Salvation, Sanctification, Glorification, in that Order!
ABSTRACT
This piece argues that Christian traditions have often reduced salvation to denominational formulas. Still, the author has come to see it as something deeper: a rescue from humanity’s moral and existential brokenness. Drawing on the Hebrew meanings of Yeshua and yasha (the root word), the author presents salvation as God’s deliverance of people from sin and self-destructive life patterns, not merely a ticket to heaven after death.
The central idea is that salvation unfolds in stages—justification, sanctification, and glorification—and is meant to transform a person’s worldview and lived experience here and now. The author frames faith as a matter of genuine belief, not mere knowledge or ritual, and concludes that true belief in Yeshua leads to an abundant, holy life in the here and now and certainly after one passes away.
_________________
The latest stage of my journey has been resting on the conscious idea of the salvation story that many of us have been confronted with for most of our lives, as we made our way to catechism as young adults, or even later in life, depending on the denomination we participated in. Catholics have their own theology of salvation, and Charismatics have another idea of salvation and how to administer and teach the flock how one is to be saved. The salvation message seemed to be about getting saved so one could spend eternity in heaven. That’s it! Everyone wants to be sure they are getting to heaven after they die.
I will tell you that I was confused about this for most of my life as I made my way toward my retirement years, having escaped the religion of my youth and moving toward the Protestant bunch early on, including a stint with a Pentecostal variety and a Charismatic bunch, ending up with Calvary Chapel and the evangelicals. Oh, and don’t let me forget my experience with the Catholic Charismatics during my years with the Air Force, right out of high school. They were a really friendly bunch who eventually asked me to leave and not return because I questioned their theology. That being my first round with organized religion should have taught me a lesson, but I continued through the babble of religion in America. So one may ask what I was up to as this journey through adult life was unwinding to today?
“Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved (yasha)—you and your household.” ~ Acts 16:31
Given my personal story and the dynamic I grew up in, I have been searching for the truth about life, God, the Bible, and what I was supposed to be learning. Somewhere along the way, I was told that making a “decision” for Christ would change my life for the better, but it never happened, at least not immediately. (Salvation may be sudden, but sanctification can take a lifetime for some.) But I couldn't just think of these issues as mythology to be compartmentalized as a segment of life, captured and shelved. And as I soon discovered, there seemed to be a lot of confusion about most of life’s grand questions.
“The name Yeshua — the Hebrew name of the Messiah — carries deep meaning: “Yeshua” is closely tied to the concept of salvation. Yeshua etymologically reflects the Hebrew root for salvation, deliverance, or rescue. In that regard, the name “Yeshua” isn’t arbitrary — it is intentionally meaningful: the Messiah’s name expresses his mission to bring deliverance. This theological insight draws on Hebrew biblical tradition, where names often embody a person’s destiny, character, or function.” ~ Jews for Jesus
Recently, as mentioned in a previous post, I began examining my belief system while reading a paragraph in a biblical text. Not sure how I arrived at this juncture. Oh, I remember. I was reading McGilchrist's concluding chapter in his book, The Master and His Emissary, in which he discussed the issues of knowledge and belief he discovered while studying the neurology of brain-injured patients. This was the start of my inquiry into the personal knowledge and belief challenges I had been dealing with since childhood and into adulthood, seeking answers in the very confusing Christian landscape in the Western world. McGilchrist was very clear that it is common for a person to have a lot of knowledge about a subject or many subjects, but that same person may not, in fact, believe any of it. That one statement rocked my world as nothing else had ever done, except maybe the birth of my first child. And since then I have begun to question what I believe and what I don’t, and to figure out what I do believe, why, and how a belief can and will change my worldview about life, death, love, relationships, and who I am.
“The Lord saw that the wickedness (ontology) of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil, continually”. ~ Gen. 6:5
So what does this have to do with the salvation issue that never seemed answerable or even agreeable to the Christian world? How did I arrive at an understanding of salvation, the central thesis of God’s prophets and eventually the Messiah’s arrival and death on Calvary?
As I just mentioned here, my journey was to understand and eventually know the truth about life here on this planet and to find answers to why my life had already been such a shit show for most of it. There, that is the truth I will put out there. I “simply” needed someone to tell me what I needed to know about being saved, and maybe my life would steer in a new direction. Because where I was coming from was not a particularly pleasant place. And as it turned out, I didn’t meet anyone or read anything particularly helpful. The therapist and counselors weren't any help either, and as I have only recently found out, they didn’t really know what they were doing. (That’s another post for another time.)
Then came the day I decided to look into the message of salvation and build my belief on what God’s word has been trying to communicate to me. So I began by looking at the Hebrew and Greek words for salvation and seeing what I could find. Maybe I could get to a place where I could clear up the ambiguity I found between denominations.
“They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips,” ~ Romans 1:29
Salvation, as I discovered, has a simple definition when you look at the Hebrew word and its derivative. Salvation clearly defines the theology and prophetic message about our messiah Jesus, namely that he is arriving on planet earth to rescue, deliver, and free humanity from bondage to sin, or, better yet, from our ontological problem that every human being has had since the beginning of time. Humanity has a moral and corruption problem that we can’t seem to work out, so because Jehovah loves his creation, he sent a Messiah to offer a solution, a cure, if I may, to help us make the transition to holiness, love, wisdom, and understanding. The Hebrew word Yeshua has a root word Yasha, which means to make wide, to free, or to rescue from a tight spot. Yeshua, as Jesus is called in Hebrew, means “salvation” or “the Lord saves.” Add to this that Yeshua almost always refers to a tangible historical rescue, deliverance from military enemies, escape from physical danger or slavery, and relief from poverty, famine, or sickness. As God sent Moses to Egypt to deliver the chosen people of Israel to the promised land, God eventually sent Yeshua to the world to provide deliverance, so that whoever believes in him will have salvation and eternal life, immortality.
“In the word of God, yasha is a complete, ongoing, and future journey divided into three stages: justification (freedom from the penalty of man’s ontology), sanctification (freedom from the power of man’s ontology), and glorification (freedom from the presence of man’s ontology).”
Now, here is where this took me. A couple of things start to stand out to me. All the denominations were telling me a different way to accept the gift of Yasha. Salvation is a selection on a menu, and all you need to do is choose an option, a baptismal style, or a speaking-in-tongues element, or the Catholic sacramental approach. Everyone has a different version of what this salvation thing is about, and yet I saw that the human race desperately needed help to deal with their ontological problem. It’s not too awful difficult to look at one’s life on this planet and see the story of people’s lives looking the way they do. I’ve watched many people’s lives go to the grave and never know a peaceful day, ever. They were tormented souls who never had a chance at an abundant life of any kind. Humanity has always been in a pickle about morality and life issues. We are greedy, selfish creatures, and we treat each other terribly. And if we are born into the wrong family or nationality or time in history, our lives will be a torrent of pain and misery. So, we are being offered options to be delivered from the bondage of ourselves to life and an abundant life at that, here and now. Not someday after we die. Yasha is for here and now, not tomorrow or some eternity.
So, the confusion that the Catholic and Protestant denominations have offered to Western postmodern humanity is greatly flawed, and there is still a “Crisis of Belief” in the West. The Bible is clear about what is being offered and the reason for the Messiah(Yeshua), the Yasha event. It’s not about how one is baptized, whether one can speak in tongues, or how many sacraments one has participated in. Jehovah, the creator of the heavens and the earth and everything living on it, has communicated a simple message that has been bastardized to confuse us. At the end of the day, one has to ask oneself the question, do I believe any of this or not? And if you believe anything the Bible tells you, then you should expect your worldview to change, your mindset to be altered, and your belief in the message of Yeshua to be very real, and he will save you from yourself and your ontological self. Remember, it’s one thing to know something, but to believe it is a different matter altogether; think about it. And that is when you begin to live an abundant life, and you begin to understand the truth because you believe what you have come to know. Life becomes an existential experience with meaning, joy, love, and all the other fruits of the Spirit, not some weird denominational construct that tells its members that speaking in tongues is the assurance of salvation!
Believe, and you will be delivered, Yasha! The sanctification process will then begin, and your life will take on a whole new meaning. This is God’s plan for you!
“Be holy as I am holy.” 1 Peter 1:16
