“who by God’s power are protected through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time” (1 Peter 1:5 NET).
1 Peter 1:5 provides us with an opportunity to consider another important Biblical doctrine: salvation. We can obtain a better grasp of this Biblical tenet by conceptualizing this idea as a series of steps…
- The word “salvation” is synonymous with the concept of “deliverance” when used in a spiritual sense.
- That deliverance involves God’s liberation of human beings from their state of separation from Him.
- That state of separation exists because “…all have sinned; all fall short of God’s glorious standard” (Romans 3:23 NLT).
Unfortunately, everyone has failed to live up to the standard of perfection that God established when He created the very first human couple. As the Biblical book of James reminds us, “…the person who keeps every law of God but makes one little slip is just as guilty as the person who has broken every law there is” (James 2:10 TLB).
This is why Jesus Christ -who was perfect- accepted that death penalty on our behalf through His sinless life and atoning, sacrificial death on the cross. Those who accept Jesus by faith receive salvation (or deliverance) from an eternity of separation and punishment from their Creator. One paraphrase of John 3:17-18 summarizes this idea in the following manner…
“God did not send his Son into the world to condemn it, but to save it. There is no eternal doom awaiting those who trust him to save them. But those who don’t trust him have already been tried and condemned for not believing in the only Son of God” (TLB).
Finally, the concept of salvation also incorporates the aspects of preservation and safety as well. Jesus expressed His unwavering commitment to ensure our eternal safety in the following excerpt from the Gospel of John…
“Everyone whom my Father gives me will come to me. I will never turn away anyone who comes to me, because I have come down from heaven to do not my own will but the will of him who sent me. And it is the will of him who sent me that I should not lose any of all those he has given me, but that I should raise them all to life on the last day. For what my Father wants is that all who see the Son and believe in him should have eternal life. And I will raise them to life on the last day” (John 6:37-40 GNT).