Consider the Bible mandate to live godly in this present age.
In order to successfully live out this mandate, “God’s grace brings salvation to all, teaching us through discipline to say no to ungodliness and worldly passions so that we live prudently, righteously, and godly in this present age.” [Titus 2:12]
While a host of false teachers and preachers have arisen to erase this idea from modern christianism, replacing it with false concepts of unconditional love and hyper grace, it appears that “salvation” is a process through which spiritual discipline strengths our wills and alters our behaviors. Grace enables us to live righteously, and this means behavior and lifestyle, not some nebulous “covering over my sinfulness that allows God to love me in spite of it all.”
Another pervasive assumption is that only death can position us to live right. Supposing that as soon as a person is born anew we shoot them in the head so they can be righteous, I suppose. As if the grace of God is really the mercy of God; a common misconception about grace is that it is mercy, the “time as opportunity” that God allows people to repent and produce right living. Grace is not mercy; it is the enabling power and capacity to do what God expects, strengthening the inner man through a process of passion pursuit, the man who is submitted to that process appropriating more and more of the enabling power of God in the moments when that submission is most tested.
Salvation that doesn’t teach us through discipline to live right is not the salvation of which the Bible speaks. Some consider the totality of salvation rescue to be “sins forgiven,” but there is much more to being saved than having our sins forgiven.
