The Confidence of Our Salvation
1 Thessalonians 5:8 says,
But let us who live in the light be clearheaded, protected by the armor of faith and love, and wearing as our helmet the confidence of our salvation.
On Easter Sunday God showed me a lot of things, and a lot of them had to do with my not fully trusting Him. During my pastor’s sermon, 1 Thessalonians 5:8 came up in passing, but the Holy Spirit highlighted to me “the confidence of our salvation.”
It dawned on me for the first time that my idea of salvation was inaccurately limited. I tended to think of salvation as something you received, like a gift, made possible by the event of Jesus dying on the cross and rising again later. This is true, but it’s not all salvation is.
Dictionary.com defines salvation as:
1. the act of saving or protecting from harm, risk, loss, destruction, etc.
2. the state of being saved or protected from harm, risk, etc.
3. a source, cause, or means of being saved or protected from harm, risk, etc.
4. Theology. deliverance from the power and penalty of sin; redemption.
They list four definitions but only the last one has to do with sin.
Salvation ultimately has to do with being rescued and protected.
My limiting idea of salvation in only the theological sense had caused me to inadvertently associate salvation with the past. When I read verses like 1 Thessalonians 5:8 and saw things like “the confidence of our salvation,” I thought, “Yeah, I believe in Jesus; I know I’m ‘saved.’ ”
But today I realized that God has given us so much more in salvation.
“The confidence of our salvation” is the confidence that no matter what happens - including in the future - Jesus is committed to stepping in to both protect and rescue us.
It might not always look like we expect - but we can be confident that we aren’t invisible to God and that He will look out for us.