Dear Friends,
Have you ever used a word only to later learn that you weren’t really
clear as to its meaning? That can be funny sometimes, tragic at others.
Surely you want to be clear about what the word “salvation” means and
today’s attached devotional will help you understand it clearly. God
bless you.

Because of Calvary,
John Janney

• I Thessalonians 1:10 (ESV)

  10 and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come.

“…What does salvation mean in the Bible? Trying to explain it quickly can give you a headache, because the word salvation is used in about seventy different ways in the Bible. If somebody is rescued from certain defeat in battle, he experiences salvation. If somebody survives a life-threatening illness, that person experiences salvation. If somebody’s plants are brought back from withering to robust health, they are saved. That’s biblical language, and it’s really no different than our own language. We save money. A boxer is saved by the bell, meaning he’s saved from losing the fight by knockout, not that he is transported into the eternal kingdom of God. In short, any experience of deliverance from a clear and present danger can be spoken of as a form of salvation.

“When we talk about salvation biblically, we have to be careful to state that from which we ultimately are saved. The apostle Paul does just that for us in 1 Thessalonians 1:10, where he says Jesus ‘delivers us from the wrath to come.’ Ultimately, Jesus died to save us from the wrath of God.” [R. C. Sproul, The Truth of the Cross, (Orlando, FL: Reformation Trust, 2007), p. 77-78]