This Is Not That: Salvation
Written by Russ Johnson
Have We Have Misunderstood Salvation?
Most of us heard a version of the Jesus story that goes like this:
God is holy and you’re not.
He’s perfect and you’re broken.
He can’t be near sin because it offends His purity.
But because He loves you, He sent His Son to die in your place, to absorb His wrath so He could finally forgive you and let you near Him again.
It’s tidy. Emotional. A little tragic.
And it’s wrong.
Because the real problem Jesus came to address wasn’t rule-breaking. It was believing the wrong story about God.
And until we see that, we will struggle to see what the Bible reveals about salvation.
Sin: The Lie Beneath All Lies
As I unpacked in All A Lark, the real story of sin began in the garden (Gen 3), when the serpent didn’t tempt Adam and Eve to “sin” by breaking rules. He tempted them to doubt who God is.
“Did God really say…?”
Translation: You can’t trust Him.
That’s the birthplace of sin — not rebellion, but unbelief. Not bad behavior, but blindness to the One who holds our life in His.
So sin, at its core, isn’t breaking rules. It’s believing a lie.
In one of the most radical indictments of human morality, Paul defines it this way:
“Whatever is not from faith is sin.” (Romans 14:23)
In other words, the opposite of sin isn’t virtue. It’s faith in who God is.
Miss that, and salvation becomes a frantic search for belonging we already have. The anxiety shows up everywhere: pride and fear, moral failure and moral performance.
Because let’s be honest: religious ladder-climbing and rebellion are siblings. Both are attempts to achieve an imagined independence we don’t have, and cannot carry.
And that’s what Jesus came to destroy: not our frail humanity, but our distorted vision.
That’s why John the Baptist could say:
“Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” (John 1:29)
John wasn’t speaking to bad behavior.
He was speaking to the delusion beneath it.
The distinction matters.
Because when we shrink sin down to bad behavior—something people still struggle with long after Jesus walked the earth—we turn the Bible into a contradiction.
But when we let sin mean what the Scriptures say, we find there’s no cosmic good-cop/bad-cop. The Father isn’t the angry one and the Son the kind one. They are one—undoing the delusional distrust that enslaves us.
Where the Delusion Dies
Which brings us to the cross: the place religion turned into a divine execution, but Jesus turned into a world-wide revelation.
Hanging there, He cries:
“My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46)
For centuries that line has been preached as proof that the Father, too holy to be near sin, turned away from His Son as He paid our debt.
But read carefully.
Because Jesus is quoting David’s, and our, anxious cry from Psalm 22. It’s a passage that begins in panic, but ends in peace:
“You have not despised or scorned the suffering of the afflicted one;
you have not hidden your face from him.” (Psalm 22:24)
In other words, Jesus doesn’t cease to be God on the cross, much less One who is now on His own for a moment. You can’t divide the Trinity.
So as He dies at the hands of our desire for religion instead of God, He does so as Father, Son, and Spirit—holding all humanity in Himself (John 10:30; Col 1:15-20; Eph 4:6).
It’s a scene where our anxious obsession with control is exposed, His endless love unveiled, and our tendency to miss the point put on display.
Because if you keep reading the Psalm Jesus quoted, you run straight into the next one:
“The Lord is my shepherd… Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for You are with me” (Psalm 23).
That’s not coincidence. It’s a road map.
From anxiety to assurance.
From the cry we all know: “Why have You left me?”
to the truth we discover: “You were here the whole time.”
So when Jesus says:
“It is finished.” (John 19:30)
He’s not announcing that a vengeful, blood thirsty Father is finally satisfied.
Because the Father was the Son, and the Son was revealing the undying “love” of which no one can separate themselves (John 10:27-30).
Which means the cross wasn’t a transaction where God killed His Son so He could finally love us up close. It was a moment where God revealed that He always has.
But What About Wrath?
Of course, this gracious God doesn’t fit our instinct for control masked as “justice.” Which is why we often hear people quote the late R. C. Sproul:
“A god who is all love, all grace, all mercy… and no wrath is an idol.”
Fair enough.
But in Scripture, God’s wrath isn’t rage. It’s love refusing to abandon us to delusion.
Romans 1 says God’s wrath is revealed when He “gives people over” to their illusions—letting us experience the emptiness we insist on chasing.
Not because He hates us. But because He refuses to make peace with the lies that keep destroying us.
Of course, someone will point to Paul’s words in Romans 3:25:
“I thought “Jesus was set forth as a propitiation for our sins.’”
I know I did.
But that was before I allowed the Greek word Jesus used—hilastērion—stopmeaning “payment,”and mean what it is: “mercy seat”—the meeting place where heaven’s reality confronts humanity’s blindness.
After all, Paul also says God’s grace “was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time, but has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior” (2 Tim. 1:9–10).
So the grace we have been told is now available at the cross? God has already “given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time.”
Turns out, grace didn’t begin with Jesus on a cross. Jesus on a cross simply revealed what was already true.
Which is where the familiar question comes in: “But doesn’t the Bible say, ‘Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures’?” (1 Cor. 15:3)
For sure.
But in the Greek they he original Scriptures were written in, “for our sins” (hyper ton hamartiōn hēmōn) means because of. And that changes things.
It means Jesus died because our distorted vision of God, and subsequent distrust (i.e., sin), leads us to defend our righteousness instead of receiving His.
So His death?
It wasn’t payment for our sin. It was participation: God entering our blindness and exposing the violence of the human heart that would rather crucify Love than trust it.
Grace Isn’t Conditional
At this point religion, from within us or around us, usually says: “But that’s cheap grace.”
again, I know I did.
But if grace depends on our ability to obtain it or validate it, it is no longer, by definition: grace. It’s credit. And credit always comes with a bill.
Thet’s why the grace Jesus reveals doesn’t work like credit. It isn’t the price of admission; it’s what awakens you to the truth that you were already at the party.
Religion checks the guest list.
Grace sets the table.
In short: grace isn’t soft on the sin dismantling humanity.
Grace is God not allowing our sin to define us.
Perhaps this is why Paul writes:
“By grace you have been saved through faith.” (Ephesians 2:8)
Meaning: grace is what saves you from your distorted vision of God. “Through faith” is simply the pair of glasses that lets you see and recline in what has always been true.
That’s why Paul immediately adds:
“This (grace) is not from yourselves—it is the gift of God.” (v.9)
Salvation isn’t a reward you unlock with right belief. It’s a gift you awaken to.
Because if your faith unlocks grace, then you have a God whose love is conditional. And with it, an idea of salvation based on your choice, not Christ.
Which turns faith into a work, not faith: making you self-justifying, not someone “justified by the faith of Jesus Christ” (see the original Greek text broken down in Gal 2:16 in All A Lark).
1 John 2:12 couldn’t be more clear:
We “have been forgiven on account of his name,” because a loving Father didn’t leave eternal salvation up to human frailty.
Holiness… Without Religion
Does this idea of salvation undermine God’s holiness?
Not at all.
The Hebrew word for “holy,” qadosh, points to wholeness—something complete, lacking nothing. It describes the Triune God who is full, whole, and in need of nothing.
So holiness doesn’t mean God can’t touch sin.
It means sin can’t survive God’s touch.
When Jesus touches a leper, a clear no-no in the Law, the leper becomes clean. Jesus doesn’t become unclean.
When the woman with the issue of blood grabs Jesus’ cloak, another clear no-no in the Law, she’s healed. He isn’t defiled.
That’s holiness.
Not withdrawal, but invasion.
Not purity that separates, but love that restores.
Which is why the incarnation matters so much:
“The Word (Jesus) became flesh and dwelt among us.” (John 1:14)
But the Greek makes the point even sharper than our translations. Because again and again, Scripture uses the word ἐν (en) — in, not “dwell.”
Meaning. God didn’t shine His light on the darkness from a safe distance. He entered in to it.
It’s why we, in our unbelief, didn’t come to belief from a booming voice from God in the sky, but from a work of the Spirit of God that was already — in us.
It’s why Paul, speaking to the philosophers in Athens who hadn’t yet believed, said that God “is not far from any one of us.” Why? “For in him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:27–28).
Paul even described becoming a believer this way: God “was pleased to reveal his Son in me” (Galatians 1:15–16). Not a voice to Paul. But one that was already in Paul.
And that’s the scandal a control loving species can’t stand:
God was never the problem.
Our faith and devotion, was never the solution.
Because the Father never turned His face away.
The Son never stopped revealing Him.
The Spirit never stopped moving in us.
Which means:
Sin isn’t breaking divine rules.
It’s delusional distrust of divine love.
Grace isn’t a temporary pardon we spend our lives trying to live up to. It’s the love that has always held us: the air we breathe in our struggles and the truth that ends the lie.
Faith isn’t toil for God.
It’s trusting in who Jesus already is for us.
This is peace and joy known as: salvation.
And That Matters
Because the tattered stories of our lives—and the shipwreck of human history—are the very places Jesus said He could be found.
To speak of Jesus, as Scripture shows us, is never to speak of Him in isolation. It’s to speak of the Father and Spirit who are one with Him—and of all humanity. For in Him is “life” itself, our very existence.
This is why any version of “following Jesus” or “having real faith” that centers on perfecting your story or fixing society misses the point.
This misunderstanding doesn’t just fail us; it fails Jesus.
It fails Him because it undermines the reconciliation He already accomplished for everyone (Col 1:20). And it fails the world because it offers a false hope dependent on what we’re doing and who we are becoming, instead of who Jesus already is—for us all.