What is “salvation”, according to the scriptures
The verb “to save” and the noun “salvation” mean “to save” or “to rescue” in the original Greek. That’s all it means. Semantically, the notion of rescue requires an indirect object (“saved from what?”), supplied either explicitly in the text, or understood from the context. The words “save / salvation”, however, became religiously loaded terms that it the minds of a lot of people, they are synonymous with most or all of the above:
- new birth
- receiving eternal life
- obtaining righteousness
- becoming justified
- becoming sanctified
- becoming glorified
- going to heaven
- going to paradise (whatever that means – paradise is simply “park” or “garden” in Greek (G3857 – παράδεισος / paradeisos))
- not going to hell (meaning either sheol / hades, or gehenna, or lake of fire, or some combination thereof, etc.)
- having a different relationship with death (whatever “death” means for the one speaking – loss of life, separation, going to hell, etc.)
- receiving eternal rewards
Incidentally, all of the above can’t possibly mean the same thing, since then why use all those different terms if they have the same meaning? Those are different concepts, and failure to study them out for yourself will simply leave you intellectually confused. You don’t want to be lifting proof verses out of context to prop up whatever doctrine may be popular it whatever circles while ignoring the rest.
Fortunately, there’s a better way of Scripture study – a contextual study, or the concordant method, as pertaining to vocabulary. This is how you acquire your vocabulary as a child. It requires more work on your part. In this study, I’ve done a lot of the work for you.
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Terminal Salvation 