Back to Basics: Salvation as a Life We Live Into

Many Christians view salvation as a finish line - a moment of prayer, forgiveness, or heavenly insurance. However, Scripture reveals salvation as a starting line for lifelong transformation. We are saved not just from sin, but for something greater: participating with God in bringing justice, mercy, and healing to the world. Grace involves three stages - prevenient grace that awakens us, justifying grace that reconciles us, and sanctifying grace that transforms us throughout life. When we treat salvation as complete rather than ongoing, we risk spiritual stagnation and become consumers instead of disciples. True salvation moves us outward to serve others and work alongside God in making the world new.

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Transcript

All right, church, I'm going to invite you this morning if you have your Bibles to open up to the book of Titus. It's not one that we read from a whole lot, but it is a letter from the Apostle Paul in the book of Titus. We're going to start in chapter two. We're going to read verses 11 through 14. I'll give you a second to get there.

If you have your Bible with you, it's in the New Testament towards the end.

All right, that's enough time. All right.

I got that feedback last week. Matt, take a second. Let us get there. So I hope you're there. If you're not too bad.

Alright. Titus chapter 2, 11, 14 says this. For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people. It teaches us to say no to ungodliness and worldly passions and to live self controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age while we wait for the blessed hope, the appearing of.

I'm eager to do what is good. Amen. So I bet if I were to ask you what salvation means to you, I bet as many people are, there are in this room, there'd probably be that same number of opinions as to what salvation means. If you ask a relatively, you know, easy question. What does salvation mean for you?

Some Christians would say things like it means going to heaven when you die. Some might say it means it's that moment when God forgives your sins. Some might say things like it means that Jesus has paid your debt for you. Or some might just say, well, I said a prayer once and now I'm good, right?

Somewhere along the line, salvation got shrunk down and made something smaller than it really is. It got reduced to what I think is an afterlife plan or a ticket to heaven, like some sort of a spiritual insurance policy. And I think it needs to be something bigger and broader than that. In scripture, it proves to us that salvation is bigger, it's richer, and it's something that's beautiful. Salvation is not just about where we go when we die.

It's about how we live in the moments that we have together. Here in this place, we are saved for something, not just from something. Far too often, I think Christians think that church and faith are only about getting into heaven. Like we've achieved everything we need. When we say yes to Jesus and we forget that there's still a race that we have to run together, it's like we celebrate early even though we haven't really reached the victory.

I don't know if you guys are anything like me. But as you're scrolling through TikTok and Instagram and all these different things, do you ever get those videos of like the early celebration folks? Like, the people who are in the middle of a race and they know they're gonna win? They're like, yeah, look at me, I'm gonna win. And they get passed at that last moment.

I got a few of those I think we need to share today. So, first of all, I want you to watch this one. This is a bike race where the leader basically stops pedaling early. So watch this. She's so excited she's going to win.

Look at her. Oh, no. Pass at the. Look at her. She's so mad.

Hits her knee. She's so mad. She got passed in the last second. This next one is one of my favorites. It's from a track meet in Australia.

Look at this guy on the inner curve. He's so ahead. He's ready. He's ready to take that first place location. But then he turns around and looks.

What you can't hear is that all of his buddies are cheering for him in the stands. Yeah. All right, I'm with. Oh, no.

He turned around, threw the fist pump and then lost his balance and face planted. This next one is one that cracks me up. This guy over here in Oregon is like, yeah, yeah, cheer me on. Oh, no. Watch his face.

Doesn't even realize what. What, what happened. But the great thing is at the end, he's devastated and the guy who took first place from him invites him into a hug. Like, that's. That's nice.

That's really sweet. But, man, we cannot think that we're done just because we said some. What some would say is just a magical prayer. This next one is also one of my favorites. This is a soccer game.

Goalie thinks he's done something great. Woo. Look at me. I'm out of here. Yeah, we're gonna win.

Look at the ball.

So the guy you saw, the guy who kicked the ball bent over. He was so heartbroken. And now he's on his knees, just super celebrating. We cannot take our eyes off the prize, friends. All right, next one is a tennis match.

Anybody? Big tennis players in here. This guy, there's no way he's getting it. He runs off the court, does the point, right? Watch him.

He comes out, does a little point to his buddy. Hey, look at me. I won. Oh, no. Oh, no.

There it is. Too bad. This one is by far my favorite. You ever seen a race walk? This makes no Sense to me.

I think this should be banned from all things. But she is excited. She is ready. Look, the tongue's sticking out. Here comes third place.

Oh, no. She. Watch the close ups here. This is so great. It will do a replay.

She's so excited. She raises her hand, which blocks her peripheral vision. She has no idea. Oh, no.

She. Right.

She was heartbroken after that. Right? As we always be. And as funny as those clips are, these reveal things that are true about all of us. Because a lot of Christians do this exact same thing.

We sit in church every single week because we know we've secured our place in heaven. Hallelujah. And we show up and we give to the church and we show up for the work days and we decorate the fellowship hall when, you know, we have these big celebrations and we help put up the Christmas trees at Christmas time and we think that's all we need to do. We treat salvation like a finish line. We treat the sinner's prayer like crossing the tape, like we have made it home.

And we treat going to church every single week like that's the race that we have to run. Many Christians treat baptism like that is the end of our story instead of just the beginning. We cannot be the people that celebrate our salvation too early, because when we do, it's not that we're bad people when we do, but because we've inherited a version of salvation that's too small, it's too shallow. It becomes transactional. It's us saying, yes, and God saying, all right, you're in, and that's not what it should be.

This particular version of salvation that we've inherited says that salvation is a moment instead of a lifelong transition. It's a kind of salvation that says being saved is a status instead of a calling. A version of salvation that says our salvation is something that God does for us instead of something that God does in us and then through us. And there's a difference.

A version of salvation that basically says that God does salvation for us instead of something that God does in us and through us.

Okay, all right. If you have scripture or if you have your Bibles with you, we're going to read in Ephesians another letter from the apostle Paul. Ephesians, chapter 2, verses 1 through 10. If you don't have your Bibles, you can follow along on the screen. Says this starting in verse one.

As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the Ruler of the kingdom of the air, the Spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions. It is by grace you have been saved.

And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Jesus Christ, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not from yourselves. It is a gift of God, not by works so that no one can boast. For we are.

We are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God prepared in advance for us to do Here. In the book of Ephesians, Paul says that the salvation, salvation that we receive is God's free gift of grace to us. We can't earn it. We can't do enough to achieve it on our own. We don't perform away into salvation.

We can't pretend into our salvation. It's given to us by a God who loves us free of charge, no requirements to earn it, offered to us as a gift. All we have to do is take that gift and then live it out. And the hard part is it's really easy for us to take that gift. Hallelujah.

Unsaved. It becomes hard when we're supposed to live it out, right? Paul doesn't just stop with a reminder that God's grace gives us our salvation. He says that we are saved by grace for good works, which God prepared for us in advance to do.

In other words, salvation isn't the finish line. It's never the finish line there. Salvation isn't our end goal. Salvation is just for us, the starting line. God's grace given to us is not God saying, hey you guys, great job, you earned it, you got it, you're done.

The grace given to us by God is God saying to us now, friends, let's really get going, okay? Our salvation should never be seen as a trophy. It should be for us, the beginning of a lifelong transformation. Salvation is God's grace that turns us into the people who. Who join God in healing the world.

In the book of Philippians, chapter 2, verses 12 and 13, it says this. Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence, continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose. I have a friend. I have a really good friend who is not just an atheist, he's somebody who is kind of. He harbors an animosity towards a lot of Christians.

He went to a Christian school in college and struggles with people who call themselves Christians. He told me once, after a long evening, I was reading for seminary. This was when I lived in Oklahoma City years and years and years ago. He came into my house after he had been drinking for a long time. And he basically said, I am tired of the way that the world views faith.

If it doesn't make a change in anybody, why even have it?

He said he used to spend nights in his bed, writhing around at 2 and 3 in the morning, wrestling with his doubt, with his fear, with his misunderstanding of faith, trying to reconcile the Jesus he read about with the Jesus he sees in people who call themselves followers of Jesus. And he eventually gave up. He doesn't believe in God anymore. He doesn't believe that the church has much to offer.

And he is one person who recognizes the pain that comes when we think we've got it all figured out and our faith is only about us and the world is filled with people like him. Here in the book of Philippians, Paul isn't telling the Philippians to go earn their salvation. He's telling them to live it out, to grow into it, to wrestle with it, to ask the questions that are hard. Friends, doubt is a part of faith. If we say that we shouldn't be doubting, we're missing out on a big chunk of what faith is.

We aren't just birthed into Christianity. We have to wrestle with it. If we are smart people, and I think about four of us in here are really smart. Just kidding. Guys, listen, if we are smart people, this doesn't make sense to us, right?

We can't just pull out our science textbooks and be like, all right, where's God in here? Show me how the creation of the world reconciles science with the beginning of Genesis. It doesn't make sense. Faith is hard, and if we don't wrestle with the doubt, if we don't wrestle with the questions that come up, we. We don't have our own faith.

We have an inherited faith, and that's dangerous.

When Paul says, work out your salvation with fear, and trembling. He means, let the salvation that God has given you shape your life, Friend. Salvation isn't a moment. Salvation for us has to be a movement out of these pews and into the world. Salvation isn't a transaction, it has to be for us.

Transformation in our own lives brings about transformation outside of our doors. Salvation is not a one time event, right? We'll talk about it here in a second. But we believe in three different, incredibly different ways that we experience God's grace. Right?

Prevenient, justifying and sanctifying. And so this moment in the middle, this justifying grace, is that moment where we recognize that we've said yes to Jesus and that is our what we think salvation becomes for us. But it doesn't stop in that moment. There's sanctifying grace. It's a grace that calls us to be more like Jesus every single day.

John Wesley was a big believer in a better, deeper understanding of what grace looks like for us. Grace is an ongoing work in a person's life. And this understanding fits perfectly together with what Paul is saying here when we have to work our work out our salvation. For John Wesley, salvation wasn't just that prayer that we said. Hallelujah, Jesus, come into my heart, fill me up, make me different, change me.

But it's a lifelong journey shaped by three different recognizable types of grace. Prevenient, justifying and sanctifying. Prevenient Grace awakens us to reality that God loves you. When God, you don't even recognize that God is a real thing, but God is still calling you in the moments of your life where you'll listen, God is speaking to you and you don't even know it yet. Justifying grace is that moment of reconciliation when all of our wrongs are made right, when we recognize that Jesus gave everything he had to show us what God's love looked like.

And then sanctifying grace continually transforms us into the likeness of Jesus Christ throughout the entirety of our lives.

Grace isn't just pardon for our sins. It's power to live a life shaped like Christ. It's God working in us, shaping our desires, healing our hearts, and forming us into the people who love God and neighbor fully. So when Paul says, work out your salvation, for it's God who works in you, Wesley hears this beautiful partnership between us and God. God supplies the grace, the energy, the desire, the power.

And we respond through obedience to God's word, through spiritual disciplines, ways that we practice our faith, and through the life of religious community.

Salvation is something that God does in us and Something we grow into as we cooperate with the Holy Spirit. For John Wesley, this scripture is the heartbeat of the Christian life. God works in us, and we work with God until love becomes the defining shape of our lives.

So we're not just saved from our sins. We are saved for something.

Nobody tells you when you say yes to Jesus, that there are some requirements, right? Hallelujah, you're saved. Everybody with all eyes closed and all heads bowed. If you feel God doing something, if you would just stand up, hallelujah. And they bring somebody to the front and they're really excited about that moment of salvation.

We're not just saved for that moment. We're saved because we are called to do good in the world around us. We are called to participate with God to bring about justice, to bring about mercy, and we're to tell the world about who Jesus is. We are saved so that we can love our neighbors and our enemies.

We are saved so that we can play a role in healing the world around us. Salvation is God saying to us, I'm making you new so that you can join me in making the world new. And this is why Paul calls us God's ambassadors of reconciliation. Many of you know in Matthew chapter 5 that it begins what we call the Sermon on the Mount. And in that Sermon on the Mount, Jesus reminds us that we are the salt of the earth and we are the light of the world.

We are called by Jesus to let the light of Christ shine through us so that others recognize Jesus at work in us and they will bring glory to God. Right? Our salvation should manifest itself through outward action. If you think you're called to come to church every Sunday, you're only partly right because you should be here on Sunday. But that's not what you're called to.

Salvation is not God pulling us out of the world. Salvation is God sending us back into the world after we experience what happens in here, as we learn about God, as we hear His Word, as we worship together, as we share prayer for one another, to send us out into the world so that we can help people become like Jesus.

And I don't know if you guys notice it, but when you work in the church, you see all the moments when people really don't look like Jesus. And sometimes those people are me. Just so we're clear, there are days in my life where I look nothing like Jesus. And I try really hard every day to be the same guy here that I am at home, that I am in traffic. You know what I mean?

Right?

But some people, when we get to church, we become stagnant. Don't get me wrong. I've observed people who go to church every single week. Unless they are on their deathbed ill, they are here coughing with snot rags and dripping eyes, and like, hallelujah, I'm in church. Pastor, you should have stayed home today.

I'll see you next week. But there are people who show up to church no matter what. And these are the same faithful church members, like I said earlier, who participate in committees and they give every week to the church and they help decorate the church. When it's Christmas time or Advent or Easter or Lent or whatever it is that we have going on, they're there to participate. But some of these people think they've been saved to a building.

They will remain a member of their church no matter the pastor, no matter what changes happen in their denomination, because they know they've been saved to their pew, that chair, that stool, that corner of the sanctuary for their whole lives.

These people may have never invited anybody to church. They've never told anybody outside of the church about their faith. They sit in the same pew every week. But their faith doesn't make a difference in how they treat their neighbor. It doesn't make a difference in how they live with their family members, how they live in relationship with the world.

Many people think that as long as they attend church and they're on their best behavior in front of their church friends, that that's what salvation means.

Evil in life gets hard. As long as they're faithfully in church every single week, they think that they're earning God's grace. I've literally heard people say things like, while in the world there are troubles, but I have heaven to look forward to. And they don't take any steps to heal the troubles of the world.

The rest of their lives might be falling apart around them. But as long as they think they get to heaven when they're done with this life, they're good. They have no reason to panic. I have my get out of hell free card, right. I've been a member of the United Methodist Church since 1968.

Hallelujah Church. We've got to stop only storing up for ourselves treasures in heaven while hell is unleashing, unleashing itself on earth every single day. If we live like my life may be falling apart, but at least I get to heaven when it's over, it's a clear example of celebrating our victory too early.

Jesus saved you so you could bring the kingdom into this life that we can Bring about God's desire for us, his people now, because it's needed. I don't know if you've been watching any of the news recently, but, man, we need some Jesus right now.

Salvation is not a monument. It's not a statue that should be frozen in time. When we say yes to Jesus, our salvation should be a movement out of our pews and into the world.

When Christians treat salvation as a finish line, several things begin to happen. We feel that we don't have to grow anymore. I've gotten my ticket to heaven. I'm golden. We sometimes say, we don't need to go to Sunday school.

We don't need to go to small group. We don't need to do all the things that help us grow in our faith because we got it. We're in. We stop feeling like we have reasons to repent of our sins. I'm in church every week.

Surely I'm not that bad, right? If we're not careful, we stop serving. We stop loving. We stop being transformed through our faith. When we celebrate the hope of our salvation as a once and for all kind of done deal, we end up becoming consumers instead of disciples.

We were not called to go to church because we enjoy it, because the pastor says everything that's correct. Every week we are called to go to church so that we can become better disciples of the Jesus we read about in the Gospels.

If we're not careful, we become spectators instead of participants. We become spiritually stagnant instead of spiritually alive. Sometimes we even start thinking negatively about other people who think that they're saved. How can they be saved? They just came to church the first time last week.

Friends, there's a story in scripture you may have heard of the story of the Prodigal Son, right? Where all the focus is on this young son who squandered his dad's fortune, who. Who's made some terrible financial decisions, who left home and basically said, dad, I don't recognize you as alive anymore. I want my inheritance now. I'm gonna go live my life.

It's gonna be great. And he squanders it with, again, just bad choices. And the only thing that's faithful in this story is the older son. Dad, I'm with you. I'm here.

I've never left you. I'm here to churn the butter and milk the cows and hoe the crops and all the things. Dad, whatever you need, I'm here, faithful through the whole time. The other son is gone. And when that prodigal son Returns home so hungry that he would eat pig food.

When he can't do it on his own anymore, he says, gosh, I've got nothing left but a dad who still loves me. And so he goes back to his father and no, the only person who's mad in that story is the person who stayed faithful the whole time. Church. If we're not careful, that's us. We are the people who say things like, well, how can that person be saved?

They're still smoking cigarettes in the parking lot and littering when they throw their what? When people try to make a shift in their life and we are the people who close the door in their faith. Shame on us. That is exactly who Jesus is talking about in the story of the prodigal son.

If we as church people aren't careful, we become the older brother that Jesus is warning about. We could get so upset about others achieving the same salvation that we have simply because we think that we have worked harder and longer for it. We become like this next little video clip I want to show you. Watch this. This guy is psyched out of his mind.

Oh, no, you're not going to get in front of me.

Oh, let's hug after I just basically stopped you from getting first place.

We need to watch that again. He knows he's got it in the bag and he literally stops a guy to make sure that he. Now listen, if I was judging this race, he would have been disqualified. And I like to think that if God is watching us and we become those people, that we get disqualified too. I hate that.

But oh man, there have been moments where I have disqualified myself, you know what I mean? Where I have been the kind of person that says, you don't look like me. Why do you get the same treatment that I get? That is evil thinking.

When we don't live out our salvation. That call that God has called us to encourage others, but instead we judge others. We are dishonoring what God offers us and we become a block to others salvation.

So church, if our salvation is a lifelong, sanctifying transformation, then we need practices that will continue to shape us our whole lives. We're going to need things like worship and reading scripture. We're going to need prayer and we're going to need the community that we surround ourselves with. We're going to need constant confession, accountability and repentance. We have to turn from where we've been.

We need things like Sabbath, where we have to rest and reflect on who God is. But most importantly, we need the love of Jesus. To be evident in our lives so that when we leave these doors, people don't see us as hypocrites. And we shouldn't think that these are religious chores that Christians have to do on a checklist, right? And to get into our salvation, these are tools that God uses to form us into the people that look more like Jesus.

And just like going to church each week doesn't save us, praying for others doesn't earn our salvation. Spiritual disciplines like those I just mentioned, they're not about earning our salvation either. There are tools that equip us to become more like Jesus.

When we learn to treat our salvation like a lifelong journey, everything changes. We grow. We mature. Our faith deepens. We become more patient, more compassionate, more like the Jesus that we see in the Gospels.

We become the people who carry God's healing out into a world that I promise you, needs healing more now than ever.

So, friends, this week, find a way to connect spiritually to a God who loves you. I know that we are in the season of Lent, where we are preparing ourselves for the great things that come at Easter. If you have not found a spiritual discipline, let this become the week. Find some time to dedicate to prayer. Find some time to fast.

Find some time to work on your relationship with Jesus so that we can be more knowledgeable about who he is and how he would respond. Right? We've all seen these WWJD bracelets. If you don't know who Jesus is because you don't read about him, you're going to have no idea how Jesus is going to respond. We have to know him so that we can be like him.

Choose this week to find a way to serve somebody that costs you something. Not for recognition, but because salvation is always moving outward toward others.

Heck, find a way this week to begin to work on repairing a relationship, even if it means sucking it up and apologizing first. Even if it means taking the blame, even if it means not being right for once in your life, work on your relationships. But this week, and always let your life reflect the salvation that God has planted in you. And let's move to work to bring about salvation to this whole world. Amen.

Amen.