What Should I Do?

The short answer to the title question - LOVE PEOPLE. We have no other option as Christians...

In this past Sunday's sermon a few examples from church history were given concerning what forms loving people has taken. I "wish" I knew more history...it is so informative, so humbling, so challenging, so inspiring...

Also on Sunday I talked some about a Greek word, sodzo, which is often translated as "salvation" in the New Testament. Far too often many Christians think of salvation as some sort of future event for our souls. While there is some truth to that, it does not do justice to the the biblical portrait of salvation.

In a very broad sense, salvation can be seen as "spiritual" and "physical" in the Bible. Now, before I go further it is vital to understand a few things about how language works. Very simply stated, the context a word finds itself in determines its meaning in that setting. This is a reason why dictionaries have numerous definitions for a single word. In every day language no one attributes all possible meanings for "word" when I say I looked up the word equivocate in the dictionary. or May I have a word with you? The same "word" - but two totally different meanings. This is how language works...

With that said, the portrait the Bible paints concerning "salvation" is beautiful. Ultimately all the "bad" stuff will be gone as we live fully and unhinderedly in the presence of God. Yet we live with an "already and not yet" aspect to our faith. E.g., we may already be saved from our sins (e.g., they are not counted against us) but sin still affects us (e.g., choices of others harm us, our own bad choices, etc.) - this is the not yet portion.

Taking these truths (i.e., how language works and the "already and not yet") and applying them to "salvation" (for our purposes, sodzo) is mind-boggling. In Mark alone the Greek word occurs 14 times; three of them are clearly "spiritual" in meaning (cf. Mk8:35b; 10:26; 13:13), 11 of them are "physical" in meaning (cf. Mk3:4; 5:23,28,34; 6:56; 8:35a; 10:52; 13:20; 15:30,31,31). So clearly we see "salvation" is intended to be holistic. This is vital to understand as we love people.

E.g., the "bleeding" woman in Mark 5 desired to be "made well" (5:28 - ESV) - using the Greek word sodzo. Later, after she touched Jesus' clothing and her bleeding stopped, Jesus said her faith "made her well" - using the Greek word sodzo. Remember, this word sodzo is used frequently to talk about "salvation" in the more commonly thought of sense - spiritually (e.g., Mt1:21). What are we to make of this?

While trying to not lengthen this too much, we can see how the "bleeding woman" was in fact "saved" in a holistic sense because prior to this contact with Jesus she was alientated from all forms of community for 12 years. Most certainly we would agree community with God and and others is a huge part of salvation.

So a question to us is...how will we "save" people? LET ME BE CLEAR...only God saves in the ultimate sense of the word. Yet when we look at the concept of salvation we see so much we can and must do... Initiating a friendship with someone and providing them a community that loves them is a part of "saving" them. Again, this is because we were made for community and not isolation. Furthermore, the community we initiate can play a part in allowing God to continue to work in a person's life as they submit to Him and are thuse "saved" in the spiritual (ultimate) sense.

Questions, thoughts, observations (both the word sodzo and the sermon from Sunday)?