Unlimited: Saved in Hope
Jan 25, 2023 896
For in this hope we were saved (Romans 8:24a).
Notice Paul’s use of the past perfect tense: “we were saved.” This refers to an action that happened and was finished in the past. It is not ongoing, and it isn’t future. The core and most fundamental meaning of “salvation” in the New Testament is our having been made right with God so that we have been given eternal life.
Everything else flows from this. Salvation is not an ongoing process, nor is it a future hope. It is a present reality we live in because of a past event. Your salvation was fully accomplished at the Cross, and confirmed with Christ’s victorious cry, “It is finished” (John 19:30.) To think otherwise is to deny the Cross.
Salvation is not an ongoing process, nor is it a future hope. It is a present reality we live in.
When Paul was saved, he was saved in a particular hope: “this hope”. Paul waits, as he said in the previous verse, for “the redemption of our bodies.” He waits for the glory that will be revealed in the full manifestation of the new creation, in the new heavens and the new earth. This is the hope in which he was saved.
Paul has previously told us that we have already received the adoption to sonship (Rom. 8:14-17.) Paul now waits for the day when all the world will hear that we are the children of God from the mouth of God himself.
Spiritual Application
Which is your focus of your life: Christ’s accomplished salvation or your hope for the future? Which is the source and which is the result?
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