Tag Archives: suffering

A kind of Salvation different than what they expected

Jesus used the expression “everlasting life” more than he used “salvation” since it more accurately portrayed the reality of what he taught. The Jews lived in a time when they were under the oppression of the Romans and they were expecting a long awaited messiah that their scriptures prophesied would come who would deliver them out the the hands of their enemies.

However, though Jesus appeared to be that king and messiah that they were awaiting for God to send them, he didn’t come to bring them quite the type of “deliverance” that they had expected. He wasn’t exactly the kind of king most expected him to be. Unless of course, Jesus actually started a flame that ignited a war that was not recorded in the New Testament, like a lot of original passages that are missing from the Bible. There was the Jewish-Roman War (66-73 CE) that destroyed Jerusalem. But I digress…

Jesus came to bring them the message of salvation rather than deliverance from their enemies. He came to teach them the way to obtain “everlasting life”. This is the kind of salvation that would be “lasting unto the age of the ages” as the expression is literally translated.

But the enemy Jesus came to deliver them from was not Rome, as we see from the history that was left to us. Jesus said that his kingdom wasn’t from this world. The real enemy Jesus came to deliver them from was the god of this world and their own sinful selves — and I might add the bondage to a law that was not written by God, but traditions of men.

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