disobedient to His covenant. This theme of
vindication is picked up in the New Testament. Jesus speaks of
vindication quite often, both in reference to his own
vindication (a vindication that took place in two stages: first,
at Easter; and then with the destruction of Jerusalem in AD
70) and in reference to the vindication of his followers (a
vindication that took place with their escape and survival of
Jerusalem’s downfall, which in and of itself is a signpost to his
peoples’ future vindication before the whole world). The
Apostle Paul writes in Colossians 3.1-4, “If then you have been
raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where
Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on
things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you
have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When
Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with
him in glory.” Those who are in Christ have a new identity, an
identity that is cemented with God in heaven but hidden from
those who are perishing. When Jesus appears, his people will
be made known: the curtain will be drawn back so that
everyone can see these people as those who obeyed truth and
knew God. Christians who have been mocked and persecuted
will be shown to be “in the right” after all—and their
oppressors will realize, with dread and horror, that they have
been “in the wrong” and have to face the consequences of
their rebellion and unbelief.
JUDGMENT ACCORDING TO WORKS DONE IN THE SPIRIT.
Although many Christians fear the Final Judgment, believing
it to be the moment in time when all the skeletons in our
closets are brought to light, this fear is misplaced. Christians
will undergo a judgment, but it won’t be a judgment of
condemnation, nor even a judgment of our sin, since that
judgment has already been passed on Christ as our substitute.
The judgment Christians will experience is one of judgment

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according to works done in the Spirit. This judgment produces
varying degrees of awards, not varying degrees of punishment.
Christians will be rewarded according to their faithfulness to
God and their good works done between Easter and
Consummation. The exact nature of these rewards are
unknown, but what is known is that Christians have nothing
to fear when God takes His seat of judgment against the
nations. The Christian who fears the Final Judgment is one
who has failed to grasp the wonders of justification, the evil-
defeating reality of forgiveness, the depths of propitiation,
and the wild majesty of God’s grace, mercy, and love which
have been poured out upon those who have staked their lives
on Christ.
GLORIFICATION. “Glorification” is a biblical word echoing yet
another biblical word, that of “glory.” Glory is a multifaceted
word, and when used in reference to human beings, such as
here with glorification, it refers primarily to the ruling-ship of
human beings over creation. In Genesis 3, when evil entered
the world, human beings fell from “the glory of God” (Rom
3.23). But for those in Christ, there’s the hope of “the glory of
God” (Rom 5.2). We lost the glory of God in our initial
rebellion in the Garden, but this glory is reclaimed for us by
Christ in his death and resurrection, and this glory will be
fully implemented at the consummation. Paul says in Romans
8.30, “Those God justified, them he also glorified.”
Justification comes with the promise of glorification, the
return of human beings to the glory of God, to their rightful,
God-ordained place in the cosmos, ruling over all creation as
God’s co-regents. At the Final Judgment, when Christians are
glorified, they will be restored fully and finally to their
original and truest identities as God’s image-bearers, and
Christians will take their places over the renewed creation, to
rule over it with creativity, love, and generosity. God will give
His people new physical bodies unstained by death and decay,
and in these bodies God’s people will do His work in the new
world. Future salvation has as one of its main components the
glorification of God’s children, their return to their rightful

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place in the cosmos, their return to the living-out of their
truest identities. Glorification could be defined, in short, as
the existentialist’s wet dream.
PARTICIPATION. The Jewish people believed that when the
Final Judgment came, not only would they be vindicated, but
that they would also participate in the Final Judgment,
standing on God’s side of things, doling out judgment upon
the evil that has saturated the world. This theme is picked up
in the New Testament, though we often miss it because we’re
not accustomed to it. In 1 Corinthians 6, Paul asks a series of
rhetorical questions to which the appropriate answer is to be
a resounding “Yes!” He asks, “Or do you not know that the
saints will judge the world?... Do you not know that we are to
judge angels?” (vv. 2-3) The idea of the saints participating in
the judgment on the world, especially in relation to judgment
upon those who have mocked and persecuted them prior to
the judgment, isn’t a strange shot-in-the-dark but an idea
derived from Daniel 7, where the saints (referring, in this
prophecy, to obedient Israelites) participate in the judgment
of the monsters that emerge from the sea, the pagan nations
that oppress and persecute them. When judgment comes, the
redeemed will have a part to play, though the extent and
nature of that role isn’t explicitly laid-out in the New
Testament. It’s something we’ll just have to “wait and see”,
though something (and this is the point Paul’s making in 1
Corinthians 6) we should anticipate in the present by settling
disputes within the church family rather than taking one
another to court.

THE ULTIMATE INHERITANCE: THE NEW HEAVENS & NEW

EARTH
The Final Judgment is so often focused on what happens to
human beings (in terms of Heaven or Hell) that the greater
scope of the Final Judgment is lost in a haze. The overarching
purpose of the Final Judgment is upon (a) the eradication of
evil and (b) the restoration of the created order to God’s

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original desires and intentions. These twin purposes of the
Final Judgment envelop the fates of both those who have
obeyed God and disobeyed God: those who have obeyed Him
are to enjoy God’s recreated cosmos, and those who have
disobeyed Him, to put it simply, won’t. At the consummation,
the Final Judgment will take place and the eschatological
exile will end, and God’s people will truly stand in the
Promised Land—except here the Promised Land isn’t just
some stretch of land along the eastern edge of the
Mediterranean but the entire world, the entire solar system,
the entire galaxy, the entire cosmos. The promise God made to
Abraham in Genesis 15 serves as a signpost to the greater
promise: Abraham’s family won’t just inherit Canaan but will
inherit the entire world. Heaven and Earth will merge, as
depicted in Revelation 21-22, and God’s project will continue
again. His wise rule will be carried out through all creation by
His image-bearing creatures. This “hiccup” of evil will be
dealt with, and God’s program will carry forward into eternity.
The future hope of the Christian isn’t immaterial
wandering and harp-playing in an ethereal heaven but being
made totally and completely and physically new, dwelling in a
newly created physical world, doing the work of God with
physical hands in a physical universe unstained by death and
decay. This is the goal of salvation; this is the Christian
destiny; this is the “Hope of Salvation.” Salvation with all its
present intricacies has a future aspect; we’re saved but not
yet fully, though we’re guaranteed that we will be fully saved
in the future. Until then, as we live between Easter and
Consummation, our endurance and sustenance is to be found
in God’s Spirit, in Christian community, and in “the hope of
the glory of God.”

THE COSMIC SCOPE OF SALVATION

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Because Western society is individualistic at its core, it’s easy
for us to see salvation as something God does primarily for us.
“Jesus loves me so much that he died for me so that he
wouldn’t have to spend eternity without me.” Salvation does
indeed benefit us in no small way, but when we make our
benefit the point of salvation, we’re slipping into a wholly
egocentric pattern of thought that makes God orbit around us
rather than us orbiting around Him. Salvation isn’t just
something that’s focused on human beings; salvation is
cosmic in scope, and this cosmic sweep of salvation means
that human beings, being saved and guaranteed of being fully
saved in the future, find their role within this cosmic
framework of the kingdom of God. God’s greatest concern
isn’t the entrance of individuals into heaven but the
advancement of His kingdom throughout the entire world.
Our salvation, with everything it entails in both the present
and future aspects, fits into this larger story of what God is
doing in the world.
Salvation is, at its core, about rescue, restoration, and
renewal. When a person is saved, in the present and in the
coming future, that person is (by the grace of God and by the
cross of Christ) restored to his or her true identity as God’s
image-bearer. The future of Christians is one of being fully-
restored image-bearers, priests of God, rulers over creation,
gardeners in God’s renewed cosmic garden. This is a
restoration to God’s original (and continued!) intentions for
humanity. Though we have not yet been glorified, we who are
saved in the present are called to take up rake and spade and
serve God precisely as His image-bearers now as we advance
His kingdom in our own lives, homes, communities, and
societies. In Genesis 3 mankind fell from “the glory of God”;
that is, mankind fell from being what God created him to be.
In Christ the redeemed are rejuvenated, given the sort of life
they lost. The end goal is a return to the “glory of God”, and
though we won’t experience the totality of restoration until
the consummation, we are to live as God’s image-bearers in
the present as we anticipate our future inheritance.

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 When Westerners speak, think, write, and preach about
salvation in Christ, most of the time it’s in the context of
individual human beings getting saved. It’s about what the
individual must do to enter into a private relationship with
God. The communal aspect of salvation is often entirely lost.
In our preoccupation with individuals experiencing salvation,
we come to perceive the church not as a community of the
redeemed but as a gathering-place where saved individuals
can come together to talk about their private relationship
with God and to encourage one another in their “daily walk.”
Salvation does indeed involve individuals coming to faith and
repentance in Jesus and entering the covenant community,
but the emphasis in the New Testament isn’t on disconnected
individuals holding hands in fellowship but a community of
God’s people who have been saved in the present and who will
be saved in the future.
The wide lens of salvation reaches farther than
communities, of course. The salvation of human beings and of
human communities fits into the larger framework of God’s
purpose in the cross, that of reconciling the entire world to
Himself. The salvation of the universe is the rescue and
deliverance of the cosmos from the effects of evil, from the
scarring of sin and death, from the powers and principalities
wreaking havoc on God’s beloved creation. It is the
restoration and renewal of the cosmos to its proper and
rightful place, which we see in Genesis 1 and 2. Though we
may approach Romans as a step-by-step doctrine, as an ordo
salutis regarding how people get saved; and though we may
read Galatians as a treatise on justification by faith and not by
works; when we come to Ephesians and Colossians, we find
something altogether different that forces us to rethink the
paradigms through which we read Paul’s letters. Paul says in
Ephesians 1.10 that God’s overarching purpose in Christ is to
“unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on
earth.” In the poem found in Colossians 1.15-20, Paul writes
in verses 19b-20, “For in Christ all the fullness of God was
pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all

Anthony Barnhart, 2010-2015

things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the
blood of his cross.” Paul echoes the creedal phrase in
Ephesians 1.10, linking the cross of Christ to the point at
which reconciliation takes place. This isn’t just reconciliation
between God and Man but between God and Creation.
God’s great act of salvation isn’t confined just to human
beings. The cross’ effects won’t be felt only by those who put
their faith in Christ. Salvation entails the rescue and
deliverance of the entire created order, and those who wish to
partake in this rescue have no option but to embrace Christ in
faith and repentance.

Anthony Barnhart, 2010-2015