Salvation.
What a beautiful word.
What a beautiful, misused, misunderstood word.
Salvation is a fancy way to talk about saving something (or someone). To receive salvation is to be saved from something, by someone. In a biblical context, that something is the eternal death penalty earned through our sins, and that Someone is Jesus Christ, who gave His life to pay that penalty for us, providing us access to the gift of eternal life (Romans 6:23).
When God used Peter to heal a man who could not walk, Peter testified to the religious leaders, “Let it be known to you all, and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead, by Him this man stands here before you whole . . . Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:10, 12).
That’s straightforward enough—we have salvation because we are saved by Christ.
What isn’t as straightforward is the timeline of salvation.
The Bible speaks in different tenses about salvation. Paul told the Ephesians, “For by grace you have been saved through faith” (Ephesians 2:8). He wrote to the Corinthians about “us who are being saved” (1 Corinthians 1:18). Jesus Himself explained that “he who endures to the end shall be saved” (Matthew 24:13).
Past, present and future—how can it be all three at once?
Because salvation is a process.
On Pentecost, when the grief-stricken crowds realized their guilt in crucifying the Son of God, they asked, “Men and brethren, what shall we do?” Peter replied, “Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:37-38).
When the trembling Philippian jailer asked Paul and Silas, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” they told him to “believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, you and your household” (Acts 16:30-31). As an expression of that belief, “he and all his family were baptized . . . and he rejoiced, having believed in God with all his household” (verses 33-34).
If you’ve been through the process of repentance and baptism, you have been saved. Past tense. Your sins were remitted—forgiven—and you received the Holy Spirit. Through that process, “you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, [which] is the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession” (Ephesians 1:13-14). As the power of God, the Holy Spirit is the “down payment” of our salvation—a guarantee that God will fully and completely remake us in His image at the return of Jesus Christ.
If we stick with it.
And that’s where “being saved” comes in. We have been saved from the penalty of our sins, but we haven’t yet endured to the end. We still have the option to walk away from our covenant with God and return to those sins. If we reject Jesus Christ as our Savior, we become someone who has “trampled the Son of God underfoot, counted the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified a common thing, and insulted the Spirit of grace” (Hebrews 10:29).
In other words, having the down payment of salvation doesn’t mean we can’t walk away from salvation. We can. We can decide that this way of life is just too hard, too restrictive, that we don’t want to do it anymore, and return to “the passing pleasures of sin” that Moses rejected. And as long as we maintain that course, we can’t expect to be saved. “For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries” (verses 26-27, ESV).
God always gives us room to repent and turn around—but constant, deliberate sinning will eventually lead us to a place where we don’t want to turn around. For those whose eyes are opened to the truth and who willingly choose to side with the crowd that was crying out for Christ’s crucifixion, “it is impossible . . . to restore them again to repentance, since they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding him up to contempt” (Hebrews 6:4, 6, ESV).
Their story ends with judgment, death and permanent destruction. But it doesn’t have to.
“But he who endures to the end shall be saved” (Matthew 24:13). That’s the finish line. The goal post. If we endure, if we stay faithful to God, if we repent and course correct when we falter, we will find the salvation we’re fighting for.
“Then comes the end, when He delivers the kingdom to God the Father, when He puts an end to all rule and all authority and power. For He must reign till He has put all enemies under His feet. The last enemy that will be destroyed is death . . . So when this corruptible has put on incorruption, and this mortal has put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written: ‘Death is swallowed up in victory’” (1 Corinthians 15:24-26, 54).
One day, the process of salvation will be complete. God will clothe us in immortality, and Jesus Christ Himself will read our names from the Book of Life before God the Father and His angels, announcing us to the heavens as children of God forever—and then, at long last, we shall be saved (Revelation 3:5).
Salvation is all those things, all at once. It’s an initial deliverance from the penalty of our sins after we first understand and repent. It’s a continual deliverance during our quest to overcome the pulls of sin and live a godly life. It’s the promise of our future victory over death itself and our establishment as eternal children of the living God.
And so Paul tells us in effect, “Take all that and make it your helmet.”
The Roman helmet, the galea, was as indispensable as it was uncomplicated. It had one purpose—to protect the head of its wearer. A galea of the first century would have featured a brow ridge, cheek plates and a neck guard, which all worked together to help deflect any blows aimed at a soldier’s head.
That’s what salvation does for us.
Satan would love a clean shot at your head—your mind, the seat of your thoughts, the control room of your decision-making process, the physical component that does so much to define who you are. If he can find footing in your mind, that’s where he can play his most dangerous games.
He wants you to think that you can’t win.
That you won’t win.
That you don’t really care about winning—that God doesn’t care about your winning.
That God’s way is overly restrictive and not worth the effort.
That life would be better if you gave up the fight and lived however you want to live.
The helmet of salvation protects us from those lies by reminding us of the truths that dispel them:
That you can win this fight, because you have been forgiven and will continue to be forgiven of your sins as you repent of them.
That you will win if you keep fighting, because “if God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?” (Romans 8:31-32).
That you do care about winning and that God’s way is worth the effort, because “eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love Him” (1 Corinthians 2:9).
That life wouldn’t be better if you gave up the fight, because the very best this world has to offer pales in comparison to what’s waiting for you.
Paul wrote, “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith—that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead” (Philippians 3:8-11, ESV).
As is usually the case, Paul managed to pack several heavy-hitting concepts into a single sentence, but if you look close, you’ll find the defensive elements of God’s armor on display here—righteousness, faith and salvation. The breastplate, the shield and the helmet.
The righteousness is God’s, because the law can only show us where our own righteousness falls short of God’s expectations. Faith in Jesus is what grants us access to that righteousness, and both these elements point us toward our ultimate salvation: the resurrection of the dead.
Paul knew what it was to suffer loss. His conversion began with a warning from God that he would suffer “many things” (Acts 9:16)—and he did. For Paul, following Christ meant leaving behind a comfortable life as a Pharisee, a respected religious leader of the Jewish community. He traded prestige, relationships, community and security for perils, persecution and trials (2 Corinthians 11:24-28)—and yet when he looked at the promise of salvation, he called his losses rubbish. The Greek word he used was skybala—literally, “waste thrown to dogs”—a word that could refer to anything from table scraps to literal dung.
In his eyes, nothing he had lost could hold a candle to what was ahead of him. His salvation—past, present and future—was the helmet that kept him protected, focused and motivated on the battlefield.
But while Paul lived something of an extraordinary life compared to most Christians, the salvation God offered him is no different from the salvation God offers you. Through the process of baptism and repentance, you have been saved. You are being saved. And at the end of this war, you will be saved.
The helmet of salvation offers a defense your enemy can’t even dent.
