The Doctrine of Salvation; A Beginner's Guide to Understanding Biblical Theology: What Does Biblical Salvation Really Mean

By Michael Southard

Have you ever just wanted to sit down and read something about God or Jesus just to get closer to him to know him more intimately or to expand your understanding of his creation and plan for you? So you find a book that advertises just the subject matter you are interested in, then you open it and begin to read, but before long, you realize you have to run and get the dictionary. Then you may have to purchase a dictionary of theology, then maybe an encyclopedia of Christian apologetics just to understand what you are reading. When this happens, readers often give up on the book and never finish it and may never buy another one. It can get discouraging when confronted with terminology like infralapsarianism, hamartiology, and demythologization, and that doesn't include the hundreds of nontheological words rarely used in common communication today. Authors write this way to keep the book from becoming the size of an encyclopedia. However, I did buy all those books and persevered in study because of my great hunger for the deeper things of God. Now you can too because this book conveys these wonderful biblical thoughts and great theologians' writings into plain common language. The Doctrine of Salvation takes deep theological concepts and brings their understanding down to a street level as it were. This book describes on a practical level how these doctrines are to be applied to our lives and how we can relate them to others. I refrain from using thirteen-letter words, but if they are needed, I will use them and then immediately clarify their meaning so the reader will not lose their train of thought. Enjoy reading about the wonders of God again, in greater depth!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jan 25, 2017
• ISBN: 9781635259216

Book preview

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The Doctrine of

Salvation

(Soteriology)

A Beginner’s Guide to Understanding Biblical Theology

What does biblical salvation really mean?

MICHAEL C. SOUTHARD

ISBN 978-1-63525-920-9 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-63525-921-6 (Digital)

Copyright © 2016 by Michael C. Southard

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.

296 Chestnut Street

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Introduction

1 - Terminology

2 - What Is Salvation?

3 - Why Salvation for Man?

4 - Why Salvation by God?

5 - How Is Salvation Accomplished?

6 - What Did Salvation Do for Us?

7 - What Is Our Responsibility to Salvation?

Summary

Notes

About the Author

To my long-time friend and brother in Christ, Timothy M. (Timmy) Coyle

Our careers began together in 1986 at the Naval Station Bangor in Bremerton Washington. Tim and I were an electrician and a mechanic respectively and spent many years together in a truck, on the waterfront piers, and in the rooftops of buildings working on cranes and elevators.

During this time, we spent many hours discussing the things of God and the scriptures we loved. Admittedly, I was the more theologically inclined in our conversations because I did have some formal training in that area. Tim was by far the more practical and seemed a natural at biblical application. He was able to easily learn and express faith, love, prayer, compassion, forgiveness, mercy, patience—the stuff of a true believer and what is known as the fruit of the Holy Spirit. While I could express myself well concerning the scriptures, I wasn’t nearly as capable of living it out, or at least I felt that way. I learned a great deal from Tim in that area of life.

I saw firsthand in my life the ultimate in biblical truth lived out in any man’s life. Tim contracted cancer in his fifties and battled it for about two years. At that time, I was Tim’s supervisor, and he confided in me with great detail. What I noticed was his attitude during the cancer treatments and the side effects. He was tired and left work many times out of necessity. He fought through the fatigue to keep coming to work. It was difficult to watch someone decline who was so energetic, running up fourteen flights of stairs just to see how fast he could make it to the top of a crane.

The most noticeable observation I made was his Christian demeanor when he was diagnosed as terminal. From the time he learned he had cancer, his attitude was God’s will be done, God must have a reason for this, so I’ll endure it. I thought that’s a terrific attitude, but no one had any idea at that time that it could possibly be fatal. When Tim learned he was terminal, his attitude never wavered. He displayed the same faith in God, and never once did I hear a complaint. I read a book called Dying Grace many years ago and often wondered how I might handle death. I wondered what dying grace even looked like. Now I know. If I can deal with death at least half as well as Tim did, he will have taught me yet another practical lesson about how to bring glory to God.

Tim is survived by his wife Joni, daughter Lexi, and sons Jacob and Micah.

Introduction

Coming from an on and off (mostly off) Baptist background growing up, at about the age of fourteen with some spiritual conviction, I tried to read the King James Bible that was placed in the pews of the church we as a family attended but could not understand the language used. I could not understand Elizabethan English because word meanings had changed so much over the centuries, so I turned my attention to other books that related to God. The other books I began to read and study alongside my bible were from authors that wrote concerning God, His word, His nature, His Son, His plan for mankind, His judgments, His rewards, His love for humankind, and His hatred for sin and all that mankind had embraced instead of God’s glory. Most of the books I’ve read were very good books and gave me insights to theology and philosophies concerning God and man that I would have been ignorant to, aside from those books. It is those books and their nature that prompt me to write this book some fifty years later. As a matter of study now, I use many different Bible translations.

I have discovered that the majority of books written by these very learned men appeal to a mostly educated class of readers. Admittedly, I was not in that group when I first began reading. However, through some internal motivation and desire to understand the complexities of what these writers were trying to convey about God, I kept reading and researching the words used, the concepts, and the author’s intent. One thing I learned to do was to take those seemingly complicated thoughts and concisely and plainly explain them to people who were in the same academic world as I. It should not be assumed that I am attempting to lower the bar to favor the uneducated, as our country’s education system has already done that. What I am doing in this book is to meet people where they are and hopefully help them to raise their critical thinking and discernment. Those who haven’t had the benefit of a good education should not be denied the deeper things of God simply because they don’t understand Elizabethan English, theologians’ definitions, or the biblical concepts that are being put forth.

Since most people do not have a bachelor’s degree, master’s degree, or a PhD in anything, much less theology, I believe I have found a need within the writing community. Therefore, my intent with this book is to bring God’s insights to a community of readers that do not have the tools to understand these great theologians and, more importantly, the great doctrines in the Bible. I am not writing this because I believe that I have some fantastic sense of understanding that supersedes everybody else’s. On the contrary, I believe that God has blessed my perseverance through study (using His word and these theologians’ writings) to understand Him and has made plain to me His inspired Word concerning His doctrines. While I do feel woefully inadequate to write, I do feel compelled.

I also don’t want anybody to think that I believe I have a special insight that exceeds the thousands of authors who have written about God’s Word for the past two thousand years. I certainly do not. In fact, I praise God for those writers and the great works they have brought forth to further God’s kingdom. They have been an invaluable asset throughout history in bringing people to an understanding of God’s word, not the least of which is myself. What I have realized now is that the level of understanding with society seems to be at an all-time low and not just with theological matters but with anything of value and depth in this life. It seems as though entertainment reigns as the foremost pastime with sports a close second. So much so that the average American at any age has no answer for the simplest of questions, such as, who is the current vice president, or what is the capital of the state you reside in, etc. I’m not sure if the problem can be completely blamed on the education system, the apathy of a generation, or both. In any case, the spiritual condition is abhorrent in this over-religious and self-absorbed society. It used to be said that the problem with this country is that Christianity is very widespread but only a quarter inch deep. That comment was in reference to how shallow Christianity was. True Christians should long for those days. The fact is, the machine hasn’t been made that can measure how thin and superficial Christianity is today. Truly, the way to destruction is as wide as this country.

I gave a good friend of mine a book to read; in fact, I give many books away. This friend is a Christian believer and is not ignorant of the gospel by any means. This was a book that I found to be very exciting and informative. This book was The Gospel According to Jesus by Dr. John MacArthur. I was somewhat discouraged when I asked my friend what he thought of the book, and his response was that he didn’t understand it. I thought how is that possible? Not many authors are as clear in their writings as John MacArthur. I had never heard the subject of salvation handled in such a profound way as it was in that book. At that point, I realized that there are many Christians who need and want to understand the deep theological concepts of God (Salvation, while easy to understand on a practical level, is a deep and far reaching theological concept.) I thought if those concepts could just be explained on another level. I also thought unbelievers might even benefit if God was not explained in such weighty theological terms but on a street level as it were, which is pretty much the way I learned. It was this circumstance that prompted the writing of this book in this particular format.

To that end, this book is designed to appeal to beginning readers that want to learn the fundamental doctrines of God and, along the way, learn the what and why of some of those mysterious definitions and doctrines that theologians use. I will avoid using those terms as a matter of routine, but when it is necessary, they will be thoroughly explained. I have included a short section of terminology to aid in this effort. I have chosen salvation as my first topic of choice because it is the most vital to our short-term and long-term being. Grasping this doctrine is necessary in understanding the other doctrines, a fact that will become clear as we move forward. The individual discussions about each of the theological topics covered are by no means comprehensive or all inclusive. Most of these doctrines are extremely far reaching, and the reader could easily spend years reading books related to them. I have only taken the highlights concerning these doctrines and tried to relate them in a practical way so as to convey the basic understanding for the reader. Also, I believe this book has become extremely pertinent today in light of the recent Hollywood productions concerning the afterlife.

What is being portrayed on television is fictional and incompatible with the truth of the word of God. What TV and the media portray is often emulated and taken for truth or fact, and that simply is not the case. I would like to think that the entertainment industry is unaware of what they are doing, but they have been in the business way too long to be considered innocent or ignorant of what they are doing. The entertainment industry knows all too well that they can and do manipulate their audience’s mind to accept as good what is really evil, to accept as fact what is truly false, and to accept as normal what is actually immoral.

The advanced reader may take exception to the fact that the crucifixion of Christ is not elaborated on in this book; after all, how can one speak about salvation provided by Jesus without the cross of Christ? I would like to note that this book is not going into the details of the crucifixion of Christ because the aim of this book is to bring to the reader an understanding of what the implications of the cross were and the doctrines that apply to the crucifixion, namely salvation and its components. The idea is to show the reader what true salvation looks like, not specifically the details of what Christ endured, though that does shows up as a matter of consequence in the conversation. The fact that God loved man, desired to save Him, by the sacrificial forfeiting of His only Son are covered within the chapters of this book. The necessity of Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection are also covered. The need for that sacrifice’s perfection to make full atonement is covered.

What is not specifically covered is the what and why the Romans and the Jews did to get Christ to the cross, that Judas betrayed Jesus, that the apostles left Jesus, the crown of thorns, and that a woman was first to see the resurrected Jesus, etc. These are all important details to the crucifixion but are not necessary to achieve the objective for this book.

For a thorough understanding of the crucifixion of Christ, there are many excellent books to read. See The Cross by Martin Lloyd Jones, Redemption Accomplished and Applied by John Murray, Know What You Believe by Paul E. Little, Resurrection by Hank Hanegraaff, The Seven Sayings of the Savior on the Cross by Arthur W. Pink, The Shadow of the Cross by Walter J. Chantry

1

Terminology

The first thing we need to understand is some of the most common and basic theological terms that are used. These terms do serve a purpose. The purpose is to condense or codify an entire concept in one word. That way a writer or a speaker can bring to a conversation, an entire understanding on a particular subject with just one word. If you are speaking with someone about why we as humans are here, at some point, God’s plan of salvation must arise. So also must a discussion on sin. Without going into all the attributes of salvation, one may use the term soteriology. Likewise, with sin, one may use the term hamartiology. Using these terms will move a conversation along assuming the hearer knows what they mean.

Let’s start with what we are actually doing—theology. The term theology is one of those terms that seem to turn people off. Theology simply means the study of God. It includes all the doctrines that make up our understanding of the biblical God as revealed in the Scriptures. Since I just used the term doctrine, it simply means truth as it relates to the subjects, topics, or concepts in the Bible. In other words, a doctrine may be expressed as salvation by God’s grace through faith, which is a doctrine in the Bible, i.e., soteriology is a doctrine in the Bible, or it can be stated salvation is a truth in the Bible. Another doctrine would be the Trinity of God. There are many doctrines in the Bible and doctrines are what are predominantly being taught in (Religious) colleges and pulpits throughout the world. The following are more theological terms and short definitions the reader may run into during their studies.

Advent. Refers to a coming of Christ. There was a first advent (Jesus’s birth, death, and resurrection). Most of historic Christianity expects a second advent or another coming of Christ commonly referred to as the second coming.

Agnostic. The view that a person cannot know for sure that God exists. This is however a simplistic understanding of the term. The fact is the views about not being under the authority of any god range from what is called free thinking to agnosticism to atheism.

Allegory. A tool of language used to express a truth in a picture format. Jesus used many allegories such as the parable of the soils where a sower (farmer) spread some seed on various types of soil. Some of the seed grew and flourished;