Biblical soteriology is a huge topic, one that we cannot begin to fully address in a single post. Suffice it to say, it is utterly essential that we keep the entire biblical narrative in mind when studying soteriology. As we’ve addressed in previous posts, when extracted from the biblical narrative, and especially from Israel’s story within that narrative, salvation becomes terribly distorted.

We must keep in mind that Jesus is God’s faithfulness to his covenant with Abraham. This is key — God’s only plan to put the world right is to do so through Abraham and his family. God called Abraham to reverse Adam’s sin and all of its effects. Abraham and his family were to undo the problem of Adam and therefore the problem of evil within the world. They would do this by being God’s royal priesthood, an amplified version of humanity’s vocation as his image-bearers.

Even though Israel fails in their vocation and is unfaithful to the covenant, God remains faithful to his covenant. Through Jesus, God rescues Israel, through which the rest of the world would also be rescued. This is why Paul says in Romans 1:16 that salvation comes “first to the Jew, then to the Gentile.” Jesus is God’s faithfulness to his covenant with Abraham, rescuing Israel and then as a result, rescuing the world.

But Jesus is also Israel’s faithfulness to God. Jesus is Israel’s King, their Messiah, their representative. While Israel as a nation had failed, Jesus as Israel’s representative King was completely faithful to the covenant. He was THE faithful Israelite. So when he proclaimed on the cross, “It is finished!” he was declaring that Israel’s long story was finally fulfilled and completed. Through Jesus, God was faithful to Israel and through Jesus, Israel was faithful to God.

God’s covenantal faithfulness to Israel climaxes with rescuing Israel from their exile. In turn through Israel, God was now blessing the nations by rescuing humanity from their exile and allowing all to enter into Abraham’s family. As Paul states in Galatians 3:29, “If you belong to Christ (Israel’s King), then you are Abraham’s seed and heirs according to the promise.”

All of this, and more, are essential to understanding God’s salvation for us as part of the true biblical story. Remember, in Genesis 1 and 2 God created this world to be his temple in which he would dwell and flood with his glory. He created humans as his image-bearers — reflecting worship to him and reflecting his wise care and rule into the world. But humans rejected this vocation. Thus, the primary human failure is a failure of worship. Humans began worshipping aspects of the created world rather than God. This “feedback loop” of idolatry gave the power and authority of our God-given vocation to those created forces.

Because image-bearing is our very humanness, idolatry causes our humanness to unravel. Sin, then, is the ongoing dehumanizing process in which we try to live within and benefit from this corrupted environment. But our sins only enslave us further to these forces. Idolatry and sin lead to subhuman and eventually nonhuman existence, which the Bible calls death.

As discussed in previous posts, God’s ultimate goal for his creation is the New Creation. This is the renewal and merging of heaven and earth into his ultimate temple, which he would flood with his glory and presence. And within his New Creation, humans would once again be God’s image, his royal priesthood, through whom he would run the world.

Jesus’ death, as the fulfillment of God’s covenant to Abraham, accomplishes all of this! His death completely defeats all of the dark forces, sin and evil that enslaved Israel and humanity. Free from its enslavement and exile, humanity is restored back to its vocation! This is our salvation! John declares in Revelation 1:5-6 that Jesus “has freed us from our sins by his blood and has made us to be a kingdom of priests to serve his God and Father” (cf Rev 5:9-10). And Jesus’ resurrection inaugurates God’s New Creation in which we may now serve.

Unlike Jesus, who fully embodied God’s New Creation in human form, God’s New Creation in the world as well as our renewed vocation have been inaugurated, but are not fully completed. We must learn to embody God’s image. Since Jesus fully embodied God’s New Creation, he was the true Royal Priest and Image-Bearer. Therefore, our salvation is an ongoing process, a journey of growth into Jesus’ likeness — into his virtue and vocation. By worshipping him, following him and learning from him, we may grow into and ultimately embody his character and ministry.

Both virtue and vocation are key. Our vocation as image-bearers relies upon our growth into Jesus’ virtues. The virtues are the load-bearing character-strength necessary to engage in and sustain the image-bearing vocation. God has revealed himself as a self-giving, sacrificial, loving God. As his royal priests, we cannot adequately reflect this into the world in a renewing and transforming way without actually embodying it.

I view the interrelation between virtue and vocation in the following way: Imagine heaven and earth as two pieces of fabric. The healing and transforming image-bearing vocation is to stitch heaven and earth together within the areas of our influence in the world. The thread that binds together these two aspects of creation, as revealed and embodied by Jesus upon the cross, is self-giving, sacrificial love. Our lives are the needle that winds this thread through the two realms of heaven and earth and brings them together. Learning from Jesus how to embody his virtues is what sharpens and strengthens the needle of our lives so it can adequately stitch heaven and earth together.

Thus our salvation is continually growing into Christ’s likeness — his virtue and vocation as image-bearers and royal priests in God’s New Creation — so we can worship him and reflect his sacrificial, self-giving love in all we do.