Recently I was flying to Boston, got kicked up to first class, and found myself sitting next to one of the producers of that sleazy soft porn video series, “Girls Gone Wild.” Without identifying my religious bent, I listened to him rambling on attributing all human behavior to hormones and testosterone gone wild. While he continued on, I silently was praying that I could leave some influence on him.

I sensed in him no conviction for sins committed. Certainly a message of hell wasn’t going to faze him. So what would be my angle of “Salvation” for this unregenerate. I sort of liked him, his transparency, his “bold” sinning. I live in a world where sinning is much more subtle.

As I read Scripture, I see that “Salvation” is a huge thing, cast in Technicolor garb. It cannot be reduced solely to salvation from sin, or salvation from hell, though these understandings are core to our theology. Thank God that Salvation promises both of these.

But Salvation is much broader, especially in the City, where sin corrupts all facets of life. I’ve found that many people who deny my definitions of sin and hell still can be reached in the reality that the effects of sin are so evident.

For instance, I’ve discovered that that Bible addresses “brokenness” in that amazing story the valley of dead bones in Ezekiel 37, where the brokenness of all areas of life are brought together in the clattering miracle of God’s Spirit working unity. Broken relationships, parent to child, siblings, employer-employee relationships, fractured pasts and disconnected futures, warring with nature and with God. It is the miracle of Salvation that brings brokenness back to completeness again. Later in Ezekiel, the story is about two sticks representing collective brokenness between the tribes. But through the miracle of God, groups become reconciled once again. There is so much in the City that is shattered crying out for wholeness again.

Then there is the Salvation of the “heart of stone” replaced by the “heart of flesh” (Ez 11:19; 36:26), The City is often a place of “sensory overload,” where one’s emotions slowly become brittle lest our hearts burst with the harsh realities of life. After a while, we begin to laugh at the tragic and mourn the trivial. Our emotions get all twisted up. But Salvation rips that false heart out of us and replaces it with the pulsating heart of Jesus. That truly is a component of Salvation!

Then the Bible speaks of “water”: first for quenching thirst and secondly, for cleansing. In the former analogy, David thirsts for God in Psalm 42, and Isaiah invites those that thirst to be satiated in chapter 55. The City throws at its citizens a crazy collage of meanings and purposes in life in crazy contradictions that make no coherent sense at all---a little bit of materialism here, some Buddhist quips there, the American dream here, and New Age spirituality there, and some folk Christianity thrown into the strange mess of meaninglessness. But the soul seeks meaning that can only be found in God Himself. Billy Graham identifies it as the “God-sized hole” in our soul. Only Christianity can give coherence of meaning of life. To the Samaritan woman at the well, Christ was offered as the “living water.”

Then water is also the image of cleansing, first in the Old Testament rituals of purifications and then in the New Testament imagery of baptism. The City reeks of pollution---in the air, in the water, and in the streets. But even more profoundly, there is pollution in the airwaves, on the antennas, right into the soul. Corruption has ensnared our hearts in a disease worse than cancer. Salvation seeks to cleanse us from all sin, both environmental and internal. Salvation pushes us towards purity.

A fifth metaphor particularly appropriate for Salvation is the metaphor of “from sickness to health.” Christ’s physical healings were only a sign of the ultimate healing that he offers to all, the “health” of a holiness that prepares one for heaven. For a nation that is perhaps one of the sickest in the world, by dollars expended, the promise of health, spiritually, physically, morally, is a wonderful goal of Salvation.

So, I see Scripture addressing profoundly modern urban concerns: from brokenness into wholeness, from a heart of stone to a heart of flesh, from pollution to cleansing, from meaninglessness to meaning, from sickness to health.

But it was on another flight, that my flight of fancy took Biblical Salvation even further. Salvation also involves:

6. From Darkness to Light
7. From Ignorance to Knowledge
8. From Bondage to Freedom
9. From Death to Life
10. From Emptiness to Fullness
11. From Hunger to Satisfied
12. From Hate to Love
13. From Sin to Righteousness
14. From Guilt to Forgiven
15. From Tears to Laughter
16. From Conflict to Peace
17. From Mourning to Gladness
18. From Despair to Hope
19. From Ashes to Beauty
20. From Doubt to Faith
21. From Worldliness to Holiness
22. From Legalism to Grace
23. From Rejection to Acceptance
24. From Alienation to Adoption
25. From Weariness to Rest
26. From Aimlessness to Centeredness
27. From Lost to Found
28. From Blind to Now I see
29. From Defeat to Victory
30. From Fear to Confidence
31. From Loneliness to Fellowship
32. From Hell to Heaven
33. From Poverty to Riches
34. From Cynicism to Belief
35. From Old to New
36. From Cursed to Blessed
37. From Getting to Giving
38. From Barrenness to Fertility
39. From Burden to Release
40. From Shame to Acceptance
41. From Superficiality to Depth
42. From Confusion to Simplicity
43. From Hypocrisy to Transparency
44. From Silence to Song
45. From Self to Others
46. From Enmity to Friendship
47. From Weakness to Strength
48. From Timidity to Courage
49. From Wandering to Home
50. From Abandoned to Rescued

For all of these, I find verses, images, and stories in the Bible that echo the message of Salvation. I challenge the readers to expand on this list and to cross-reference applicable verses, sending the results to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it for expanded compilation.

Not everyone feels all or even most of these at any given time. But as we listen carefully, lovingly, prayerfully to the cry of the City, some of these will emerge that allow us entry into the soul of those who hurt. We then can offer the ointment of Salvation where the wounds are exposed.

My airplane companion wore out his rant of hedonism and began to share with me the sickness of his body. He was to be operated on two days hence for multiple diseases and was facing an unknown future. I sensed an opening and was about to reveal myself when he crawled across me to the washroom. There he lingered for a long time and then painfully returned to his seat. At that point I suggested that I switch seats with his son across the aisle. He enthusiastically accepted the offer.

They called for the flight attendants. He was afraid that he had a blot clot in his leg. On landing, the paramedics came on board to attend to him. I’d lost my opportunity to inject the message of Salvation, while the attendant injected him with medication, but I felt that exchanging seats with the son was the preferred gesture. As he departed, I gave him the thumbs up, and assured him I would pray for him. He thanked me warmly.

Salvation is God’s highest agenda and covers all aspects of life. I pray that I don’t reduce it to formulized and limited definitions, thereby losing opportunities to address people at their felt needs.

And who knows, maybe while at it, there are areas in my own life that have not yet been fully “saved?”