An Evangelical friend tells me me loves Orthodox worship and teaching, but has a problem with the fact that we don’t tell people to “get saved.” Here are some notes after I looked up what the Apostles and Evangelists have taught us about being saved.

What does the New Testament say about being saved?

The New Testament repeatedly uses the future passive of σώζω (“to save”), especially σωθήσεται: “he will be saved.”

• Matthew 10:22 – “He that endureth to the end shall be saved.”
• Matthew 24:13; Mark 13:13 – “He that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.”
• Mark 16:16 – “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved.”
• John 10:9 – “I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved.”
• Acts 2:21; Romans 10:13 – “Whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”
• Acts 11:14 – Peter “shall tell thee words, whereby thou and all thy house shall be saved.”
• Acts 16:31 – “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy household.”
• Romans 5:9 – “Being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him.”
• Romans 5:10 – “Being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.”
• Romans 9:27 – “A remnant shall be saved.”
• Romans 10:9 – “If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.”
• Romans 11:26 – “And so all Israel shall be saved.”
• 1 Corinthians 3:15 – When a person’s unprofitable works are burned up, “he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire.”
• 1 Corinthians 5:5 – Discipline the unrepentant sinner so “that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.”
• 1 Timothy 2:15 – Women in labor “shall be saved in childbearing if she continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety.”
• James 5:15 – The prayer of priests “shall save the sick.”

Scripture also speaks of being saved here and now.

• Acts 2:47 says the Lord added to the Church “those who were being saved.”
• 1 Corinthians 1:18 contrasts “us who are being saved” with those who now are perishing.
• 1 Corinthians 15:1–2 says of the Gospel, “By which also ye are being saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you.”
• 2 Corinthians 2:15 speaks of “them that are being saved.”

And several passages speak of salvation explicitly as something still future for the faithful.

• Romans 13:11 – “Now is our salvation nearer than when we believed.”
• 1 Thessalonians 5:8–9 – Christians are to put on “the hope of salvation,” because God has appointed them “to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ.”
• Hebrews 9:28 – Christ “shall appear the second time without sin for salvation” to those who eagerly await him.
• 1 Peter 1:5 – believers are “kept by the power of God through faith for salvation which is ready to be revealed in the last time.”
• 1 Peter 1:9 – “Receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls.”

Who can we be saved by?

Christ’s work is utterly unique. Nobody else is capable of bursting death and hades open from the inside, uniting mankind to God in one eternal divine-human Person, and seating human nature on the throne of the Trinity. In that sense Christ is absolutely the only Savior.

But the writers of Scripture also tell us:

• Paul saves some (Romans 11:14, 1 Corinthians 9:22)
• Timothy can save those who hear him (1 Timothy 4:16)
• Spouses may save each other (1 Corinthians 7:16)
• Baptism saves us (1 Peter 3:21)
• The word, implanted in us, will save our souls (James 1:21)
• Prayers of priests save the sick (James 5:15)
• Jude commands us to save others (Jude 1:23)
• Those who turn sinners from error save them (James 5:20)

Salvation means wholeness, restoration, rescue, freedom, preservation.

Seven times in the gospels, Christ told someone “Your faith has made you whole” or “Your faith has saved you” but both sentences are identical in the Greek: ἡ πίστις σου σέσωκέν σε. It’s only the translators that felt the need to render them differently.

The New Testament speaks of salvation in three tenses:

Past: “By grace you have been saved” (Ephesians 2:8).

Ongoing: “To us who are being saved” (1 Corinthians 1:18).

Future: “We shall be saved” (Romans 5:9–10).

Scripture does not speak of salvation as a condition or a thing that a person has or does not have. Wholeness and freedom from sin is a reality which has been accomplished in Christ, is now being accomplished in us, and will be experienced in full in the resurrection Kingdom of God.