Freedom & Salvation

The experience of salvation is the discovery that you are forgiven. Not that you can be forgiven, or that you will be forgiven after doing such and such, but that you are forgiven already in the radical grace of holy love and mercy. This has always been the essence of God’s eternal and relentless coming to us.

In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation—having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise. Ephesians 1:13

Notice the order as Paul recounts the way the Christians in Ephesus experienced God’s rescue, or salvation. They heard a true message, which is the good news of their salvation. This was no mere offer or possibility that they might be saved, but the announcement of the completed labor of God’s love on their behalf in Christ. They heard the good news of their salvation.

This they believed, that is, trusted to actually be true. The salvation God had brought to the world in Jesus did not become true when they trusted it, but certainly became real to them once they heard it and placed their hope in it.

Finally, in choosing to hope in this message, that is, in and through faith, they received the Spirit of God. In other words, the transcending presence of eternal Love entered into them in a profound way, for the Spirit is the channel of God’s love (Romans 5:5).

How do we understand the euphemism of being sealed? Perhaps we can say that when they heard the announcement of God’s saving work, a new and profound sense of the eternal Love, which is God and the Spirit of God, was now the ground on which they could confidently stand. They now knew themselves as infinitely loved. The essence of All was “for” them, and not against them.

When we realize the pure gift of God’s work to redeem and bring us to himself, that it is wholly of him and not ourselves, we suddenly recognize that our existence is, and always has been, grounded in surprising goodness. The freedom such a new perspective creates is release from any brooding and fearful worry that we are unworthy. We are freed from fearing that in the end God stands ready to condemn us for our condemnable deeds.

Instead, the Love who cherished us before time, loves us despite our blatant and persistent lack of love. No absence of love on our part supersedes the sufficiency of God’s love and mercy. The future is not determined by our failures but by God’s generosity. It is not resting on whether we are good enough, or faithful enough to be saved, but on whether God is good and faithful enough to save us despite our horrid sin.

The gospel is freeing, the announcement that God is, and always has been, sufficiently good and faithful for just this salvation. When we trust it, we are flooded with the overwhelming and freeing Love of all eternity.