This is a long one that is a response to this request: “Tell us about the terms “Savior” and “Salvation,” please.”
The request is a good one. Savior of course, is a man-made word—scripturally based, and part of the story of a people looking for salvation from many years of tyranny and slavery. “Save us” they cried to the heavens and were told that one who would save them was coming. They believed and trusted—as a people.
Through this One they would be freed—an important word and idea. They were a people without freedom looking for one to set them free and rule them justly. They just didn’t realize that it would not come to pass in the way they envisioned it in their human thinking.
Jesus did come to set them free—you have only to look at how he lived his life to see the message he was giving…the lessons he gave on how to BE FREE! That was how he was to “save” them, and you. To show/demonstrate how to live in the freedom of the higher law of Love. They, and many still today, missed the message.
It is the word freedom that is the stumbling block. Jesus lived freedom–he was free from influence, free from the common thinking of the day, free from constraints of culture and religion—though he respected the necessity to be able to live within certain human constructs.
He followed no human rule, but in that freedom acted with respect when no harm came to others. To live in the human construct peacefully was his challenge.
So, it was not freedom from the tyranny of the Romans he came to accomplish, rather, it was full freedom of Spirit he came to show. There was a higher “law” to follow that was not confined by religious rule and dogma or any governmental institution. Jesus called, and still calls all to that law. You may call it Love. That which is of God—that which is who you truly are!
That is “salvation.” Jesus came to save those of his day and now by showing you that you are ALREADY free. One’s body may be imprisoned, but YOU are free.
It is a difficult message for those who cannot see past the human condition—for those who think the life they are living is reality, and the human person they see in the mirror is who they are. It is not. That image is imagined by you so that you can enjoy the physical world. It is only an image that the true YOU has created to experience the life you are living.
Connect with the real YOU, son or daughter of God, to see how truly FREE you are. Bring the LIGHT of the true you into the world. Then you will live as Jesus did.
Yusef