The meaning of Salvation
Salvation in the religious sense is a widely used term. Each religion defines it differently, however. Hinduism and Buddhism define it as an escape from the endless cycle of birth- death-rebirth into union with the universal, impersonal, Absolute. The Hindu word is 'samsara' (Sanskrit for 'migration') and the Buddhist word is 'nirvana' (Sanskrit for 'blowing out'). This hoped for merging of the self into the Universal One would be an end of self-consciousness, an ultimate release into oblivion.
The great monotheistic religions, by contrast, promise not an escape from existence but an escape into existence, not an end to the individual's self, but an enhancement of it.
Of course both opposing views can easily be belittled and parodied. The classic parody of the Christian view of Heaven is to call it 'pie in the sky when you die'. It is easy to suppose that Christians believe that they (and only they) are going to be rewarded, and the rest punished with eternal fire in a place called Hell. An even worse parody is for one group of Christians (whom others will refer to as a sect) to suppose that membership of their particular group is an essential, and that all other flavours of Christianity are condemned to eternal perdition simply for having failed to join the right group.
So salvation is an important doctrine, and understanding what the Bible teaches about it is essential if we are to avoid the distortions that will prevent us from responding to the Good News of the gospel.
The root of the word comes from the Latin for health, so the metaphor we are using with the word 'salvation' is illness and healing. What sickness are we in need of being healed from? The Bible throughout has a simple but unpopular word for it: sin. We are fallen from the high place God intended for the human race, and now suffer from a tendency to do evil things. Those who are most aware of this are also most aware of how difficult it is to combat this tendency in one's own strength. Such people long for a transformation deep within that will enable them to desire better things, and to have the power to do those better things too.
The transformation we need is so total that a good metaphor for it is 'new birth'. As Jesus said to a leading man of his day, Nicodemus, 'I tell you the truth, unless a man is born again he cannot see the Kingdom of God.' And the footnote to this verse (John 3:3) adds a possible alternative translation as 'born from above'. We need the birth from the womb ('born of water') and also the birth of the Spirit. John 3:6 gives us: 'Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit.'
Christianity is unique at this point. It describes two kinds of 'life': there is 'bios' (simply being alive in the way all animals are) and there is 'zoe' (spiritual life). Zoe is a new quality of life, much more than a biological life with no physical death to follow. When Christians talk about eternal life they are not thinking in temporal terms (how long? for ever). Rather they are thinking qualitatively (what sort? of the spirit; where? now in this universe, and ultimately in the 'new earth and new heaven'.).
It is also important to think of salvation as having three tenses. Christians find themselves saying: 'I have been saved', 'I am being saved', and 'I will be saved.' It may seem confusing, but all three tenses are right.
In the first instance (the past tense) we are looking at God's intervention through Jesus Christ, who died for us and rose again. In the second (the continuous present) we are thinking of the Spirit of God beginning the transforming process that enables us to start to share in the character of Jesus Christ. In the future tense we are thinking of the promise that the death of our physical bodies will not be the end of us, but that we will share in the resurrection of Christ, and we too will rise to live, transformed, within a promised 'new earth and new heaven'.
The key thing to avoid is any mechanistic view of salvation, as if there were some formula, do this and you will be saved. For instance if a Christian thinks he is being saved by receiving communion he needs to review this. Communion is the symbolic remembrance that Christ's body was broken, Christ's blood shed, for us. Wearing a Victoria Cross medal does not make anyone brave. The medal commemorates the bravery that has already been demonstrated. Wearing a golf club's badge on one's blazer does not make one a member of that club. Being a member entitles one to wear the badge. This principle is true of all the 'badges' there are. Christians call the badges sacraments. Baptism is an important badge, but the reality it is symbolising is what matters. The symbol (as Paul explains in Romans 6) is of dying with Christ, being buried (submerged under water) with Christ, and then arising with Him, as He rose from the dead. Unless there is a real union with Christ, both in His death and in His resurrection, any amount of water (or bread and wine) and any amount of special words uttered by people deemed authorised to utter them, will be much the same as pinning a badge on a tailor's dummy. It will be no more than decoration.
Salvation is not a lottery prize which God decides to give to some, but not others. Nor is it a reward awarded to the good but withheld from the bad. And thank goodness for that. Which of us dares hope to be good enough to deserve it?
Salvation is the healing of our sickness, the transforming of our total being, and is a process which we are either experiencing or not. My guess is that most folk who are experiencing it are as frustrated as I am that I seem to be responding so poorly, and the progress (through my own fault) is so slow. How I long for the better things. How frequently I fall in the mud and get dirty, like a child.
Salvation began at a point of time in history, in a particular place, because 'God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.' (John 3:16) It continues in the here and now, as we open our hearts to the Saviour to be filled with his Holy Spirit. And we think of the future, beyond the grave, when we shall be like Him, having shared in His resurrection. We long for this, knowing how much better it will be. But the life we live now, frustrating as it is, is the arena where we fight the battles we are called to fight, and ask God to be patient with our failings.
So having introduced the topic of Heaven and Hell, let us go into more detail for both, even though this may seem something of a digression in an attempt to look at the question of what it means to be human.
My view is that it is vital to address the question in this broader sense. Am I an eternal being, or simply one with nothing to come after they put me in a box? The answer to this question is very relevant to our big question.