First a little unfair summary of what I grew up with (though pretty much reflecting the image above the post… OUCH!!):
1) We are all sinners and therefore justifiably will be punished forever. 2) Jesus dies for our sins. 3) All who repent are forgiven, they will live forever in heaven… They are saved from future punishment.
Of course the above will be (thankfully) nuanced, but I think we get the gist.
A central NT text about the ministry of Jesus in the context of Israel is Matt. 1:21
She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.
His people from their sins. In the framework of the earlier verses (Matt. 1), where we read that Jesus is the ‘son of David’, ‘son of Abraham’, and has come to bring the exile to an end, salvation expectation is very historical and concrete. Israel needs saving, they need a deliverer to set them free, set them free from Rome’s rule. The promise is that in Jesus God is returning to Zion (Emmanuel = God with us), and the result will be salvation. The texts such as Isaiah 52 would seem to be echoed here:
How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who announces peace, who brings good news, who announces salvation, who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.”
Listen! Your sentinels lift up their voices, together they sing for joy; for in plain sight they see the return of the Lord to Zion.
Break forth together into singing, you ruins of Jerusalem; for the Lord has comforted his people, he has redeemed Jerusalem.
Truly for Israel the ‘kingdom of God was at hand’. Freedom was just round the corner. This kind of salvation is common place in the OT texts, indeed that is salvation in the OT texts. A text then like this in the Gospels is about concrete and historical salvation, it is escaping the ‘wrath that is to come’ (Matt. 3:7; Lk. 3:7). We force Scripture if we try and make this a universally time-unrestricted text, I cannot make it in to a text that says ‘he will save ‘Martin Scott’ from his sins’ (leave that to other texts).
Likewise as I have pointed out in other posts we cannot do this with early texts in Acts – the context is Jerusalem and the Jews, who were warned to flee from this current generation – so many echoes here of the generation leaving Egypt, and of course resonating with Jesus’ prophetic discourse on ‘all these things taking place within a generation’, leading up to AD70 and the sacking of Jerusalem, the end of ‘that age’ (we should avoid conflating ‘end of the world’ with ‘end of the age’. The latter is used, the former not.)
There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved (Acts 4:12).
This is a Jewish-oriented message; salvation is not in the name of Abraham, nor David, nor anyone else, but solely through the name of Jesus. The crucified Messiah – the one condemned by Israel, God has raised up as Saviour and Lord – and only in him will salvation be found.
Salvation then does not have a ‘save me from hell’ angle, not in the NT nor in the OT. We can have (OT) an individual who prays to be saved from the hand of their enemy (not ‘get me to heaven when I die’); Israel needs salvation from Egypt’s bondage, from practical situations such as a lack of food in the wilderness; from the attack of the Assyrians; the domination of Babylon; and likewise in the post-OT period salvation from the Greek domination, particularly the religious persecution under Antiochus Epiphanes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiochus_IV_Epiphanes)… and so on.
There is a consistency of salvation being concrete and historic and is needed in order for Israel to be who they are meant to be. They are forgiven of their sins (released from the effects of their disobedience, the ultimate result being that of exile and coming under foreign dominion).
Now jumping forward the Gentiles did not have the same calling of God as did Israel, but the dividing wall was removed at the cross. The ‘good news of the kingdom’ was proclaimed also to them, and the gift of life also was granted to them. They were now offered on the same basis as Jews entry into the ‘people of God’ – via Jesus. Like the Jews they also needed to be saved, delivered. There is, not surprisingly, a historic and concrete context to this salvation also for them.
In the NT era the salvation was very sharply focused, so before jumping to my situation we should focus there. For the Gentiles also there was salvation in no other name… not the name of the one who claimed to be the saviour, whose kingdom (basileia) of peace (pax romana) extended throughout the entire civilised world (oikoumene); to be saved they had to repent (change of mind, metanoia used to mean a change of political approach by Josephus!), as a result they turned from idols, to be set free from the powers of this age. Scriptures such as:
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to set us free from the present evil age (Gal. 1:3-4).
extend the death on the cross to not simply deal Jewish sin, but Gentile sin, and with the same result, salvation, the result of salvation being set free. This was necessary for in the former era there was an enslavement:
you were enslaved to beings that by nature are not gods (Gal 4:8).
Freedom. Freedom from the divide of the law. Not now two peoples but one. Freedom from ruling powers, (not now Egypt nor Babylon, and more than simply freedom from Rome, but freedom from the very real spiritual powers that Rome / the world enforce. It was for ‘freedom that Christ has set you free’).
The powers of sin and death. The powers of Imperial domination that demand conformity, hence we are no longer to be conformed to the powers of this age (Rom. 12:2 – again the word is ‘age’, not ‘world’, though in this context ‘world’ could be an acceptable translation). Through salvation the mind of Christ is that which we have and are to be shaped by.
In the immediate the powers continue, sin and death continue but salvation is in the name of Jesus, repent, be forgiven (be released – we need to avoid putting our ‘getting over an offence’ into the meaning of forgiveness when we think of God as I am not sure forgiveness can be reduced to something personal when applied to God… the same word was used of releasing a ship to sail on the sea, the ship being released to her ‘destiny’), and to be joined by the Spirit of God to the shaping culture of heaven. That seems to be the salvation on offer, now offered to Gentiles and Jews alike. Yes there is a future – post-parousia (more than post-death) – aspect to this, but there is a very real present, historic and concrete element to it. Saved from… (but we should not quickly put the word ‘hell’ in there) and saved for, by being incorporated into the subversive-to-all-dominating-powers people of God.
For the people of those regions report about us what kind of welcome we had among you, and how you turned to God from idols, to serve a living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead—Jesus, who rescues us from the wrath that is coming (1 Thess 1: 9-10).
The wrath that is coming is the judgement on all that opposes God… We are set free through our new allegiance. Set free now, justified (marked out as being in the right), and when these hostile dominating powers, including the final power of death are abolished, that justified verdict will sound so sweet. Saved through no other name to sail to her / his destiny.