What does it mean to be "Saved"?

NomNomPizza

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So getting saved is gaining the knowledge based on God's existence?
Nope , devils know God exist they arent saved
Bible also says unbelievers know God exist but surpress it due to thier evil deeds they don't gain knowledge of God existing or not they alredy have that knowledge.
 
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NomNomPizza

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So getting saved is when the Holy Spirit begins to live inside you?
You get born of the seed of God and then Spirit goes to live inside of you yea , your flesh become temporary temple at resurrection you will get resurrected body .
 
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sirruhx

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In a more simple way:
(This is the ABC's to becoming a Christian and getting saved)

A-Admit to God that you are a sinner and you cannot save yourself from eternal condemnation to Hell.

B-Believe that Jesus is God's son that he sent Jesus here on Earth to die in sinners'(everyone,that's us) place so that we can accept his free gift of salvation and go to Heaven for eternity instead of Hell.

C-Confess your new faith and that Jesus is the Lord of your life by mouth and to others!
 
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Petros2015

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So everybody who believes Jesus is the son of God is saved?

Those who believe, follow
Those who say they believe, but don't follow, don't believe (they would follow if they did)
I tend to think of it like a man lost in the dark wearing a blindfold made of cobwebs.
Suddenly someone out of mercy, not the man, takes the blindfold off and he sees a light.
"I'm saved!" he thinks
And he is.
But he better start following that light.
If he turns around and heads back the other way,
Things will get darker and darker again
And he'll start walking through cobwebs again
And that blindfold will build up again before he realizes it
Is that guy saved?
I'm not so sure.

To me, its a cooperative process that was not initiated by me
But one that I need to participate in
 
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JosephZ

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What do Christians mean when they say they are saved? I've even heard some of them mention the specific day that they got saved. What does this mean?

Ken
In order for one to be saved, they must be "Born Again".

“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom... Do not be amazed that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’" (John 3:3, 7)

What does it mean to be born again"?

To be "Born Again" is an act of God through the work of the Holy Spirit in which He grants upon the believing sinner a new life. When we are Born Again the Holy Spirit transforms our hearts from hostility toward God to a love of God and a desire for righteousness.

Born again = “born of God”

"who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God." (John 1:13)

Being Born Again makes us “a new creation”

"Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come." (II Corinthians 5:17)

Being Born Again means we are “created in Christ Jesus”

"For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them." (Ephesians 2:10)

Being Born Again makes us “partakers of the Divine nature”

"For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust." (II Peter 1:4)

How are we born again?

Paul gives a good summery of the gospel that one must believe upon in his first letter to the Corinthians:

"I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain. For what I received I passed on to you of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.” (1 Corinthians 15:1-4)

And Jesus said:

"Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life." (John 5:24)

Therefore:

"Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved..." (Acts 16:31)

And we can be confident of our salvation because:

"[We] have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer [we] who live, but Christ lives in [us]; and the life which [we] now live in the flesh [we] live by faith in the Son of God, who loved [us] and gave Himself up for [us]." (See Galatians 2:20)

We must accept the fact that we all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23), therefore, being born again is a necessity for all who desire to be a part of the kingdom of God (John 3:3)
 
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Gregory Thompson

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So getting saved is gaining the knowledge based on God's existence?
Not so much. Possessing knowledge doesn't do anything.

Getting saved is the process of your inner being translated into a form that is compatible with God's reality. When we're born, it's not, so we need to be born again.
 
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Gregory Thompson

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What does that mean? What part of you becomes recreated?
The inner part.

The spirit within humans is dead by default, but being born again results in the spirit within a human being being made alive.
 
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ViaCrucis

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What do Christians mean when they say they are saved? I've even heard some of them mention the specific day that they got saved. What does this mean?

Ken

It depends. What you are describing is more of a modern Evangelical way of talking about salvation.

In historic Christian thought salvation is a fairly large topic that encompasses many theological topics, from Christology to Eschatology.

I'll be working from within a traditional/historical perspective, but it'll also be flavored by my own Lutheran tradition (I think it's important that I be clear on that).

The Greek verb that is translated to save is sozo, and it means "to rescue". Salvation, as a concept, refers to the Divine rescue by God of creation; the rescue of creation from death and sin. Other words that come into play here are redemption, reconciliation, and renewal. Redemption or apolutrosis in Greek means the giving of freedom, freeing or liberating from captivity; reconciliation or atonement or katallage in Greek means restoration--the restoring of creation, the restoring of man, restoring man's communion with God, etc. Renewal, the healing, the making new again, of creation.

In Christian theology not only is man broken by sin; but all of creation labors and suffers under the hegemony of sin and also of death.

That is, the universe--all that exists--is intrinsically and inherently good. We confess faith "in one God, the Father, maker of heaven and earth, of all things seen and unseen" and all which God creates is good. But creation has become subject to sin and death; the biblical narrative which communicates this to us is the story of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, who tricked by the words of the serpent sell themselves into bondage through their disobedience; and through this brings the rest of creation into subjugation with them.

Man was created to be the caretaker, God's loving representatives in the world, to bear the Divine image and likeness by reflecting God's own love and light into the world; and reciprocally reflecting creation, bearing of creation back to God in worship (which is not about feeding God's "ego", but about man fulfilling his purpose as a rational agent in communion with God and in communion with the rest of creation); through the fall this became broken, distorted, wounded. Our loss of fellowship with God, and the breaking of our good communion with one another and also with the rest of creation.

God, however, never intended to abandon anything He made, and so the overarching biblical narrative is the redemptive drama unfolding in history ultimately coming into climax with Jesus Christ, God made flesh.

God the Word and only-begotten Son of the Father united Himself with our humanity; and becomes a full partaker in our humanity--from birth even to death. In His living He was righteous, even when we were not; and thus His obedience becomes the counter-measure to Adam's disobedience. Where the first man sinned and brought sin and the subjugation of death; Christ, the "second Adam" by His obedience restores righteousness to man, undoing what Adam had done. And thus, by His life, death, and resurrection justifies sinful man. That is, makes man just or righteous. By His death, He participates in our death, thereby giving Himself up to be swallowed up in death--that He might destroy the power of death by His rising from the dead. In this Jesus has become the "first fruits" of the resurrection; Christ has been raised from the dead, and therefore we can trust and hope that what God has done for Jesus, He will do also for us, and indeed, all of creation.

Christ and His Gospel--the good news of what God has done for the world in Jesus, for all of us--is brought forth to the world through what Christ called His "Church"; the assembled group of those who have believed in Him, and seek to live their lives out in this world as His disciples. Through the proclamation of the Gospel, and in the Sacraments which Jesus Christ instituted for His Church--such as Baptism and the Eucharist--God is active and at work to bring faith to us. Bringing faith to us, giving us faith, He works to appropriate what Christ has done to us. That, therefore, we are freely justified before God by His grace, through faith, on account of what Jesus Christ has done.

In this, therefore, the sinner is reconciled to God, God establishing His peace with us; and our disposition toward God is transformed from an estranged and hostile creature to a restored, reconciled relationship of that of a child. For through Jesus we have received adoption as children; thus even as Christ is the eternal and only-begotten Son of the Father, so have we become counted as sons and daughters of the Father. Christ's Father has become our Father. And God dwells in us, and with us, through the enduring presence of the Holy Spirit.

This work, which happened objectively and for all in Christ is now given to us personally, and through this we are brought into the life of God that is found in Jesus for us--a life that cannot be destroyed even by bodily death in this present age. More than that, however, is God's promise that death shall no longer be. Even as we live in a world that is dying, the Christian faith and hope is that this age full of madness, decay, and entropy shall reach its end--history shall come to a close. It is not the "end of the world" that we hope for, but rather that at the end of this age God shall transform, renew, and bring healing to all things.

What God did in Jesus God is doing for all creation. Life, not death, is what triumphs in the end.

Salvation, therefore, is all that God has done, is doing, and will do. Our individual salvation is part of that larger story and picture--of God's redemption, healing, and saving of all things. It happened objectively in Christ for all; it happens subjectively in us through our regeneration (i.e. new birth), whereby through faith we have been changed, made new in Jesus as grace--pure gift. And the ongoing work of God in our lives, renewing us in our faith by grace in God's word by which we hear Him forgive us, loving us, healing us; and in the very tangible elements of water, bread, and wine in the Sacraments. Through Baptism we have been born again, renewed in Christ, our sins washed away by grace, our lives changed by mercy, etc. In the Eucharist we receive Christ's very flesh and blood, so that even by our eating and drinking there is Jesus here, our salvation here in, under, and with the meager elements of bread and wine. And the Gospel is preached, that we may be renewed day by day in God's mercy. In order that we might daily walk as disciples, bringing and bearing Christ to the world.

Through giving of ourselves in our lives to our neighbors, friends, strangers, and whoever we are blessed to know--even our enemies. That we might love the world even as God loves the world; to love as Christ loves. That the healing and redemption which is for the world, that which has been done already and that which will be done on the Last Day; is breaking into here and now in our relationships with one another, with others, and indeed the rest of creation.

And ultimately, on that last day, all shall be transformed, renewed, healed, and restored; God will be all in all.

All of this is salvation. Being "saved" is about God's bringing rescue to us and to all creation. Both what has already been done, what is being down even now, and what will be done finally in the end.

We have been saved.
We are being saved.
We will be saved.

-CryptoLutheran
 
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Ken-1122

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In a more simple way:
(This is the ABC's to becoming a Christian and getting saved)

A-Admit to God that you are a sinner and you cannot save yourself from eternal condemnation to Hell.

B-Believe that Jesus is God's son that he sent Jesus here on Earth to die in sinners'(everyone,that's us) place so that we can accept his free gift of salvation and go to Heaven for eternity instead of Hell.

C-Confess your new faith and that Jesus is the Lord of your life by mouth and to others!
This appears to be instructions of someone converting to Christianity. How about the person born into a Christian family who was raised knowing, believing in and having faith in Jesus? Would such a person be born saved?
 
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Ken-1122

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Those who believe, follow
Those who say they believe, but don't follow, don't believe (they would follow if they did)
Action is always more difficult than beliefs. Just because you believe something doesn't mean your actions will correlate with what you believe to be true. People who do wrong, know it's wrong yet they do it anyway; that's why they do wrong in secret.
 
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Ken-1122

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What does it mean to be born again"?

To be "Born Again" is an act of God through the work of the Holy Spirit in which He grants upon the believing sinner a new life. When we are Born Again the Holy Spirit transforms our hearts from hostility toward God to a love of God and a desire for righteousness.
Why isn't everybody just born this way? If the Holy Spirit can transform a heart from hostility toward God to love for him and a desire for righteousness, why not have the Holy Spirit at birth?
 
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Ken-1122

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Getting saved is the process of your inner being translated into a form that is compatible with God's reality. When we're born, it's not, so we need to be born again.

The spirit within humans is dead by default, but being born again results in the spirit within a human being being made alive.
Why are we born dead by default? Why can't the default be born alive??
 
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Gregory Thompson

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Why are we born dead by default? Why can't the default be born alive??
This goes back to the first humans, because they partook of the fruit of knowing good and evil, their Godlike imagination killed them because they knew evil and could not control the manifestation of both good and evil at the same time.

So the spirit in humans are dead, but even the first humans lived just short of 1000 years, the life we experience in the body is all we know until our spirit is revived by the Spirit of God.
 
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