Indeed the Savior

"...we have heard for ourselves and know that this One is indeed the Savior of the world." (John 4:42)

True belief I suspect is going to produce evidence of the convictions seen in the confession of these people after their encounters with Jesus. There are plenty of beliefs running around purporting to be Christian and religious that are cheap imitations of real belief. But no matter how pious or religious they may appear or how right they may feel, unless they produce a heart change that results in a confession of this kind of faith directly in Jesus Himself it is likely that belief is a counterfeit.

I want a faith, a belief personally in Jesus and in the Father God, that I have heard for myself and not only from someone else. As good and effective and compelling as anyone's testimonies may be in attracting me to want to meet Jesus, I don't really have a saving faith until I have spent my own days interacting with Him myself and building an intimate relationship with Him for myself. I cannot have the experience of someone else no matter how desperately I want or try to do so. Too many of us have been conditioned to live our lives vicariously and because of that many people may have nearly lost their ability or awareness of how to live their own lives. What a sad condition this is producing in the world today, but it is one of the most effective ways that sin has divorced us from our Creator.

We were originally created in the image of God. That phrase has far more implications than we can realize now because of our lost capacity to know what God really is. Because of our unfamiliarity with what God is really like we don't know what we are supposed to be like either. And then as our minds and imaginations keep becoming more and more twisted by the lying representations of God through so may various ways in this world our views of God become so blackened and perverted that we are led to become either terrified of Him or feel that He is ineffective in our lives.

All of this massive damage inflicted and perpetuated on the human race is precisely the target of God's saving work focused in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, the Savior of the world. But then we have to quickly unpack the true meanings of many of the words we are using before their false assumed meanings again distort what we are trying to actually say. What is a Savior anyway? It is such an overused and misunderstood word that it really helps to step back and try to find a more objective, accurate definition for this term.

Most people today in the English-speaking world seldom use the term savior except in religious circles which creates the high potential of it becoming very isolated and obfuscated in its meaning. I looked up the root of this word from the Greek using Strong's extrapolation and this is the core meaning that I found:

...to save, i.e. deliver or protect (literally or figuratively): to heal, preserve, save (self), do well, be (make) whole.

Most of these terms in this definition betray the fact that there must be something which we need deliverance from, some danger that we need protection against, some damage that has already been inflicted on us or some disease that requires healing, some handicap that needs restoration. This is the context in which the word Savior must be viewed.

One of the best definitions for the word Savior can be found in the words of the angel when revealing to Jesus' earthly surrogate father what the true purpose and mission was for Jesus even before He was born.

"She will bear a Son; and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins." (Matthew 1:21) Thus, in the very name given to call this unborn child that had for it's Father the very God of heaven Himself, the concept of Savior is fully incorporated. According to the angel the word Jesus and the word Savior should be considered synonymous.

Also in the words of this angel it become clear what it is that we need saving from, what we need protection and healing from – it is sin itself and all the effects that it is has caused in our lives and in our world. Again, sin is probably one of the most misunderstood words in the whole world in my opinion and is the root for more arguments, at least among Christians, than any other word. Our definition for what we think sin is forms the very foundation of nearly everything else we believe about salvation and about God. But of course that makes complete sense, because if we don't understand what our problem is we can't understand what God wants to do to deliver us from our problem.

I have spent many years pondering and learning and reconsidering and questioning the various assertions about what sin is and continue to seek to know heaven's view of this term. I have realized over the years that just because people may be able to string Bible verses together to supposedly prove their strong assertions about this subject that it does not necessarily prove that their assertions and definitions are in agreement with the Bible. I have seen many people try to impose their version of what sin is on others to support their doctrines about sanctification and perfection while in their spirit and attitude they are actually sinning themselves without realizing it. This is the amazing power of sin to deceive even the most religious.

But what I see in this verse is the kind of true conversion and authentic effects of a real encounter with God that deals with the real core problems of sin in our lives. These Samaritans were just like all other people in the world, religious or not. They were caught in the same trap of sin with no hope of escape outside of intervention on the part of their Creator and Redeemer. They needed a Savior to spring them from the trap of Satan, from all of the lies rooted into their psyche, from all the damage in their relationships with each other and with God. They, like all the Jews, all the Greeks, all the “barbarians” and everyone else living around the globe needed a savior, and when they encountered Jesus they instinctively knew from the deepest part of their hearts that this indeed was the genuine, authentic Savior that God had promised to send into the world to save them.

This brings up yet another seriously misunderstood term in religion, the word saved. Today I hear many people talk about being saved with implied meanings that have much more to do with a future entry into paradise than it has much to do with our present situation and our own character right here and now. Christians talk about 'getting saved' in a way that seems to somehow imply that if a person just says a few (magic) words or performs some routine or incantations that suddenly their future destiny is irreversibly locked into an eternity of bliss no matter what choices they may make thereafter.

This kind of logic terribly distorts the true meaning of salvation. Jesus did not come to earth to create some magical formula to induct people into heaven without involving their own on-going freedom to choose the direction of their lives. If we viewed marriage the way we viewed 'getting saved' we might have a lot fewer divorces but that would not guarantee that people would be happier. The word 'saved' is not some sort of irrevocable lock that forces us to live in heaven based on one point in time in our life but has everything to do with an ongoing relationship with a Person who offers to take up residence inside of our hearts and transform our characters from the inside out. This allows us to once again begin to enjoy the true freedoms that we were originally created to enjoy.

Jesus did not come to offer us a trap into which we might step to carry us into heaven largely unchanged. This is not supported anywhere in Scriptures and must be carefully challenged in our thinking. This is a counterfeit of the assurance God desires us to enjoy. God values freedom of choice above anything else in our lives, for without full freedom – ongoing freedom for all of eternity – to turn away from Him there is no real option to love Him the way that true love must happen. If there is no freedom to choose not to love God – or anyone else for that matter, then there really is no freedom to love and love under those conditions is only a mirage. So in order for us to really have the opportunity to enter into the kind of love relationship with God that He desires for us and that we were created to thrive in, we must always have the freedom to choose our own destiny at all times.

This may frighten many people at first, but God has something far better for us than an arrangement of 'being saved' that excludes our freedom to turn away from loving Him. His kind of salvation – the core of what the word Savior is all about – is based on the process of healing, transforming, liberating, restoring us to our original design and purpose. (see Luke 4:18, 19) And this is accomplished not vicariously by Jesus taking our place in living a righteous life but by actually living inside of us and shaping our own characters into His image once again. (Gen. 1:26; 2:7) This is radically different than the kind of salvation often taught by evangelical Christianity today.

As we more clearly comprehend the implications and opportunities offered us by God in the real version of salvation and what He really wants to do in our lives as a personal Savior to save us from sin, we realize the importance of why the angel said that Jesus was sent to save us from our sins, not leaving us in our sins. When we realize that sin is not the outward violations that we do against each other and God but is really our broken connection with the only Source of life in the universe, and that brokenness produces these symptoms, then we can better understand what a Savior wants to do for us. Our Savior was sent to reconnect our hearts with the only hope and life-source – our Father in heaven, and only that can restore us to wholeness. Jesus becomes our umbilical cord through which the life of the Father can once again flow into our broken, withered, diseased souls and bring healing and life once again to our hearts and cause us to thrive and become more and more alive.

In closing I would like to share some of the inspiration along this line from My Utmost for today.

His Birth in Me. “Of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you” (Gal. 4:19). Just as Our Lord came into human history from outside, so He must come into me from outside. Have I allowed my personal human life to become a ‘Bethlehem’ for the Son of God? I cannot enter into the realm of the Kingdom of God unless I am born from above by a birth totally unlike natural birth. “Ye must be born again.” This is not a command, it is a foundation fact. The characteristic of the new birth is that I yield myself so completely to God that Christ is formed in me. Immediately Christ is formed in me, His nature begins to work through me.

Chambers, Oswald: My Utmost for His Highest : Selections for the Year. Grand Rapids, MI : Discovery House Publishers, 1993, c1935, S. December 25

I want to know much more – no, more than that – I want to experience more deeply at the heart level much more of what it really means to have a living Savior who is given to save me from my sins. He has been faithful all of my life and has been doing that to the extent that I have let Him. Yet the deceitfulness of sin has caused me to often resist His saving work in me all too much and I want Him to expose those deceptions and to release me from all of my own resistance against His saving love for me. I now again give Him unlimited permission to do whatever He needs to do to transform me, to save me, to heal me, to prepare me to more effectively testify to His power and grace to save even people who are stuck in sin like me.