The Message of Jesus: What Is Salvation?
In Greek and in English, to be “saved” is to be rescued from some problem. To understand what Christian salvation is, we need to know what the problem was, what God did about it, and whether we have any role in being rescued.
What humans are
When God made humans, he made them “in the image of God,” and he pronounced his creation “very good” (Genesis 1:26-27, 31). Humans were a wonderful creation: made from dust and energized by the breath of God (Genesis 2:7).
“The image of God” means that we are like God in some way, in a way that animals are not. Some think it means intelligence, language, creativity and power over creation. It includes the ability to make moral choices. That’s because God has something special in mind for us, his children. He wanted a relationship with them, a friendship.
Genesis tells us that the first humans did something God had warned them not to do (Genesis 3:1-13). Their disobedience showed that they did not trust God. By being faithless, they had broken the relationship and fallen short of what God wanted for them. They were becoming less like God. The result, said God, would be struggle, pain and death (3:16-19). If they were not going to follow the Maker’s instructions, they were going to end up doing things the hard way.
Humans are noble and crude at the same time. We can have high ideals, and yet be barbaric. We are like God, and yet ungodly. We are not the way we are supposed to be. Even though we have messed ourselves up, God still considers us to be made in his image (Genesis 9:6). The potential is still there for us to be like God and to live with him. This is why he wants to rescue us, to save us, to restore the relationship he had with us.
God wants to give us eternal life, free from pain, on good terms with God and with each other. He wants our intelligence, creativity and power to be used for good. He wants us to be like he is, to be even better than the first humans were. He wants to live with us forever. This is salvation.
The center of the plan
We need to be rescued. And God has done this—but he did it in a way that no human would have expected. The Son of God became a human, lived a perfect life, and we killed him. And that, says God, is the salvation we need. What irony! We are saved by a victim! Our Creator became flesh so he could die for us. But God raised him back to life, and through Jesus, he promises to make us new, to give us life after we die.
In the death and resurrection of Jesus, the death and salvation of humanity is represented and made possible. His death is what our failures deserve, and as our Creator, he paid for all our failures. Though he did not deserve death, he willingly died for our sins, on our behalf.
Jesus Christ died for us, and was raised for us (Romans 4:25). Our old self died with him, and a new person is brought back to life with him (Romans 6:3-4). In one sacrifice, Jesus paid “for the sins of the whole world” (1 John 2:2). The payment has been made; the question now is how we are to receive the benefits. We participate in the plan through repentance and faith. Now we need to know what those words mean.
Repentance
Jesus came to call people to repentance (Luke 5:32). Peter told people to repent and turn to God for forgiveness (Acts 2:38; 3:19). Paul preached about “repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus” (Acts 20:21).
The Greek word is metanoia, which comes from roots meaning “after” and “thought.” It means a change of mind, a change that will result in a change of behavior. John the Baptizer told people to “bear fruits worthy of repentance” (Luke 3:8). He wanted to see evidence that the people had really changed the way they were thinking.
When John and the early apostles preached to Jewish audiences, they were often speaking to people who already had good behavior. What those people needed most was to change the way they were thinking about Jesus. They needed to see Jesus, not the law, as the correct guide to life. They needed to have faith in him, to trust in him. Repentance and faith meant almost the same thing for these people.
For pagans and for people whose lives were a mess, changes in the way they were thinking about Jesus would lead to major changes in behavior, too. Their faith in Jesus would lead them to trust his instructions in how to live, and they would change their behavior in response to Jesus’ teachings. Faith and repentance went together.
Repentance means to turn away from sin and toward God. We stop answering the call of sin; we stop going toward sin and start going toward God. Paul told people in Athens that God overlooked idolatry that had been done in ignorance, but “now he commands all people everywhere to repent” (Acts 17:30). They should stop their idolatry and start worshiping the true God.
Paul was concerned that some of the Corinthian Christians might not repent of their sexual sins (2 Corinthians 12:21). For these people, repentance would mean that they would stop their immorality. Paul preached that people should “do deeds consistent with repentance” (Acts 26:20). They should change their thinking and their behavior.
Part of our doctrinal foundation is “repentance from dead works and faith toward God” (Hebrews 6:1). But this does not mean perfect behavior—Christians are not perfect (1 John 1:8). Repentance means not that we arrive at our goal, but that we begin traveling in the right direction.
Pleasing Christ becomes our highest priority, more than just pleasing ourself (2 Corinthians 5:15; 1 Corinthians 6:20). Paul tells us, “just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and lawlessness, leading to even more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness” (Romans 6:19).
Faith
Telling people to change their behavior is not going to rescue them. Humans have been told to obey for thousands of years, but they still need to be rescued. Something more is needed, and that is Christ. But we do not experience his salvation unless we believe that Christ has done this for us. We need faith, or belief.
The New Testament says much more about faith than it does repentance—the words for faith occur more than eight times as often. Christians are known as believers, not as repenters. Belief is the defining characteristic.
Everyone who believes in Jesus is forgiven (Acts 10:43). “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved” (Acts 16:31). The gospel “is God’s saving power for everyone who believes” (Romans 1:16).
Does this mean that we are to accept certain facts? The Greek word is pistis. It can mean belief in a fact, but more often it has the sense of trust. It is often a relationship term, meaning faithfulness. Wealthy people could show pistis toward their servants; the servants would respond with pistis as well. For one person it might mean generosity; for the other it might mean gratitude and praise. In both cases the people are being faithful to a relationship.
When Paul encourages us to believe in Jesus Christ, he is not emphasizing facts. (The devil knows the facts about Jesus, but he isn’t saved.) When we believe in Jesus Christ, we trust him. We know he is faithful and trustworthy. We can count on him to take care of us, to give us what he promises. We can trust him to rescue us from humanity’s worst problems. When we turn to him for salvation, we admit that we need help, and that he can provide it.
Our faith does not save us—our faith must be in him, not something else. When we believe in a fact, our faith does not make it true – it recognizes that it is already true. When we have faith in Jesus as our Savior, it does not make him a Savior. Rather, it recognizes that he is already our Savior. He has already paid the price to rescue us; he is already worthy of our praise and loyalty. We simply accept something that is already true.
When we trust in Christ, we quit trying to save ourselves. Although we try to have good behavior, we do not think our efforts are saving us (diligent effort never made anyone perfect). Nor do we get depressed when we fail. That’s because we are trusting in Christ, not in ourselves, for our salvation. Our confidence is in him, not in our performance.
Faith is a change in the way we think – it is repentance – and when we think in a new way, we will also change the way we behave. Our thoughts, words, and actions will be changed by what we believe about Jesus.
When we trust Jesus as our Savior, when we realize that God loves us so much that he sent his Son to die for us, when we know that he wants the best for us, then we become willing to live for him and please him. We make a choice—we give up the pointless and frustrating life we had before, and accept his purpose and direction for what life is supposed to be.
Faith is the internal change that makes all the difference. Our faith doesn’t earn anything or add anything to what Jesus has earned for us. Faith is simply the willingness to respond to what he has done. We are like slaves working in the clay pits, and Christ announces, “I have purchased your freedom.” We are free to stay in the pits, or we can trust him and leave. Our part is to accept it and act on it.
How Do We Receive Salvation?
Salvation is God’s gift to us, given by his grace, his generosity. We can’t earn it, no matter what we do. “By grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God—not the result of works, so that no one may boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9). Even our faith is a gift of God. Even if we obey perfectly from now on, we do not deserve a reward (Luke 17:10).
We were created for good works (Ephesians 2:10), but good works cannot save us. They come after salvation, but they cannot earn it. As Paul says, if salvation could be achieved by law-keeping, “then Christ died for nothing” (Galatians 2:21).
Grace does not give us permission to sin, but grace is given to us when we sin (Romans 6:15; 1 John 1:9). Whatever good works we do, we thank God for doing them in us (Galatians 2:20; Philippians 2:13).
God “saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works but according to his own purpose and grace” (2 Timothy 1:9). “he saved us, not because of any works of righteousness that we had done, but according to his mercy” (Titus 3:5).
Grace is the heart of the gospel: We are saved by God’s gift, not by our works. The gospel is “the word of his grace” (Acts 14:3; 20:24). “We will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus” (Acts 15:11). We “are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Romans 3:24). We would be hopelessly in sin and condemnation, except for grace.
Our salvation depends on what Christ has done. He is the Savior, the one who rescues us. We cannot brag about our obedience, or our faith, because they are always defective. The only thing we can be proud of is what Christ has done (2 Corinthians 10:17-18)—and he did it for everyone, not just us.
How are we saved? We are saved by the death and resurrection of Jesus. How do we receive salvation? By God’s grace – his gift to us. How do we experience salvation? By faith, by trusting that what God says is true.
Justification
The Bible explains salvation in many ways: ransom, redemption, forgiveness, reconciliation, adoption, justification, etc. (See Lesson 3.) That is because people understand their problem in different ways. For those who feel dirty, Christ offers cleansing. For those who feel enslaved, he offers redemption, or purchase. For those who feel guilt, he gives forgiveness.
For people who feel alienated and put at a distance, he offers reconciliation and friendship. For those who feel worthless, he gives an assurance of value. For people who don’t feel like they belong, he describes salvation as adoption and inheritance. For those who are aimless, he gives purpose and direction. For those who are tired, he offers rest. For the fearful, he gives hope. For the anxious, he offers peace. Salvation is all this, and more.
Let’s look at justification. The Greek word is often a courtroom term. People who are justified are declared “not guilty.” They are exonerated, cleared, acquitted, declared OK. When God justifies us, he says that our sins will not be counted against us (2 Corinthians 5:19). They are removed from the record.
When we accept that Jesus died for us, when we acknowledge that we need a Savior, when we acknowledge that our sin deserves punishment and that Jesus bore the penalty of our sins for us, then we have faith, and God assures us that we are forgiven. On the day of judgment, all the evidence against us will be gone. We may be rewarded on the basis of how much we did well (1 Corinthians 3:14-15), but we do not need to fear a verdict of “guilty.”
No one can be justified, or declared righteous, by observing the law (Romans 3:20), because the law does not save. It is a standard that we fail to meet, and by that measurement, all of us fall short (v. 23). God “justifies the one who has the faith of Jesus” (v. 26). “A person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law” (v. 28).
To illustrate justification by faith, Paul uses the example of Abraham, who “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness” (Romans 4:3, quoting Genesis 15:6). Because Abraham trusted God, God counted him as righteous. This was long before the law was given, showing that justification is a gift of God, received by faith, not earned by law-keeping.
Justification is more than forgiveness, more than removing our debts. Justification means counting us as righteous, as having done something right. Our righteousness is not from our own works, but from Christ (1 Corinthians 1:30). It is through the obedience of Christ, Paul says, that believers are made righteous (Romans 5:19).
Paul even says that God “justifies the ungodly” (Romans 4:5). God will consider a sinner righteous (and therefore accepted on the day of judgment) if the person trusts God. A person who trusts God will no longer want to be wicked, but this is a result and not a cause of salvation. People are “justified not by the works of the law but through the faith of Jesus Christ” (Galatians 2:16).
A new start
Some people come to faith suddenly. Something clicks in their brain, a light goes on, and they accept Jesus as their Savior. Other people come to faith in a more gradual way, slowly realizing that they do trust in Christ and not in themselves for their salvation.
Either way, the Bible describes this as a new birth. When we have faith in Christ, we are born anew as children of God (John 1:12-13; Galatians 3:26; 1 John 5:1). The Holy Spirit begins to live within us (John 14:17), and God begins a new creation in us (2 Corinthians 5:17; Galatians 6:15). The old self dies, and a new person is being created (Ephesians 4:22-24)—God is changing us.
In Jesus Christ, and as we have faith in him, God is undoing the results of humanity’s sin. As the Holy Spirit works within us, a new humanity is being formed. The Bible doesn’t say exactly how this happens, and perhaps we are not even able to understand the details; it just says that it is being done. The process begins in this life and is finished in the next.
The goal is to make us more like Jesus Christ. He is the image of God in perfection (2 Corinthians 4:4; Colossians 1:15;Hebrews 1:3), and we must be transformed into his likeness (2 Corinthians 3:18; Galatians 4:19; Ephesians 4:13; Colossians 3:10). We are to be like him in spirit—in love, joy, peace, humility and other godly qualities. That’s what the Holy Spirit does in us. He is restoring the image of God.
Salvation is also described as reconciliation—the repair of our relationship with God (Romans 5:10-11; 2 Corinthians 5:18-21; Ephesians 2:16; Colossians 1:20-22). No longer do we resist or ignore God—we love him. We are changed from enemies to friends.
And we are even more than friends—God says that he adopts us as his own children (Romans 8:15; Ephesians 1:5). We are in his family, with rights, responsibilities and a glorious inheritance (Romans 8:16-17; Galatians 3:29; Ephesians 1:18; Colossians 1:12).
Eventually there will be no more pain and sorrow (Revelation 21:4), which means that no one will be making mistakes. God will live with us (verse 3) – that was the goal all along. God wants fellowship with us. He wants to share his life with us, to invite us into a communion of love, kindness and respect. If that sounds like a good thing, then Jesus is good news, because that’s what he is giving us.
Sin will be no more, and death will be no more (1 Corinthians 15:26). That goal may seem a long way off when we look at ourselves now, but the journey (just like any other journey) begins with a single step—the step of accepting Christ as Savior. Christ will complete the work he begins in us (Philippians 1:6).
And in the future, we will be even more like Christ (1 Corinthians 15:49; 1 John 3:2). We will be immortal, incorruptible, glorious and sinless. Our spiritual bodies will have supernatural powers. We will have a vitality, intelligence, creativity, power and love far beyond what we know now.
It cannot be earned. We don’t deserve it – it is the gift of God made possible by Jesus Christ, who loved us and gave himself for us.
Author: Michael Morrison; updated in 2025
