Salvation

God’s work to rescue us from the consequences of our sin, so that we might live in restored relationship on this earth and eternally.
(via Lutheran Basics for Teachers)

Titus 3:4-5

⁴ But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, ⁵ he saved us, not because of any works of righteousness that we had done, but according to his mercy, through the water of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit.

What’s Salvation Like?

Salvation is an experience first and a doctrine second. Doing the work you’re best at doing and like to do best, hearing great music, having great fun, seeing something very beautiful, weeping at somebody else’s tragedy—all these experiences are related to the experience of salvation because in all of them two things happen: (1) you lose yourself, and (2) you find that you are more fully yourself than usual. A closer analogy is the experience of love. When you love somebody, it is no longer yourself who is the center of your own universe. It is the one you love who is. You forget yourself. You deny yourself. You give of yourself, so that by all the rules of arithmetical logic there should be less of yourself than there was to start with. Only by a curious paradox there is more. You feel that at last you really are yourself. The experience of salvation involves the same paradox. Jesus put it like this: “Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it” (Matthew 10:39). You give up your old self-seeking self for somebody you love and thereby become yourself at last. You must die with Christ so that you can rise with him, Paul says. It is what baptism is all about. You do not love God so that, tit for tat, he will then save you. To love God is to be saved.                    

• Frederick Buechner, Beyond Words (2004)

Reflection & Prayer
Give thanks for a time you have experienced what Buechner describes above. If a time doesn’t come to mind, ask that God for a new experience.