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:
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.
No comments:
Post a Comment