What is Salvation Redemption?

Cut off from the foundational knowledge of the context of "deification/glorification" the Western Christian Structure reads the scriptures through a veil blinding them to the true story. They take many things literally or in non-contextual distortions, and totally ignore most of Scripture, not understanding its meaning.

What is Salvation and Redemption?
How did the early Church understand it?

Let us start with the elementary teaching of Saint Paul. Paul talked and wrote about salvation as "freedom from the bondage of the Law, meaning the Mosaic Law, the bondage of that part of the Ancient Law that the Mosaic Law represented.

He said the chief enemies of humanity are sin, death, and the Law, that is, the Law of Moses. Since Saul/Paul was a second temple Pharisee we can assume that when he was speaking about "the Law" he was speaking about primarily the Levitical statutes, the 600 plus commandments that constituted the backbone of the Hebrew religion, over and above the Law of Moses, and above the ancient Law, commonly accepted often called the Law of Noah. He stated that the Law was an emergency measure provided by God to deal with the crisis of human sin. Galatians Chapter 3 and Romans Chapter 10 The Law was a means to prepare the people for Christ, and more directly to prepare, that is, pave the way for Christ, for his incarnation, so that his incarnation would be possible through the Virgin Mary, into a society, a culture that held the possibility of understanding the event. When we read the earliest "creeds" that exist in New Testament text, what has come to the called, "The Highest Christology is the Earliest Christology, The Earliest Christology is the Highest Christology."  Outside of this there is a term I and others have used, "The Sickness of Religion," and people whose understanding of Healing Salvation is just a mental conception, a philosophical, or legal concept who view salvation as primarily a "legal matter, either a deal with Satan or a deal to appease an angry God," they find the idea of the sickness of religion to be not just foolish but offensive, after all, isn't the goal to be religious? For the readers of scripture-alone, without the Apostolic understanding of what Healing Salvation is (SOZO) there is no comprehension of what Saint Paul teaches, and you get heresy after heresy based upon his words. God gave the Law of Moses as a "stop gap measure" to create the ground where the Word of God could incarnate, into that society prepared for Him, but the Jewish people treated the Law as a goal in itself, a set of rational concepts that became a lying bondage. When in the Gospels Jesus is seen, and indeed even his disciples are caught breaking the "laws," they were not breaking the Law; they were breaking the BONDs that had become wicked. People have asked me where I got the pseudonym I use for my online work, "Bond Robin." They assume it is some reference to the Jame Bond books and movies.  Bond Robin is an Icon of the Gospel, the recognition of the Bond of the Law that had become an Idol, and a little bird given wings to fly away from it. The Law of Moses had been distorted into a sickness of religion, and it is the BOND from which the Robin has to escape. I'm not making doctrine by the name Bond Robin. It is just a constant memory tool to denote the foundation of what I'm doing here. 

From the earliest times when the Mosaic Covenant was established, the Law became a tyrant. People started to try to please the tyrant through the keeping of the Law for their security, for their own ego's sake, for prestige in society, to be seen as religious and righteous before men, so that even that Law became an idol not leading to God anymore. It actually became a source of wickedness.  We see the Second Temple Pharisees and Sadducees plot in conspiracy, lying in public, plotting in secret to murder Jesus. Their "kingdom" was being challenged. Their kingdom was wealth and power. There came a tie between the keeping of the Law and material wealth. In the sickness of their religious state, those who were wealthy, no matter how the wealth was gained, were viewed as "blessed by God," though many times, great wealth is in reality a measure of shame, and can even be a curse. It is only in this understanding that Jesus' words come into place where he said that it is very difficult for a wealthy person to be saved, an almost impossible thing, as he stated it. Because in the sickness of religion, in the Bond of the Law, wealth was pride, and no matter the cruelty of the wealthy person, he saw his wealth as a blessing from God, a stamp of approval for his ego-driven greed and lust. We have a great picture of this in the person of King Solomon. The humility that existed in his father was gone. There are no great "confessional Proverbs" only rational wisdom.

The sickness of religion broke the relationship between God and man. No matter how wealthy or prideful, that man does not share the reality where, were he sane, he would cry out, "O wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death."

Hebrews 2:15
Since God's children share in flesh and blood, which had become a "body of death," God, himself, partook of the exact nature that through death he might destroy him who has the power of death, that is, the devil and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong bondage, having canceled the bond which stood against us with its legal demands, he set that aside, nailing it to the Cross. God HIMSELF climbed upon the Cross, and you were buried with him in Baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the working of God who raised him from the dead. In every sense, His resurrection is our Salvation.

Salvation is also seen as liberation from the bondage to Satan, sin, and death. The Early Christians understood that humanity is not a static, timeless reality. Human beings are understood in terms of relationships. They are in the process of becoming persons as they look to and communicate in love with God AND with the world around them.
The imagery of human development from embryo to infant, toddler, innocent child, young adult, mature, and wise is used in scripture to denote the formation of the new being IN HIM. In many instances, the New Testament speaks of this 'process', and this truth mocks the conceptualists who say there are no processes in our healing Salvation.

We become Christian and begin our healing Salvation in an environment, a culture, a physical reality inextricably bound with the physical and spiritual existence of all being. True Christians are not isolated from God's Creation but rather adore it. But they become separated from the Zitgeist of the world, from the "spirit of the age," which is the spirit of Lucifer.

What is evil, then, is whatever ruptures our communion with God. Whatever impedes taking on of the Divine attributes and attaining the fullness of our humanity in union with God. This isn't, as the Calvinist would speculate, a legal agreement, but is an organic, spiritual/biological, and genuinely lived experience. Evil battles against us, and in Saint Paul's recognition of this battle, he talked of the mortal taking on immortality. It is only in this context: (here is the context) in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.
1Co 15:53 For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.
1Co 15:54 So when this corruptible should put on incorruption, and this mortal should put on immortality, then will come to pass the word which was written: "Death was swallowed up in victory." In this context, the following words of Saint Paul may be comprehended and not become the basis of hedonism, lust, and antinomian magic (anti-nomian = without law.) Rom 7:23 But I see a different law in my members, waging war against the law of my mind, and capturing me by the law of sin which is in my members.
Rom 7:24 O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from this body of death?
Rom 7:25 I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself with the mind serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.

He was speaking of the process of the mortal taking on immortality, and he asked, "How can we neglect so great a healing-salvation?"  He was speaking about some Gnostic anti-matter philosophy, easing way to hedonism and lawlessness, debauchery and ultimately brutality.  He was speaking of recognizing how the flesh betrays us and disciplining ourselves no to be captured by it. The process of becoming whole in love, in God. Christ's incarnation, his life, his miracles, his teaching, and not immediately his death on the cross, but his resurrection liberate us from Satan, from sin, and from death. Salvation is true liberty and the triumph of Christ, which is the breaking of every yoke and the smashing of every bondage, including the bondage of the Mosaic Law. You will see that a significant temptation of early Christians was to become Judaized and thus to walk on the Blood of Christ.
The great heresy of modern Evangelicalism is to become Judaized in a different form, accept Ecumenicism and the Jewish State as our special focus.


Galatians 5, 1-12.

Stand fast therefore in the freedom in which Christ has made us free, and do not be loaded down again with a yoke of bondage.

Indeed I, Paul, say to you that if you become circumcised, Christ will profit you nothing.

 And I testify again to every man who becomes circumcised that he is a debtor to keep the whole law.

You have become estranged from Christ, you who are justified by law; you have fallen from grace.

 For we by the Spirit eagerly await for the hope of righteousness by faith.

 For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything, but faith working through love.

 You were running well; who hindered you from obeying the truth?

This persuasion does not come from Him who calls you.

 A little leaven leavens the whole lump.

 I have confidence in you, in the Lord, that you will be intent on nothing else; but he who troubles you will bear his judgment, whoever he may be.

 And I, brothers, if I still preach circumcision, why am I still persecuted? In that case the offense of the cross has been done away with.

 Oh that those who disturb you would even castrate themselves!

 For you, brothers were called to freedom; only do not use freedom for an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.

 For all the law is fulfilled in one word, in this: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."

 But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another!

Slaves to Righteousness

Rom 6:15 - 23
What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? Certainly not!

Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves as obedient slaves, you are slaves to whom you obey, whether of sin resulting in death, or of obedience resulting in righteousness?

But thanks be to God, that though you used to be slaves of sin, yet you obeyed from your heart that form of doctrine to which you were delivered.

 And having been freed from sin, you became enslaved to righteousness.

I speak in human terms on account of the weakness of your flesh. For just as you presented your members as slaves to uncleanness, and to lawlessness resulting in more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness resulting in sanctification.

 For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness.

 So what fruit did you have then of which things you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death.

 But now having been freed from sin, and having become enslaved to God, you have your fruit resulting in sanctification, and the outcome, eternal life.

 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Read 1^st Corinthians Chapter 15, which is a mini Gospel.

Stand fast, therefore, and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery. In Galatians 5:1, He said the Gospels vividly represent the triumph of Christ over the destructive forces of evil and death, as we see in Jesus' temptation in the wilderness, his casting out the impure spirits, the healing of the sick and more importantly raising sinful flesh from the dead, his miracles over what appeared to be "natural law" and above all his crucifixion (and preaching from the Cross, pointing to Pslams 22) his smashing the power of hell and his resurrection. On the Cross, we see the reality of the final battle, the adversary of life, which is death, in death, by death defeated, defeated on its own home field, as it were. We saw LIFE triumph, and that LIFE in Christ is the New LIFE, the Truth, the Life, and the Way. It is the ultimate victory of humanity over sin and the devil's defeat. 

The Greek word used by the early Church Fathers for Salvation is "Sotiria" (Healing), and the word for redemption is "apolutrōsis" (that which looseth). 

(Strong's #4982)

 sozo

 sode'-zo

 

 from a primary sos (contraction for obsolete saos, "safe"); to save, i.e. deliver or protect (literally or figuratively):--heal, preserve, save (self), do well, be (make) whole.

(Strong's #4991)

 soteria

 so-tay-ree'-ah

 

 feminine of a derivative of  - soter 4990 as (properly, abstract) noun; rescue or safety (physically or morally):--deliver, health, salvation, save, saving.

Christ is spoken of as "The Redeemer" and "Savior" over souls, minds, and bodies—delivery from the bondage of death and redemption from our sins. If you haven't yet grasped it, it has nothing to do with paying the devil a ransom or trying to satisfy the anger and honor of an angry god. These are late inventions, western scholastic, and sola-scripture false explications. The Greek word SOZO is translated in myriad forms as saved, salvation, and healing. Of these, it is the latter which is most important. In fact, every time the word is translated, it should read "healing salvation" since the tie between rescue and healing is so complete. There is no healing without salvation; there is no salvation without healing. Jesus said, "What difference does it make if I say, thy sins are forgiven thee, or take up your bed and walk?" – answering the Pharisee critics when he healed the paralytic man on the Sabbath. This is a beautiful demonstration of the difference between the reality of healing salvation and the sickness of religion. The Religious cared nothing for the man's suffering, but everything about honoring the Sickness of Religion – the sickness is fully demonstrated here. 

God Himself assumed human nature in the person of Christ to heal it, save it, restore it, make it compatible with the divine, and make it whole – this is salvation. And in the organic understanding of healing salvation, it cannot be separated from the Eucharist, where Christ Himself shares his Resurrected Human/Divine Body and Blood with us. And Saint Paul also made that abundantly clear, saying, __ I speak as to wise men; judge for yourselves what I say. 

1Co 10:16 The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ?" It is sadly comical to read the various western bible commentaries trying to circumvent the explicit meaning of this text. They who say in their sola scriptura arrogance, "first there it the clear reading of the text" as the scriptures are supposedly, self-interpreting. And here is the clear text they cannot swallow and even mock.