Skip to main content

 There is an ancient Greek word, "Sozo", found in the New Testament that is translated salvation. It is a huge word, full of meaning and insight beyond a one-word translation

Sozo is one of those ancient words so full of concepts that the layers of meaning have long sense been differentiated by us, sadly, into disconnected terms. It means to heal a body, to redeem and restore one’s whole life, to transform a community, to eliminate an addiction, and to deliver from danger.

It's very much like the Hebrew word "Shalom". Shalom means so much more than mere peace. It describes peace with God, peace with others, peace with self, internal and external peace and safety, it means moving forward in life, making good and right decisions, soundness of reason and wholeness in life. It describes human flourishing that is only found as the gift of God that it is.

Sozo — salvation - describes the process of bringing an individual or a community to wholeness.

Jesus Christ, Eternal God the Son, became Incarnate, the embodiment of "Shalom" and "Sozo". By His life and ministry, by His sacrificial death through crucifixion, by His mighty resurrection and His glorious ascension, He has made a singular way for us to enter into and begin to experience the reality and life-transforming power of His "Sozo", His "Shalom".

When you come to believe Him, when He comes to live His life in you, because you belong to Him, He begins to change you from the inside out to live into His "Sozo", His "Shalom".

That is really Good News...so much more than we can fathom!




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

 THE FOLLY OF IDOLATRY Martin Luther said that the human heart is an idol factory. The truth is that we were created to know and live by the gracious rule of and in the Presence of God who created us. Our peace, our understanding of meaning and purpose can only be truly grounded in God who created us for that meaning and purpose. The rebellion of Adam and Eve, their decision to do the opposite of what God said would make for life, resulted in spiritual and ultimately physical death. They chose to believe they needed something more than what God had provided. Their doomed attempt to try and live life without reference to God as the ground of meaning and purpose did not make life fuller, but emptied it. They wanted to decide what was good and what was evil without God and the disintegration of human life was the consequence. Rather than living in the Presence of God and by the gracious rule of God all around them, they turned from wholeness to brokenness, from fulfilment to scarc...
Post a Comment
Read more
  WORKING AGAINST ALL HUMANITY 1 Thessalonians 2:15-16 “They fail to please God and WORK AGAINST ALL HUMANITY   as they try to keep us from preaching the Good News of salvation to the Gentiles. By doing this, they continue to pile up their sins.” WOW! What a startling statement! St. Paul is making it crystal clear that those who oppose and work to prevent the proclamation of the Gospel are actually “working against ALL HUMANITY.” Why would he write that? It is because the only means of the restoration, reclamation and salvation of humanity is what God has done for all people through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. That is the essence of the Gospel: Jesus Christ. To oppose and try to silence the presentation of the Gospel is to work against the reclamation of all humanity. Who would want to work against ALL humanity? Satan is the name by which he is known. He hates ALL humanity because every human being still bears the image of God, albeit that ima...
Post a Comment
Read more
  TIMING Years ago, I head an old preacher say, “The right thing at the wrong time is the wrong thing.” That statement is an offense to the culture being worshipped world-wide today. There is a lust for the immediate, as a line from an old movie stated, “Immediate gratification takes too long!” We want faster internet, immediate responses to our texts, mobile orders at the ready when we walk into Starbucks. What we want, we demand to have NOW. We are masters at justifying ourselves. “Well, we’re engaged already and we’re going to get married anyway, so what’s wrong with us living together and being sexually intimate now?” God’s timing in human relationship is not arbitrary, it is protective and covering. Sad to say, even some who call themselves followers of Jesus Christ choose to justify their living in sexual sin now, because they promise that they will one day get married. The context where sexual intimacy finds its true meaning and purpose is in the covenant of marriage. ...
Post a Comment
Read more