From First Century Ekklēsia to Twenty First Century Church

If you were getting to know someone you had only recently met, learning that the person considered himself to be a “Christian” might prompt several questions, but by itself would provide surprisingly few answers. Christianity today includes numerous denominations, traditions, movements, and independent churches. Many of their differences arise from differing interpretations of Scripture and doctrine, and even within individual denominations there can be considerable differences in belief and practice.

The person might attempt to clarify matters by telling you that he attended a particular denominational church, or perhaps a non-denominational Evangelical church. If you were familiar with that church’s statement of faith or denominational distinctives, you might then have a better idea of what he was likely to believe. We have become so accustomed to thinking about Christianity in these terms that they seem perfectly natural to us. Yet much of this would have been quite foreign to a similar conversation in the first century.

This does not mean that the earliest Christians agreed about everything. The New Testament itself makes that impossible to maintain. Questions arose concerning circumcision, food, marriage, spiritual gifts, the resurrection, relations between Jews and Gentiles, the observance of particular days, and even which teachers Christians should follow. Paul’s letters frequently address disagreements and correct beliefs and practices that he considered serious departures from the gospel. Christians have had to work through disagreements almost from the beginning.

But there is an important difference. A Christian in first-century Corinth could not respond to those disagreements by deciding that he was a Baptist rather than a Presbyterian, a Pentecostal rather than an Anglican, or simply leaving one congregation to find another whose statement of faith more closely matched his own. Those categories did not exist. Paul wrote instead “to the ekklēsia of God that is in Corinth, to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints” (1 Corinthians 1:2). There was God’s ekklēsia in Corinth – a people identified by their relationship to God through Jesus Christ.

That word, ekklēsia, is normally translated into English as “church.” We are so familiar with that translation that we seldom stop to consider what we hear when we read it. Today “church” can mean a building, a Sunday service, a local congregation, a denomination, an institution, its leadership, or even the religious sphere of society as distinguished from the secular world. We speak naturally of “going to church,” “joining a church,” “changing churches,” and “church and state.” None of those expressions seems particularly strange to us.

But how much of that would Paul have heard in the word ekklēsia?

That question is worth asking because words do more than label things. They help organize the way we think about them. If we have gradually loaded the word “church” with ideas that were not present when the New Testament writers used ekklēsia, we may sometimes be reading those later ideas back into the text. The translation may be familiar and perfectly usable while the picture it creates in our minds has moved some distance from what the original writers intended.

The question, then, is not whether Christians should stop using the word “church.” After centuries of use, it is deeply embedded in Christian language and can still refer quite properly to the people of God. The more important question is what the New Testament writers meant when they spoke of the ekklēsia – and what may have happened to our understanding as ekklēsia gradually became what we now think of as “the church.”

A good place to begin is with the word itself. The Greek word ἐκκλησία (ekklēsia) does not, by itself, mean a religious institution, a sacred sphere, or a community separated from the secular world. At its most basic level, it refers to an assembly, gathering, or congregation – a group of people assembled or understood as a body. It was already an ordinary Greek word long before Christians began using it.

A particularly useful New Testament example occurs in Acts 19. During the disturbance at Ephesus, Luke uses ekklēsia for the gathering of townspeople. “The assembly was in confusion” (Acts 19:32). Later, the city clerk tells them that other matters should be settled “in a legal assembly” (ennomō ekklēsia, v. 39), and finally Luke tells us that he “dismissed the assembly” (v. 41). The word translated “assembly” in all three places is ekklēsia.

Luke is obviously not describing the Ephesian crowd as “the church.” English translators quite reasonably use “assembly” because “church” would give modern readers the wrong impression. The example nevertheless shows us something important: there is nothing inherently Christian or religious in the word ekklēsia. Its significance depends upon who is assembled and to whom that assembly belongs.

For understanding the New Testament, however, ordinary Greek usage is only part of the picture. The word already had a long biblical history. The Septuagint – the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures widely used in the world of the New Testament – frequently uses ekklēsia for the Hebrew קָהָל (qahal), referring to the assembly or congregation of Israel. Deuteronomy, for example, speaks of “the day of the assembly” when Israel gathered before God at Horeb (Deuteronomy 9:10; 10:4; 18:16).

That background becomes especially interesting in Acts 7:38. Stephen speaks of Moses as being with “the assembly in the wilderness.” The word translated “assembly” is again ekklēsia – the same word normally translated “church” when applied to the followers of Jesus. Most English translations understandably avoid “church” here because to modern ears “the church in the wilderness” would suggest something quite different. But the distinction exists in the English wording, not in the Greek word.

This matters. When the earliest followers of Jesus described themselves as the ekklēsia, they were not inventing a new word or introducing an entirely new category called “the Church” in the sense that Christians would later come to understand it. They were using a familiar word with both an ordinary meaning and a rich biblical history. It could describe an assembly of people, and within Israel’s Scriptures it had already been used for the assembled people of God.

This does not by itself settle every question about the relationship between Israel and the followers of Jesus. But it should make us cautious about assuming a sharp distinction simply because our English Bibles speak of the “assembly” or “congregation” of Israel on one side and “the Church” on the other. The English words make them sound like two different kinds of things. The underlying biblical vocabulary does not make that distinction nearly so easily.

A few paragraphs back, I referred to the opening of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians:

“To the church of God in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be his holy people, together with all those everywhere who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ – their Lord and ours...” (1 Corinthians 1:2)

Having looked more closely at the word ekklēsia, it may be helpful to hear that opening again without immediately giving “church” all the meanings it has acquired for us. Taking a little liberty with the wording, we might hear something like: To God’s assembly in Corinth – to those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be his holy people...

Paul is addressing an ekklēsia, an assembly or community of people in Corinth. But this is not just any assembly. It is God’s ekklēsia, and Paul immediately identifies these people by their relationship to Jesus Christ. They have been sanctified in Christ and called to be God’s holy people, together with people everywhere who call upon Jesus as Lord. The meaning comes not simply from the word ekklēsia, but from whose assembly it is and who these people are.

This brings us back to the question with which we began. If I ask a Christian today what kind of Christian he is, he might answer Baptist, Pentecostal, Anglican, Presbyterian, or perhaps non-denominational. Those labels tell us something about the particular Christian tradition or community with which he identifies.

Something interesting happens almost immediately after Paul addresses God’s ekklēsia in Corinth. The people within that community have begun identifying themselves in ways that sound strangely familiar:

“I belong to Paul.”

“I belong to Apollos.”

“I belong to Cephas.”

“I belong to Christ.”

(1 Corinthians 1:12)

We should not simply read our modern denominational system back into first-century Corinth. These were not denominations in the modern sense. But there is a recognizable human tendency at work. People who belonged to the same ekklēsia were beginning to organize themselves around preferred teachers and competing identities.

Paul does not respond by finding a proper place for each of these groups within the Christian community. He challenges the fragmentation itself: “Has Christ been divided?” (1 Corinthians 1:13)

That question is particularly striking when read alongside the address with which Paul began. Before anyone is “of Paul,” “of Apollos,” or “of Cephas,” Paul has already identified them as God’s ekklēsia in Corinth – people sanctified in Christ Jesus who share one Lord with believers everywhere. Their disagreements were real, but Paul did not allow those disagreements to become their primary identity.

One Assembly, Many Differences

The situation at Corinth reminds us that disagreement among Christians is nothing new. The difference is not that first-century believers agreed while Christians today do not. They clearly disagreed, sometimes strongly. The difference is that many of those disagreements still had to be worked through within a shared community. Paul did not write separate letters to the followers of Paul, Apollos, and Cephas. He wrote to the ekklēsia of God in Corinth and expected these people, despite their differences, to learn how to live faithfully together.

That does not mean Christians must remain together regardless of what is taught or practised. The New Testament itself warns against serious error and recognizes circumstances in which fellowship can be broken. Nor should every later division among Christians be treated as unnecessary. Some disagreements concern matters important enough that maintaining a common teaching and practice becomes extremely difficult. Shared convictions also provide real benefits. They allow communities to teach consistently, worship together, pursue common purposes, and establish reasonable boundaries concerning what they believe and practice.

But those same boundaries can carry a cost, and sometimes a serious one. As Christianity developed into denominations, traditions, and movements, differences that once had to be faced within a shared community could increasingly become boundaries around separate communities. Christians who disagreed no longer always had to work through those differences together. Over time, particular interpretations and practices could become part of the identity of the group itself.

Once that happens, beliefs can become more difficult to examine. People naturally tend to gather with others who share their convictions, and churches understandably teach according to the beliefs on which they were founded. A Baptist church will normally teach Baptist understandings of baptism; a Pentecostal church will generally teach Pentecostal understandings of spiritual gifts. The same is true of Reformed, Anglican, dispensational, charismatic, and other traditions. This consistency can provide stability and clarity. But it can also create something of an echo chamber, where the same interpretations are taught, affirmed, and repeated while serious alternatives are seldom heard from those who actually hold them.

The consequences can go considerably beyond simply saying, “We believe this, while they believe that.” Once a particular doctrine becomes closely tied to the identity of a community, questioning the doctrine can begin to feel like questioning the community itself. The difference may then be described not simply as disagreement but as faithfulness versus compromise, truth versus error, or, in more extreme cases, orthodoxy versus heresy. Christians on the other side can gradually become people to defend ourselves against rather than brothers and sisters from whom we might still have something to learn.

History shows how serious this tendency can become, particularly when religious authority has been joined to political power. Christians have excluded, persecuted, imprisoned, and at times killed other Christians over doctrinal and ecclesiastical differences. Religious divisions became entangled with political conflicts and contributed to wars in which Christians fought Christians. Those events cannot be blamed simply on denominations or theological disagreement; political power, national interests, social conflict, and other forces were often deeply involved. But they demonstrate how far Christian divisions can travel once disagreement becomes bound up with institutional identity, authority, and power.

Most denominational differences today obviously do not lead to anything so extreme. The quieter danger is much more common. A belief can be repeated from one generation to the next not because each generation has carefully returned to Scripture and reached the same conclusion, but because the belief has become one of the accepted markers of belonging to that particular community. The walls that preserve a tradition’s convictions can preserve its errors just as effectively.

That is the tension worth recognizing. Shared convictions give a Christian community definition, stability, and the ability to teach with some consistency. But the very structures that preserve what a community believes to be true can also shelter those beliefs from serious examination. The problem is not that Christians have traditions. None of us approaches Scripture without them. The problem comes when our tradition becomes so familiar, and the voices around us so similar, that we can no longer easily distinguish what Scripture actually says from what our community has taught us that Scripture says.

That makes Paul’s response to Corinth worth hearing again. Faced with Christians gathering around preferred teachers, he did not ask which group had chosen the best label. He brought them back to the identity they already shared: “Has Christ been divided?” Their unity did not require them to pretend their disagreements were unimportant. Much of the letter is devoted to working through those disagreements. But Paul expected them to do that work as people who belonged first to Christ and to one another.

Perhaps that is one of the things our modern use of “church” can make easier to overlook. We commonly think of a church as a particular organization that we join – often one whose beliefs already resemble our own. Paul began somewhere else. He began with God’s ekklēsia: a people called together in Christ who then had to learn how to live, disagree, correct, forgive, and grow together.

When One Assembly Became Two

There is another consequence of the way we have learned to think about “the Church,” and this one reaches beyond denominations. For many Christians, particularly those raised within dispensational teaching, Israel and the Church have become two familiar and clearly separate theological categories. The distinction can seem so obvious that it is seldom necessary to explain it. There was Israel in the Old Testament; then came the Church in the New Testament. Israel and the Church are different, and confusing the two is considered a serious interpretive mistake.

But after looking more carefully at the word ekklēsia, that distinction deserves another look.

We have already seen that ekklēsia did not begin as the name of a new Christian institution. It was an ordinary word for an assembly, and in the Greek Old Testament it was already being used for the assembly of Israel. Stephen could therefore speak in Acts 7:38 of the ekklēsia in the wilderness. The English Bible calls Israel an “assembly” there and normally calls the followers of Jesus the “Church,” but the Greek word itself has not changed.

This does not prove that Israel and the New Testament ekklēsia are identical in every respect. Something genuinely new has happened through the coming, death, resurrection, and enthronement of Jesus and the giving of the Spirit. Gentiles are now being brought into the people of God on a scale anticipated by the prophets, and the community is being formed around Israel’s Messiah. But if we are going to distinguish Israel's ekklēsia from the ekklēsia we now call “the Church,” that distinction must come from the biblical story itself. We cannot simply assume it because our English Bibles have taught our eyes to see “assembly” in one place and “Church” in another.

This becomes particularly important when we come to dispensationalism. One of the defining features of traditional dispensational theology has been its insistence upon a continuing distinction between Israel and the Church. Charles Ryrie, one of its most influential twentieth-century representatives, described the distinction between Israel and the Church as essential to dispensationalism. Some forms of dispensationalism have carried that distinction further, describing the present Church age as a kind of “parenthesis” within God’s prophetic program for Israel – a program that will resume when God again turns his attention specifically to Israel.

Not every dispensationalist today would state the distinction that strongly. Nevertheless, a continuing distinction between Israel and the Church, along with a future role for ethnic Israel, remains characteristic of dispensational thought.

The older formulation, however, illustrates particularly well the problem we have been considering throughout this discussion. Someone can read “Israel” and “the Church” for decades as two obviously separate theological categories without realizing how much that distinction has been reinforced by the vocabulary and theological system through which the Bible has been learned.

If “the Church” is understood as the proper name for a new people beginning in the New Testament, a particular set of questions follows from that understanding: When did this new people begin? Which promises belong to the Church and which belong to Israel? When does the Church’s particular role end? And when does God turn his attention back to Israel? These questions may seem obvious once the distinction has been established, but they arise from a particular way of organizing the biblical story rather than from the word ekklēsia itself.

But what happens if we step behind the English label and return to the biblical story?

Paul gives us an especially important picture in Romans 11. He does not describe a Jewish people of God alongside a newly created Gentile people of God. He describes one cultivated olive tree. Some natural branches have been broken off because of unbelief, while believing Gentiles, pictured as branches from a wild olive tree, have been grafted in among the remaining branches and now share in the same nourishing root. Paul also warns those Gentile believers against arrogance: “remember that it is not you that support the root, but the root that supports you” (Romans 11:18).

The direction of the imagery matters. Gentiles do not receive a new tree of their own. They are grafted into something already there.

Paul makes much the same point using different imagery in Ephesians 2. Gentiles had once been “aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise.” But in Christ those who “once were far off have been brought near.” Paul does not then say that they have been brought near to form a second covenant people alongside Israel. He says that Christ has made the two into one, that they are “no longer strangers and aliens,” but “citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God.”

Galatians points in the same direction. Paul identifies Jesus as Abraham’s promised offspring and then tells Gentile believers, “if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise” (Galatians 3:29). Again, the movement is not away from Israel’s story toward a separate story called the Church. Gentiles are being included in promises that began long before them.

None of this requires us to pretend that the New Testament erases every distinction between Jew and Gentile. Paul plainly continues to speak about Israel and about his fellow Jews, most notably in Romans 9–11. Nor does it settle every question concerning what Paul expects for ethnic Israel. Those questions deserve to be considered on their own terms.

What it does challenge is the assumption that the biblical story contains two separate peoples of God with two separate redemptive programs simply because we have learned to call one “Israel” and the other “the Church.” The language of the New Testament repeatedly emphasizes incorporation, reconciliation, grafting, shared inheritance, one household, and one people gathered around Israel’s Messiah.

That brings us back to ekklēsia. The word itself cannot settle the entire Israel-and-Church debate, and it should not be asked to. But recovering its biblical background removes one of the assumptions that can make the separation appear self-evident. Israel had an ekklēsia before Pentecost. The followers of Jesus are called an ekklēsia after Pentecost. The important question is therefore not, “When did God replace Israel with something called the Church?” Nor must we begin with the opposite assumption that God now has two distinct peoples.

The better question is the one the biblical story itself invites us to ask:

What has God done with his people through Israel’s Messiah, Jesus Christ?

When we begin there, the story looks less like God setting one people aside, inserting another people called “the Church,” and eventually returning to the first. It looks much more like the long-promised expansion of God’s people through Israel’s Messiah, as people from the nations are brought near, grafted in, made fellow citizens, and become heirs with those who share the faith of Abraham.

So What Difference Does Recovering Ekklēsia Actually Make?

None of this means that we need to stop using the word “church.” Nor does recovering ekklēsia eliminate genuine differences among Christians or settle every question about Israel and the people of God. What it can do is help us see more clearly what may have become hidden behind a familiar word.

The ekklēsia of the New Testament was first of all a people – a people called together by God and identified by their relationship to Jesus Christ. They could disagree, sometimes seriously, without those disagreements becoming their primary identity. Paul could confront factions within Corinth while continuing to address them together as God’s ekklēsia. Their first identity was not found in Paul, Apollos, or Cephas, but in Christ.

Recovering that understanding may also help us read the larger biblical story with fewer assumptions. The people gathered around Jesus did not appear in a story that began at Pentecost. They belonged to the much older story of Abraham, Israel, covenant, promise, and Messiah. Gentiles who came to Christ were not given a separate tree of their own; they were grafted into one already growing. They were brought near, made fellow citizens, and became heirs of the promise.

Perhaps, then, recovering ekklēsia is less about finding a better word than recovering a better picture. The church is not primarily a building we attend, an institution we join, a denomination whose distinctives we adopt, or a religious part of life separated from everything else. It is a people who belong to God through Christ and are learning together what it means to live under his lordship.

That picture will not make all our disagreements disappear. It may, however, change how we hold them. It reminds us that our traditions, denominations, and theological systems are not the ekklēsia. They may help us understand and live faithfully within it, but they should never become more fundamental than the identity we already share.

Paul’s question to a divided assembly in Corinth therefore remains remarkably appropriate:

“Has Christ been divided?”

In the Last Days: What Was Paul Warning Timothy About?

There are certain passages of Scripture that Christians learn to associate almost automatically with particular ideas. Second Timothy 3:1–9 is one of them. Paul warns Timothy that “in the last days distressing times will come,” and then follows with a disturbing description of human behaviour. People will be lovers of themselves and lovers of money. They will be boastful, arrogant, abusive, ungrateful, unholy, without self-control, brutal, treacherous, reckless, conceited, and lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.

It is not difficult to read that list while watching the evening news, scrolling through social media, or simply observing changes in society and conclude that Paul must have been describing our time. I have heard some version of that conclusion for much of my Christian life. The argument usually seems straightforward: look at what Paul said people would become in the last days, look at the world around us, and the resemblance seems obvious.

But resemblance alone does not establish what a biblical writer originally meant.

Before asking whether Paul's description resembles the twenty-first century, there is a more basic question we should ask: What did Paul mean when he wrote these words to Timothy?

Closely related to that is another question: Was Paul giving a prophecy about a distant generation, or was he warning Timothy about conditions and people Timothy himself would have to face? The two possibilities are not necessarily absolute opposites. A warning can contain prediction, and Paul clearly says that “distressing times will come.” But identifying the purpose of his words matters. Was Paul giving Timothy a description of conditions that would identify the final years of world history thousands of years later? Or was he preparing Timothy for a “last days” crisis that already belonged to the world in which Timothy lived?

Paul was writing to a man he knew, a fellow worker who was dealing with real problems among real people in the first-century church. Whatever “the last days” meant to Paul, his words had to mean something to Timothy before they could mean something to us.

That leads to an even more basic question.

The Last Days of What?

When Christians today hear the expression “the last days,” many immediately think of the final years of human history immediately preceding the return of Christ. That meaning has become so familiar in some Christian traditions that it is often assumed rather than demonstrated.

But that is not the only way the New Testament uses the expression.

At Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit was poured out and the disciples began speaking in other languages, Peter stood before the crowd and explained what they were witnessing:

“This is what was spoken through the prophet Joel.”

He then quoted Joel:

“In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh.”

Whatever additional fulfillment someone might believe Joel's prophecy still awaits, Peter's statement should be allowed to speak plainly. He was explaining something happening in front of him. He did not say, “This resembles what Joel said would happen someday.” He said, “This is what was spoken through the prophet Joel.”

Therefore, for those gathered before him, the last days, in some meaningful biblical sense, had arrived.

The writer of Hebrews speaks similarly:

“Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created the worlds.” (Hebrews 1:1–2)

The writer does not say that the last days would begin at some distant point in the future. He says that God “has spoken to us” in these last days through his Son. The coming of Christ itself marked a decisive turning point in the biblical story.

Later in the same letter, Hebrews makes the point even more explicitly. Speaking of Christ's sacrifice, the writer says:

“But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to remove sin by the sacrifice of himself” (Hebrews 9:26).

Paul uses similar language when writing to the Corinthians. After recounting events from Israel's wilderness history, he explains why those events had been preserved:

“These things happened to them to serve as an example, and they were written down to instruct us, on whom the ends of the ages have come. (1 Corinthians 10:11)

Paul was not describing people who would live thousands of years after him. He included himself and his readers among those “on whom the ends of the ages have come” (1 Corinthians 10:11).

Peter speaks in much the same way. He tells his readers that Christ “was destined before the foundation of the world, but was revealed at the end of the ages for your sake” (1 Peter 1:20). John can go even further and tell his readers, “Children, it is the last hour” (1 John 2:18).

Taken together, these passages establish an important starting point. The New Testament writers did not consistently use expressions such as “the last days,” “the end of the ages,” or even “the last hour” to describe a period that remained thousands of years in their future. They understood something decisive to be happening in their own time.

One common response is that the “last days” began with Christ or Pentecost and simply continue throughout the entire church age until Christ returns. On that understanding, Peter and Paul were living in the last days, but so are we nearly two thousand years later. That is certainly one way of bringing these passages together, but it should not simply be assumed. It raises an important question of its own: Were the apostles describing the beginning of a long age that would continue for thousands of years, or were they living through the closing period of one age and the dawning of another?

The New Testament does not present the transition between these ages as though someone simply turned off one light and switched on another. The new age was inaugurated in Christ, but the old order did not immediately disappear. For a time the two overlapped. The new had arrived while the old was passing away.

This is the remarkable historical position occupied by the first Christians. Christ had come, died, risen, and been exalted. The Spirit had been poured out. The new covenant had been inaugurated and the kingdom of God had broken into history. Yet Jerusalem still stood. The temple still stood. Its priests continued their service and its sacrifices continued to be offered. Jesus had pronounced judgment upon that order and declared that the temple would be destroyed, but for those living and writing before AD 70, that judgment had not yet occurred.

Hebrews captures this transition particularly well. After speaking of the new covenant, the writer says:

“In speaking of a new covenant, he has made the first one obsolete. And what is obsolete and growing old will soon disappear” (Hebrews 8:13).

Notice the movement in that language. The new covenant is already a reality. The first has already been made obsolete. Yet something belonging to that old order is still “growing old” and approaching its end.

This is not merely a distinction between two theological ideas. The first Christians actually lived through that transition. They stood on one side of Christ's death, resurrection, exaltation, and the giving of the Spirit, while still living in a world in which the temple and the institutions associated with the former covenant remained visibly present.

We do not occupy that same historical position. We live after the passing away of that temple order, not during its final years. That difference matters when we encounter New Testament expressions such as “the last days,” “the end of the ages,” and “the last hour.”

It therefore becomes important not to assume in advance that “the last days” means one continuous period stretching without distinction from Pentecost to the Second Coming. Perhaps that is what a particular passage means, but it must be established from the text rather than built into the definition.

The more basic question remains: The last days of what?

Were the apostles simply announcing the beginning of an age in which Christians two thousand years later still stand in exactly the same historical sense? Or were expressions such as “the last days,” “the end of the ages,” and “the last hour” also describing the closing period of an order that was visibly passing away around them as the new creation had already begun to dawn in Christ?

That question should be answered before we assume that Paul's “last days” in 2 Timothy 3 are our days simply because we can recognize his description in the world around us.

What Did Timothy Hear When He Read This Letter?

Second Timothy was not written as a general prophecy addressed to an unknown generation in the distant future. It was a personal letter from Paul to Timothy. That does not limit its authority or relevance for later Christians, but it does establish the historical setting in which its words must first be understood.

Paul begins the chapter: “You must understand this, that in the last days distressing times will come” (2 Timothy 3:1).

If we stopped there, it would be easy to imagine Paul looking far beyond Timothy's lifetime. The language is future: distressing times “will come.”

But Paul does not stop there. After describing the people who will characterize those times, he tells Timothy: “Avoid them!” (3:5).

That is an important change. Paul has moved from what sounds like a future prediction to a direct instruction concerning people Timothy himself must avoid.

The movement becomes even clearer in the following verse: “For among them are those who make their way into households…” (3:6).

Paul does not say that people will someday begin doing this. He speaks of people who are doing it. Then, after comparing them with Jannes and Jambres, he says: “So these people, of corrupt mind and counterfeit faith, also oppose the truth” (3:8).

The progression deserves to be noticed: “will come” → “avoid them” → “among them are” → “these people.” The people Paul associates with the last days are not merely figures standing on a distant prophetic horizon. People fitting his description were already present in Timothy's world.

The preceding chapter makes this even harder to miss. Paul has already warned Timothy about arguments and false teaching. He names Hymenaeus and Philetus, whose teaching “will spread like gangrene” and who “have swerved from the truth” (2 Timothy 2:17–18). He speaks of opponents who must be corrected in the hope that God will lead them to repentance and “an escape from the snare of the devil” (2:25–26).

Then comes: “You must understand this, that in the last days distressing times will come.”

The chapter division can unintentionally hide the connection. Paul has not suddenly stopped talking about Timothy's circumstances in order to insert a prediction about people living thousands of years later. The discussion continues naturally from the problems Timothy is already confronting.

And after describing these people in 3:1–9, Paul turns directly back to Timothy:

“Now you have observed my teaching, my conduct, my aim in life, my faith, my patience, my love, my steadfastness…” (3:10).

The contrast is immediate. These people behave and teach in one way. Timothy has seen another way modelled in Paul. A few verses later comes the practical conclusion:

“But as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed” (3:14).

This gives the passage a very different emphasis from the one it sometimes receives in popular end-times discussions. Paul is not primarily giving Christians a list of social conditions by which they can calculate their position on an end-times calendar. He is warning Timothy about corrupt people and false teachers and telling him how to remain faithful in their presence.

Could This List Describe Almost Any Age?

There is another reason to be cautious about treating Paul's list as a set of identifying signs for our particular generation.

Consider what Paul actually lists. People will be lovers of themselves and lovers of money. They will boast. They will be arrogant, abusive, disobedient, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, slanderous, lacking in self-control, brutal, reckless and conceited. They will love pleasure rather than God.

Certainly these things can be found in our world. But when have they ever not been found?

That question is not meant to suggest that every society has been equally corrupt or that moral and social conditions never become better or worse. History provides plenty of examples of societies experiencing serious moral, political, institutional and social deterioration. It is also reasonable to observe that such deterioration has sometimes accompanied the decline of possibly all great civilizations and empires.

But we do not need to establish a universal historical law to make the more modest point. Nothing in Paul's list is unique to our age. Indeed, Paul himself provides evidence of this. In Romans 1 he describes people as filled with “envy, murder, strife, deceit, craftiness.” They are “gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, haughty, boastful,” rebellious toward parents, faithless and heartless (Romans 1:29–31).

The resemblance to 2 Timothy 3 is difficult to miss. Yet no one needs to suppose that Romans 1 is Paul's description of twenty-first-century society. Paul was describing the human rebellion and idolatry known in his own world.

This creates a problem for one common argument. If selfishness, greed, arrogance, rebellion, brutality and pleasure-seeking were present in Paul's world and have repeatedly appeared throughout history, then finding those things in our world cannot, by itself, demonstrate that Paul was specifically describing us.

Someone may respond that these things are worse now. That may be worth discussing as a historical or sociological claim. Some things may indeed be worse in a particular society, while others may be better. But even if we could demonstrate that several of these behaviours have increased in our time, we would still have to establish that Paul intended increasing levels of those behaviours to function as a prophetic clock.

The passage itself never tells us to do that. More importantly, concentrating upon the general wickedness in verses 2–4 may cause us to overlook one of the most revealing statements in the entire passage.

Paul's description does not end with people who have rejected religion. It ends with people who still possess it.

“Holding to the Outward Form of Godliness”

Verse 5 changes the way the preceding list should be heard. These people are:

“holding to the outward form of godliness but denying its power.”

That is not an obvious description of an increasingly secular society that has abandoned belief in God. These people retain an outward form of godliness. They look religious. They possess the appearance of piety while something essential is missing beneath it.

This becomes even clearer when we continue reading. These people make their way into households. They influence others. Their victims are described as “always studying yet never able to recognize truth.” Paul says that these teachers “oppose the truth” and describes them as people “of corrupt mind and counterfeit faith.”

The setting is therefore not simply social decay. It is religious corruption.

Paul is concerned about people who can operate within a religious environment, speak about matters of faith and truth, gain followers, and maintain the appearance of godliness while their character and teaching deny the reality their profession claims.

Titus contains a remarkably close parallel: “They profess to know God, but they deny him by their actions” (Titus 1:16).

That helps us understand what denying the “power” of godliness may involve. Paul does not necessarily mean that these people verbally deny that God possesses supernatural power. The contrast is between the form of godliness and its reality. Their profession says one thing. Their lives reveal another.

Read this way, the vice list in verses 2–4 takes on additional significance. Their love of money, arrogance, lack of self-control, brutality, treachery, conceit and love of pleasure are not merely signs that society is becoming wicked. They expose the emptiness of the godliness these people profess.

The problem is not that they have no religion. The problem is that their religion has become a shell.

That should cause us to look more closely at the example Paul chooses next.

Why Jannes and Jambres?

Paul writes: “As Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these people, of corrupt mind and counterfeit faith, also oppose the truth” (2 Timothy 3:8).

The names Jannes and Jambres do not appear in the Exodus account itself, but Jewish tradition associated them with the Egyptian magicians who opposed Moses before Pharaoh.

Paul could have chosen many biblical examples of wickedness. He could have pointed to Sodom. He could have mentioned one of Israel's notoriously wicked kings. Instead, he chooses figures associated with counterfeit opposition to God's authentic work.

That is significant. When Moses and Aaron appeared before Pharaoh, the Egyptian magicians were initially able to imitate some of the signs they performed. Something resembling God's work appeared alongside God's genuine work. For a time, the counterfeit could appear impressive. But it could not continue indefinitely.

Eventually the magicians reached the limits of what they could imitate, and their inability became apparent. That makes Paul's next statement especially fitting:

“But they will not make much progress because, as in the case of those two men, their folly will become plain to everyone” (2 Timothy 3:9).

The comparison is not merely between good people and bad people. It is between truth and counterfeit, between God's genuine work and those who present something resembling it while actually opposing it. This brings Paul's warning remarkably close to another first-century warning about religious appearance and inward corruption.

Jesus Had Described Something Remarkably Similar

Matthew 23 contains one of Jesus' strongest denunciations of the religious leadership of his generation. Again and again, the contrast is between what appears outwardly and what actually exists within.

In addressing the crowd, Jesus said that the outside of the cup is clean while the inside is filled with greed and self-indulgence. He said the tomb appears beautiful on the outside while death lies within, and that people appear righteous to others while inwardly they are filled with hypocrisy and lawlessness.

The problem he was addressing wasn’t an absence of religion. These are deeply religious people. They possess Scripture, religious institutions, traditions, teachers, ceremonies and public demonstrations of devotion. Yet Jesus said that the outward form conceals something profoundly wrong. The similarity to Paul's “form of godliness” should at least get our attention.

There is another important feature of Matthew 23. Jesus did not leave the timing of the coming judgment undefined. After describing a long history of rejecting God's messengers, he tells his hearers:

“Truly I tell you, all this will come upon this generation” (Matthew 23:36).

Then comes his lament:

“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it!”

The following chapter begins with Jesus leaving the temple and announcing its coming destruction.

Paul's warning belongs to the same first-century world in which Jesus had condemned outward religious faithfulness concealing inward corruption, warned of opposition to God's messengers, and announced judgment upon the existing religious order.

Against that background, Paul's language about “the last days,” counterfeit faith, outward godliness, and opposition to the truth does not sound strangely out of place.

It sounds remarkably at home.

But Can We Really Know?

At this point another response sometimes appears: “But we can't really know what Paul meant.” There are certainly details about this passage that remain open to discussion, and responsible interpretation should acknowledge them. But that does not mean the passage itself is so uncertain that nothing definite can be said.

“We can't really know” can sound appropriately humble while actually avoiding the evidence in front of us. Paul was not writing a cryptic message intended primarily for Christians living thousands of years later. He was writing a letter to Timothy, a real coworker facing real problems in real churches. Paul expected his words to communicate something Timothy could understand and act upon. If our interpretation makes Paul's warning largely unintelligible or irrelevant to Timothy but remarkably specific to us, we should at least ask whether we have begun reading ourselves into the passage.

The text gives us considerable help. Paul begins by saying that “in the last days distressing times will come.” Yet only a few sentences later he tells Timothy, “Avoid them!” He then speaks of people who “make their way into households” and refers to “these people” who presently oppose the truth. The people who characterize Paul's “last days” are not merely distant figures on a prophetic horizon. Timothy is already encountering people of precisely this kind.

That does not answer every question about what Paul meant by “the last days,” but it answers more than “we can't really know” allows. Whatever else Paul may have believed about the future, he understood the conditions he was describing to have direct relevance to Timothy's own time.

This is where appeals to uncertainty can become a problem. If someone begins with the assumption that “the last days” must mean the final years before Christ's return, evidence that Paul and other New Testament writers regarded themselves as already living in the last days creates an obvious difficulty. One response is to reconsider the original assumption. Another is to say that the prophecy may have had an initial first-century application but awaits its real or complete fulfillment at the end of history. And when that becomes difficult to demonstrate from the passage itself, the discussion can retreat still further to, “We simply can't know.”

But uncertainty should not be used to make an interpretation immune to contrary evidence. If evidence can establish an interpretation, evidence must also be allowed to challenge it. An interpretation that becomes definite when the text appears to support it but suddenly becomes unknowable when the text points elsewhere is not being treated by the same standard in both directions.

The better question is not, “Can we know everything Paul had in mind?” Of course we cannot. The better question is, “What does the evidence in the letter allow us reasonably to know?”

Quite a bit, as it turns out.

We know Paul was writing to Timothy. We know Timothy was expected to respond to the warning. We know Paul moved from what would happen “in the last days” to people Timothy was presently instructed to avoid. We know those people were already entering households, influencing others, opposing the truth, and presenting a counterfeit form of faith. And we know that elsewhere the New Testament writers could speak of their own period as “the last days,” “the end of the ages,” and the time upon which “the ends of the ages have come.”

None of that requires us to pretend that every interpretive question has been settled. But neither should responsible caution be confused with interpretive paralysis. Sometimes we genuinely cannot know. Sometimes we can know enough to recognize that a familiar interpretation has serious difficulties. The task of interpretation is to tell the difference.

So Was Paul Talking About AD 70?

This brings us to a question that naturally arises from everything considered so far. If the New Testament writers believed themselves to be living in the last days, and if Jesus had announced judgment upon Jerusalem and the temple within that generation, was Paul specifically talking about the events leading to AD 70?

Here again, we should allow the evidence to determine how far we go.

AD 70 belongs to the historical world in which Paul's language must be understood. Jesus had announced judgment upon Jerusalem and its temple. The earliest Christians lived during the final decades of that temple order. At the same time, the gospel announced that Israel's Messiah had come, the new covenant had been inaugurated, the Spirit had been given, and God's kingdom had broken into history.

Jesus had announced judgment upon Jerusalem and its temple. The earliest Christians lived during the final decades of that temple order. At the same time, the gospel announced that Israel's Messiah had come, the new covenant had been inaugurated, the Spirit had been given, and God's kingdom had broken into history.

That creates an important distinction. The question need not be whether 2 Timothy 3 predicts AD 70.

The better question is whether the approaching end of the old covenant temple order helps us understand why first-century Christians could speak naturally of themselves as living in “the last days.”

There is good reason to take that possibility seriously. The destruction of Jerusalem did not bring history to an end. The earth continued. The gospel continued to spread. The church continued its mission among the nations. But an age really did end.

The temple that had stood at the center of Israel's covenant life was destroyed. Its sacrifices ceased. Its priestly service ceased. The political and religious world centered upon that sanctuary underwent a catastrophic judgment of exactly the kind Jesus had warned would come upon his generation.

From that perspective, asking “the last days of what?” becomes essential.

If we automatically hear “the last days” as “the final days of planet Earth,” we may miss the redemptive-historical transition the New Testament writers believed was already taking place around them.

Second Timothy 3 does not require us to identify every feature of Paul's warning with AD 70. But neither does it require us to transport Paul's warning thousands of years into the future before it can properly be called a “last days” passage.

Paul and Timothy were already living in the last days.

The Warning Still Belongs to Us

None of this makes Paul's warning irrelevant to Christians living today. It may actually make it more relevant.

If we read 2 Timothy 3 primarily as a prediction of society shortly before the Second Coming, the passage encourages us to look outward. We examine the surrounding culture. We notice selfishness, greed, rebellion, sexual excess, brutality, arrogance and pleasure-seeking. Then we compare the world around us with Paul's list and conclude that prophecy is being fulfilled before our eyes.

But Paul directs Timothy's attention somewhere much closer.

His greatest concern is not simply with people who have rejected God. It is with people who maintain “the outward form of godliness” while denying its reality.

That warning cannot safely be confined to someone else's generation.

It asks Christians in every generation to examine the relationship between what we profess and what our lives actually reveal. Religious language is not enough. Correct appearances are not enough. Belonging to the right religious community is not enough. Even teaching and learning about spiritual things are not enough if we can be “always studying yet never able to recognize truth.”

The warning becomes particularly uncomfortable when we remember that the people Paul describes apparently do not recognize themselves as the counterfeit. They possess a form of godliness. They operate among religious people. They influence others. They speak about truth.

The danger, therefore, is not merely that the world might become increasingly worldly. It is that God's people can become very skilled at maintaining the appearance of faithfulness while resisting the transforming reality to which that appearance is supposed to point.

That danger existed in Jesus' generation. It existed in Timothy's generation. And it exists in ours. Perhaps, then, the most important question raised by 2 Timothy 3 is not, “Does this prove that we are living in earth's final days?”

The New Testament had already declared the arrival of the last days long before we were born. The more searching question is the one Paul's warning places before every generation of Christians:

Do we merely possess the form of godliness, or has the truth we profess actually been allowed to exercise its power in us?

Saved, Being Saved, and Yet to Be Saved

Recently I was part of a group of friends in a Bible study. We were working our way through the opening chapters of 1 Corinthians, using the NIV as our common translation, when we noticed something interesting in the way Paul spoke about salvation. In 1 Corinthians 1:18, Paul described Christians as those who “are being saved.” Then, in chapter 3, while speaking about the testing of each person's work, he said that a person whose work was burned up nevertheless “will be saved.”

The difference raised a simple question: Why the change in tense?

In the King James Version 1 Corinthians 1:18 reads differently. Instead of “us who are being saved,” it says “unto us which are saved.” To a modern reader, that can sound more like a completed condition. That raised another question. Was the NIV interpreting Paul's words as an ongoing process, or was “being saved” actually closer to what Paul wrote?

The question seemed worth pursuing because Christians often speak about salvation almost entirely in the past tense. We ask someone when they were saved, tell the story of how we were saved, or describe a particular moment when we came to faith in Christ. There is good biblical reason for speaking this way. Something real happens when a person comes to Christ. Paul can speak about believers as people whom God has already justified, reconciled, and brought into a new relationship with himself.

But that is not the only way Paul speaks about salvation. At other times, he describes Christians as people who are being saved. Still elsewhere, he tells people who already believe in Christ that they will be saved. Salvation can appear in Paul's writings as something that has happened, something that is happening, and something that remains ahead.

This raises a larger question than the one with which our Bible-study discussion began: What does Paul mean by salvation? Perhaps the best way to answer it is not to begin with a theological definition, but with Paul's own words.

Those Who Are Being Saved

In 1 Corinthians 1:18, the NIV reads:

“For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”

The King James Version, however, reads:

“For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God.”

The wording of the King James Version can easily give a modern reader the impression that Paul is speaking entirely about something already completed: “us which are saved.” The NIV's “us who are being saved” sounds noticeably different.

There is a good grammatical reason for the NIV's wording. The Greek word is sōzomenois, from sōzō, meaning to save, rescue, or deliver. It is a present passive participle. The expression is therefore naturally translated “those who are being saved.”

The contrast within the sentence makes this even clearer. Paul describes one group as “those who are perishing” and the other as “those who are being saved.” The two expressions are grammatically parallel. One group is described as perishing; the other as being saved. Translating the second expression as “being saved” therefore preserves something that can easily be missed by a modern reader of the KJV.

Paul's point in the immediate context is not to construct a detailed doctrine of different stages of salvation. He is contrasting two groups and their response to the message of the cross. What appears foolish to one is recognized by the other as “the power of God.” Nevertheless, Paul's choice of language matters. He does not hesitate to describe people who already belong to Christ as people being saved.

Nor is this an isolated expression. Near the end of the same letter Paul returns to the gospel he had preached to the Corinthians:

“Now, brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. By this gospel you are saved...”

—1 Corinthians 15:1–2, NIV

Here again, the Greek verb is present and the expression can appropriately be understood as “you are being saved.” These are not people waiting to become Christians. They have already received the gospel and presently stand in it. Yet Paul can still describe God's saving activity in relation to them as a present reality.

Salvation, therefore, cannot simply be reduced to the moment at which they first believed.

He Himself Will Be Saved

Then there is another expression in the same letter that moves salvation in a different temporal direction. In 1 Corinthians 3, Paul describes Christian workers building upon the one foundation, Jesus Christ. Some build well; others do not. Eventually the quality of their work will be revealed. Paul writes that “their work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light” (1 Corinthians 3:13, NIV).

He then says of the person whose work does not survive:

“If it is burned up, the builder will suffer loss but yet will be saved—even though only as one escaping through the flames.” —1 Corinthians 3:15, NIV

Here there is no ambiguity about the future orientation. The Greek verb sōthēsetai means “will be saved.” The person Paul is describing is already building upon the foundation that is Christ, yet Paul looks forward to “the Day” and speaks of that person's salvation as something future.

Within the opening chapters of the same letter, therefore, Paul can speak of Christians as those who are being saved, while also looking toward a coming Day when someone will be saved. Then, in chapter 15, Paul again speaks of believers in connection with present salvation before turning his attention toward resurrection—the great future event toward which Christian hope is moving.

The difference we noticed in our Bible study, therefore, was not simply the result of inconsistent English translation. Paul himself uses salvation language in different temporal ways. That combination deserves attention.

What Happens at the Beginning?

None of this means that Paul regarded conversion as unimportant or thought nothing decisive had yet happened to Christians. Quite the opposite. Paul can describe the Christian's new standing before God in remarkably definite terms. In Romans 5:1 he writes:

“Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” —Romans 5:1, NIV

Something has changed. Reconciliation is real, and a new relationship with God has begun. In Romans 6, believers are described as having died with Christ so that they might “live a new life.” In 1 Corinthians 6:11 Paul reminds his readers:

“But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.” —1 Corinthians 6:11, NIV

Whatever else Paul means by salvation, Christianity is not merely waiting for God to do something someday. Something decisive has already happened. There is therefore good biblical reason for a Christian to look backward and say, “I was saved.” There is a genuine beginning to the Christian life in which we are brought into Christ, reconciled to God, justified, and given the Spirit.

But Paul does not stop there.

Salvation Is Also Happening

The Christians at Corinth had received the gospel and stood within it, yet Paul described them as those being saved. This gives us a second legitimate way of speaking: “I am being saved.”

That does not mean Christ's work was incomplete or that Christians must gradually earn the salvation he began. In 1 Corinthians 1:18 the grammar itself points in the opposite direction. “Being saved” is passive: God is the one acting. The Corinthians are the recipients of his saving work.

Nor should every use of salvation language simply be equated with what later theology calls sanctification. Paul certainly speaks of growth, transformation, obedience, perseverance, and becoming increasingly conformed to Christ. These belong within the Christian life, but his language of salvation is broader than any one theological category. God's saving work has begun, but the story has not ended.

Paul expresses something similar in 2 Corinthians when he describes believers as “being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory” (2 Corinthians 3:18, NIV). In Philippians he speaks of God as the one who “began a good work” in his people and who “will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus” (Philippians 1:6, NIV).

There is a beginning, therefore, but there is also an ongoing work—and that work has a destination.

Salvation Is Nearer Than When We Believed

Perhaps one of Paul's clearest statements occurs in Romans 13:11:

“...because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed.” —Romans 13:11, NIV

These people have already believed. Paul can look backward to a time “when we first believed.” Yet he can simultaneously say that their salvation is nearer now than it was then. That statement is difficult to explain if salvation can refer only to the moment of conversion. Paul is clearly looking forward to something that has not yet reached its completion.

We see the same pattern in Romans 5. After speaking of believers as already justified, Paul writes:

“Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him!” —Romans 5:9, NIV

Notice the movement within the sentence itself. We have now been justified, and we shall be saved. Paul can place something already accomplished beside something still future without seeing any contradiction between them.

Romans 10:9 initially appears to provide another example:

“If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” —Romans 10:9, NIV

Again, salvation points forward: “you will be saved.” But this passage introduces another question. If salvation is future in this sentence, what does Paul mean by the believing and confessing that precede it? Is he describing a single moment when someone believes and confesses, after which salvation is guaranteed? Or is he describing the faith and confession that characterize the person who belongs to Christ?

The following verses help clarify the picture. In verse 10 Paul explains more generally:

“For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved.” —Romans 10:10, NIV

Paul then speaks of “the one who believes” in verse 11 and concludes by quoting Joel:

“Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” —Romans 10:13, NIV

The point, then, is not that the Greek tense in Romans 10:9 proves that believing and confessing are continuous processes. It does not. The more important observation is that Paul describes believing in and confessing Jesus as the response of faith associated with those who belong to him, while still placing salvation toward a future horizon: “you will be saved.”

This becomes especially significant when Romans 10:9 is placed alongside Romans 13:11. Paul can look backward to “when we first believed” while telling those same believers that “our salvation is nearer now” than it was then. There was a genuine beginning, but salvation still has a future destination.

A similar pattern appears elsewhere in the New Testament. John 3:16 describes the person who has eternal life as “whoever believes in him.” The Greek expression uses the present participle (ὁ πιστεύω) ho pisteuōn—“the one who believes.” John describes the believer, then, as someone characterized by faith in Christ, not merely as someone who believed at a particular moment in the past. This fits well with what we have already seen in Paul. Faith has a beginning—Paul can speak of “when we first believed”—but believing does not simply belong to the past. The Christian presently stands by faith and is repeatedly urged to continue in it.

This gives us the third way of speaking: “I will be saved.”

Saved From What?

At this point another question becomes important: Saved from what? The answer may help explain why Paul can speak about salvation as something already experienced, something presently taking place, and something still awaiting completion.

If salvation is understood primarily as having our sins forgiven so that we can go to heaven when we die, then it is natural to think of salvation mainly as something that happened in the past. Once forgiveness has been received and our future destination settled, the essential saving event appears to have occurred. The rest of the Christian life can then seem like what happens after salvation rather than part of the larger saving work of God.

Paul's understanding of salvation, however, belongs within a much larger biblical story. Humanity's problem includes sin, alienation from God, corruption, bondage, and ultimately death. God's answer includes forgiveness and justification, but it does not end there. If death remains, God's saving purpose has not yet reached its final victory.

There is another part of this that should not be overlooked. Paul does not speak as though the response of faith with which the Christian life begins becomes irrelevant once someone has believed. He can look backward to the time “when we first believed” (Romans 13:11), but he also repeatedly urges believers to continue in the faith they have received.

This can be seen within 1 Corinthians itself. When Paul returns to the gospel in chapter 15, he reminds the Corinthians of “the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand.” He then says, “By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:1–2, NIV).

That qualification matters. These people had heard the gospel. They had received it. They had believed it. They were standing in it. Yet Paul still tells them to “hold firmly” to what they had received. Whatever conclusions we may eventually draw about the theological questions surrounding perseverance and apostasy, Paul does not treat an earlier act of believing as though subsequent unbelief could simply be ignored.

Nor is this concern limited to Corinth. In Romans 11, Paul warns Gentile believers against becoming proud about their place in God's people. Speaking through the image of the olive tree, he tells them, “They were broken off because of unbelief, and you stand by faith. Do not be arrogant, but tremble” (Romans 11:20, NIV). He then adds that God's kindness remains toward them “provided that you continue in his kindness. Otherwise, you also will be cut off” (11:22).

Likewise, in Colossians Paul speaks of people whom God has already reconciled through Christ's death, and then adds: “if you continue in your faith, established and firm, and do not move from the hope held out in the gospel” (Colossians 1:23, NIV). In Galatians his concern becomes even more immediate. These are people who had received the Spirit and begun by faith, yet Paul is alarmed that they are being drawn toward a different understanding of the gospel. He asks, “After beginning by means of the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by means of the flesh?” (Galatians 3:3, NIV).

Paul therefore seems able to hold two truths together without treating them as contradictory. Something decisive has happened to those who have come to Christ, and God's faithfulness toward his people is a source of profound assurance. At the same time, Paul continues to warn those same communities about unbelief, deception, false teaching, and turning away from the gospel they received. His assurances do not make his warnings meaningless, and his warnings do not erase his assurances.

This is another reason to be cautious about reducing salvation to a single moment in the past. Paul can certainly look backward to the beginning of faith, but he also looks at what is happening to believers in the present and toward what God will finally accomplish in the future. Faith is not merely the doorway through which someone once entered. Continuing to trust Christ and hold firmly to the gospel remains part of the way Paul describes Christian life.

This does not require us to settle here the later theological debate over whether someone who finally abandons faith was never genuinely converted or was genuinely converted and subsequently fell away. Paul was writing centuries before those categories were formulated in their later systematic forms. For the purpose of this discussion, the more important observation is simpler: Paul takes the possibility of turning away seriously enough to warn believers about it. He does not reason that because they once believed, what they subsequently believe and how they subsequently respond to Christ no longer matters.

That brings us back to 1 Corinthians 15. The chapter begins with people who have received the gospel, presently stand in it, and are being saved through it as they hold firmly to it. Paul then spends much of the chapter explaining where that gospel is ultimately taking them: the resurrection of the dead.

Christ has been raised as “the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.” Those who belong to Christ will be raised “when he comes” (1 Corinthians 15:20, 23, NIV). Then comes the end, when every opposing power is finally brought beneath Christ's rule. Paul identifies one enemy in particular: “The last enemy to be destroyed is death” (15:26).

That enemy has not yet disappeared. Christ has defeated death through his resurrection, but Christians still die. They still await the resurrection and the moment when “the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality” (15:53). Only then does Paul announce the fulfillment of the promise: “Death has been swallowed up in victory” (15:54).

This helps explain why salvation can remain future even for someone who already belongs to Christ. God's saving work does not end with forgiveness. It reaches its goal in life—life freed finally from sin, corruption, and death.

The Redemption of Our Bodies

Romans 8 presents much the same picture from another direction. Paul says Christians already possess “the firstfruits of the Spirit.” Something has unquestionably begun. Yet those same Spirit-filled Christians continue to groan while waiting for something they do not yet possess in its fullness: “our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies” (Romans 8:23, NIV).

Paul immediately connects this expectation with salvation: “For in this hope we were saved” (Romans 8:24, NIV). The Christian life therefore exists between what God has already done and what God has promised still to do. The Spirit is already present as the firstfruits, while the redemption of the body remains ahead. Christ has already risen, while those who belong to him still await their resurrection.

This is the familiar New Testament tension often described as the already and the not yet. Christians have already entered the life of the coming age, but they have not yet experienced that life in its fullness. Salvation has begun, but death has not yet been destroyed.

Three Statements, One Salvation

We can therefore make three statements, each reflecting something Paul himself says. A Christian can say, “I was saved,” because there is a genuine beginning to the Christian life. We come to faith in Christ, are reconciled to God, justified, brought into Christ, and receive the Spirit. Something real and decisive has happened.

The Christian can also say, “I am being saved.” God's saving work is a present reality. Paul describes Christians as those who are “being saved,” people who continue to stand in and hold firmly to the gospel they have received. This does not mean that they gradually earn salvation. God remains the one who saves, but his saving work has a present dimension.

And the Christian can say, “I will be saved.” Salvation has an eschatological completion that has not yet happened. Christ will return, the dead will be raised, mortality will put on immortality, and death—the final enemy—will finally be destroyed.

These are not three different salvations. They are three perspectives on the one saving work of God in Christ. The past tells us that God's saving work has genuinely begun. The present tells us that we are still living within that saving work. The future tells us that God's purpose has a destination that has not yet been fully reached.

Attempts to force salvation entirely into one tense can therefore distort Paul's language. If we speak only of future salvation, we can overlook what God has already accomplished in Christ and what believers already possess. If we speak only of present salvation, we can lose sight of the decisive beginning that Paul clearly recognizes. But if we speak only of past salvation, we can unintentionally make Christian salvation smaller than Paul's vision of it.

The person who says, “I was saved when I believed,” can therefore be saying something perfectly biblical. The difficulty arises only when that sentence is expected to carry everything Paul means by salvation. Paul himself can look back to when Christians first believed, describe them in the present as those being saved, warn them to continue in the faith they received, and still point forward to a salvation drawing nearer.

Salvation Has a Destination

Paul's language makes considerably more sense when salvation is placed within the whole biblical story. God is not merely rescuing disembodied souls from a doomed creation. He is rescuing human beings from sin and death and bringing his purposes for humanity and creation to their intended completion in Christ.

That work has already begun, continues in the present, and will finally be completed. This helps explain why Paul's language moves so naturally among past, present, and future. He does not seem troubled by saying that Christians have already experienced God's saving action while simultaneously describing them as being saved and awaiting salvation.

Nor does the certainty of what God has accomplished in Christ make the Christian's continuing response irrelevant. Paul encourages believers with God's faithfulness while also telling them to stand firm, continue in faith, hold firmly to the gospel, and resist teaching that would draw them away from Christ. Both kinds of statements belong to his understanding of Christian life and should be allowed to stand together.

The resurrection of Jesus guarantees that death will not have the final word, but it does not mean every part of God's saving purpose has already occurred. We still live in mortal bodies. We still experience weakness and corruption. We still bury the dead, and death is still called an enemy. Yet Paul does not leave the story there.

The gospel announces that Christ has risen. Those who belong to him will also be raised. What began in Christ will finally extend to his people, and the enemy that has followed humanity from the beginning of the biblical story will at last be destroyed.

Seen from that perspective, perhaps the fullest answer to the question “Are you saved?” cannot be limited to a single tense. According to the different ways Paul himself speaks, the Christian can look backward, at the present, and toward the future and say: By God's grace, I have been saved, I am being saved, and I will be saved.

The Christian hope is large enough to require all three.