Spiritual Disciplines: Chapter 3, Salvation is Life

We’ve relegated God’s life in us to special times and places and states of mind. And we’ve become so used to this style of life, we are hardly aware of it. When we think of “taking Christ into the workplace” or “keeping Christ in the home,” we are making our faith into a set of special acts. The “specialness” of such acts just underscores the point—that being a Christian, being Christ’s, isn’t thought of as a normal part of life. ~Dallas Willard

        Is Christ a part of my everyday life? Do I consider Him in every aspect of life?

What does it mean to be “saved?” What do people understand when they hear “salvation,” “redemption,” and other New Testament terms used to refer to God’s action in restoring women and men to their intended place in his world? Is it possible that we’ve been robbed of the words’ true and coherent concepts? ~Dallas Willard
        
        Salvation is not a one time experience alone. It is an ongoing aspect of life. Salvation isn’t just about beginning a relationship with Christ, but learning from his entire life experience and aligning our lives with His.

For some strange reason, though, we find it easy to put our minds away when it comes to religion, when it comes to bringing the same type of care to our faith as we would to other subjects. But, in reality, we need to be even more careful with our religious teachers and theologians. ~Dallas Willard

One specific errant concept has done inestimable harm to the church and God’s purposes with us—and that is the concept that has restricted the Christian idea of salvation to mere forgiveness of sins. ~Dallas Willard

The cross act was first narrowly interpreted as mere vicarious suffering and then mistaken for the whole of the redemptive action of God. ~Dallas Willard

        What else has Christ called us to in our relationship with Him?

We’ll never be able to make clear just exactly what it is that our lives have to do with our “salvation.” Futile efforts of believers through the centuries somehow to tack obedience—or “works” or “law”—onto grace, or to insist that Christ cannot be our Savior without also being our Lord, are a historical
proof of this point. ~Dallas Willard