Originally Posted by
revdrgade
In answer to "from what are we saved" it is death and corruption.
This is what Adam and Eve won when they ate of the forbidden fruit. They KNEW that if they ate of it they would die. They ate, they died. The image of God with which they were created was corrupted. Seth was not born in the image of God but in the image of Adam:
Ge 5:3
3 When Adam had lived 130 years, he had a son in his own likeness, in his own image; and he named him Seth .
NIV
Illustrations from the OT can be helpful in explaining doctrine. But there is no such doctrine as distinguishing salvation from the Kingdom of God.
Salvation in through faith/trust in God as savior and lord. The Kingdom of God is living submitted to that Lord because we trust/have faith in Him.
The Greek word used for "king" and "kingdom" is the same: Basilea just as in English is for "king" and "kingdom".
The Jews hardly walked with God in Egypt when the plagues made things worse at first. They had no faith that God would save them when they were pursued. They complained and distrusted at every discomfort. They doubted God had enough power to allow them to enter the promised land(kingdom?) after what should have been an eleven day journey. The whole forty years was added BECAUSE they wouldn't walk with God. They died in the wilderness because they were never even saved from unbelief.
Whether many of them were saved from the death and corruption from Adam and Eve or went to heaven, only God knows. And He only says later that "most" died in the wilderness and never entered His spiritual rest.
Heb 3:7-4:2
7 So, as the Holy Spirit says:
"Today, if you hear his voice, 8 do not harden your heartsas you did in the rebellion,during the time of testing in the desert, 9 where your fathers tested and tried meand for forty years saw what I did. 10 That is why I was angry with that generation,and I said, 'Their hearts are always going astray,and they have not known my ways.' 11 So I declared on oath in my anger,'They shall never enter my rest.'"
12 See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. 13 But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin's deceitfulness. 14 We have come to share in Christ if we hold firmly till the end the confidence we had at first. 15 As has just been said:
"Today, if you hear his voice,do not harden your heartsas you did in the rebellion."
16 Who were they who heard and rebelled? Were they not all those Moses led out of Egypt? 17 And with whom was he angry for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the desert? 18 And to whom did God swear that they would never enter his rest if not to those who disobeyed? 19 So we see that they were not able to enter, because of their unbelief.
Hebrews 4
4:1 Therefore, since the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us be careful that none of you be found to have fallen short of it. 2 For we also have had the gospel preached to us, just as they did; but the message they heard was of no value to them, because those who heard did not combine it with faith.
NIV
Entering His eternal kingdom does have a beginning, namely; when we are brought to faith, or what many like to call "being saved". (Theologians call it being "justified/made the righteousness of God by the blood of Christ).
This then in the beginning of a journey of walking in that kingdom, walking in good works for which God created us.
They are "both" by faith in the grace (favor and power) of God.
They just look like two separate things because salvation has been made by some humans to mean only an experience, a confession, which can be made over and over again and yet has little to nothing to do with being changed by the Spirit of God as well as being removed from the kingdom of death and corruption.
The following show that we are saved from DEATH.
Jn 5:24
24 "I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life.
NIV
Jn 8:51
51 I tell you the truth, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death ."
NIV
Ro 5:12-13
12 Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned— 13 for before the law was given, sin was in the world.
NIV
Ro 5:20-21
20 The law was added so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, 21 so that, just as sin reigned in death , so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
NIV
Ro 6:3-7
3 Or don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death ? 4 We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.
5 If we have been united with him like this in his death , we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. 6 For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin— 7 because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.
NIV
1 Jn 3:13-15
14 We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love our brothers. Anyone who does not love remains in death . 15 Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life in him.
NIV
et ali
