I believe there are probably many ways to explain how salvation is a life. I have a tried to write out a few of them and they seem to dissolve into abstractions. I guess in order to explain this idea, I would start with my own experience.
So talking about this with crowds of people may being with questions of character followed by the message that we can see salvation as a life in the transformation of character. It is God's kingdom coming into a person's life.
Salvation became a life for me when I realized that if I am not being saved from my sins in this life, why should I expect that I would be saved later? It sounds strange, I imagine, but when I read Romans 5:4 several years ago and realized that from character comes hope, I saw why I had felt so much despair. My character was essentially unchanged. There had been some shuffling around of habits and thoughts, but essentially I saw that I was not much different than I had been ten years before.
The process that God led me through was essential to my understanding that salvation is a life, but the beginning came from this fairly simply idea: "A gospel that does not change my character now is not really good news to me." I see that as another way of communicating that salvation is a life because character will not change without a life change.
I believe that salvation must begin now if it's to being at all. Salvation for a whole life is made up of many little "salvations" or deliverances. I feel that if my character remains static, it should make me wonder whether my salvation is effective instead of questioning the nature of salvation. The changes (deliverances) may be small, but over time they should be noticeable. Desires, feelings and thoughts change as well as facial expressions, habits, and bodily actions. I have had the painful experience of seeing and hearing myself on videos from ten to fifteen years ago. My anger and worry was so apparent!
I guess that the message of salvation is a life comes down to locating salvation in general with the little "salvations" of life. Also, if salvation is the coming of God's kingdom into this world, the first place I would come to realize that his kingdom comes is in my life, in my body in particular, since it is the primary realm I rule. When God's rule breaks in, it would have to be in my body, in my character. If God's rule does not come into and through my body, then I can see why I worried it might not come at all.
Rambling on, I see that the message of the resurrection is the message of transformation. It begins small and invisibly. The rebellions and uprisings in my character against God are quelled one by one. As they are quieted, my very body begins to change in habit, expression, strength, and rest. Resurrection will be the end of it, not because I can foresee such changes in myself, but because it is promised.
Certainly I will not "work" my way to resurrection, but since resurrection is the ultimate transformation of myself, I suspect that salvation presently would be transforming in its nature. With my body as it is currently, I don't anticipate my transformation can go very far, but if salvation has a lot to do with transformation, then my body will certainly feel the effects and react to it. The same power that raised Jesus from the dead is active in the transformation of my life, including my body (Ephesians 1:18-21).
Salvation, then, comes through the body. Christ showed this in his incarnation and resurrection. We cannot be saved without our bodies being part of it in action as well as in effect. We cannot be saved merely spiritually - as unbodied - but always as embodied. Jesus came to show us this very fact. Salvation is found nowhere else because there is no one else who saves the body. Resurrection recognizes and blesses our bodily existence and gives us hope for transformation even now, in these corruptible bodies. Ignoring the body ignores the incarnation and the resurrection and leads to empty religion. Christ brought the body into the Godhead so it might become eternal.
Without this, our bodies would have no destiny other than destruction apart from God. Without our bodies, we do not exist. We are embodied spirits. I do not know how we could exist otherwise. Apparently we can't because Christ's saving action has to do with saving the body as well as the spirit.
Lord, I sense something big here. Lead me and open my eyes to your wonderful plan of salvation that included our bodies. Amen.
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