Teaching Tuesday | Lesson 8: Salvation - What, Why, When, and How? with John Cueto

Welcome to the August 2025 session of Teaching

Tuesday. Tonight we're doing the first part of

a two -part series on salvation. We touched on

the essentials of salvation during the session

on the gospel, but now we want to do a deep dive

into the who, what, where, why, when, and how

of what Jesus did and does for the people who

follow him. Now, a quick disclaimer. You can

be saved without knowing 98 % of what we're talking

about in this session, but we should never be

happy with understanding the bare minimum about

God. I find that when I go deep on topics like

this, it's like a form of worship. Because I

have a better understanding of everything he

has done and continues to do, I am more grateful

and feel a stronger desire to share him with

others. I also find that examining what other

Christian denominations believe on a topic helps

me test and refine my views. This first session

is going to cover the what, why, when, and how

of salvation, and it's going to be light on disagreements,

only two in their minor. The next session, however,

covers the who and where, and that's when things

get a little bit spicy. But for now, let's get

started. So, I'll have a specific book recommendation

for you in the second session, but tonight I

want to introduce you to a type of book that

is crucial to studying topics like salvation

and death. It's a type of book called a views

book, which presents all or many of the legitimate

Christian interpretations on a topic by having

a proponent of that view explain their position,

argue against the other interpretations, and

then defend their view against the criticisms

from the other contributors. The one up on the

screen, for instance, presents five Christian

interpretations on the fall of man and the doctrine

of original sin. And you'll see a summary of

that information when we get to that part of

the presentation tonight. Combined with reading

the Bible for yourself and referencing the systematic

theology books we've talked about before, these

views books will help you understand the full

spectrum of legitimate Christian perspectives

and make a more informed choice for yourself.

Anytime we explore a topic in detail, we must

start with a clear definition. Otherwise, we

could get halfway through the discussion and

realize we're talking about two different things.

So we'll begin tonight by defining what salvation

is. Ironically, even though salvation is such

a massive topic that it requires two sessions

to explore completely, it can be defined simply

and briefly as the restoration of our intended

relationship with God. But if you're anything

like me, answering the what immediately leads

into a why. Specifically, Why do we need salvation?

And to answer that, we have to ask a few more

questions. Like, what is our intended relationship

with God? What hurt or hurts that relationship?

What are the effects of that damaged relationship

that we are being saved from? The book of Genesis

contains the answers to most of those questions.

We read at the end of Genesis 1 that God looked

over all he had made and he saw that it was very

good. That's Genesis 1, 31 from the New Living

Translation. The situation at this point was

God's ideal. Humans created in God's image and

serving as his children and representatives on

earth, living sin -free in an intimate relationship

with their creator. There was no pain, death,

suffering, or what we would come to know as sin.

Their sole moral directive was to obey God. But

that perfection wouldn't last. It was crucial

to God that humans have free will. He didn't

want fleshy robots programmed to love him. He

wanted free creatures that voluntarily pursued

a relationship with their creator. But true free

will allows for people to make the opposite choice,

which is what Adam and Eve did. This disobedience

removed their state of innocence and made them

morally accountable for their choices. Choices

made counter to the will of God are sin, and

any single sin is enough to break the creator

-creature relationship. Although the Bible doesn't

say so explicitly, many theologians believe that

God's perfect sense of justice would immediately

destroy any imperfect creature in His presence.

So, for our own survival, God pulled himself

back from the world. We call this event the fall.

Now, we come to our first area of disagreement

between Christians, the consequences of the fall,

or in other words, the nature of the problem

that we find ourselves in and need to save from.

There are three possible consequences, and different

Christian denominations assert different selections

and combinations of the three. Perhaps the most

widely agreed upon is the corruption of creation,

including the introduction of death to the world.

The distance created between man and God due

to sin leaves the world in a corrupted state.

Things like disease, natural disasters, and telemarketers

were never part of God's ideal. We see this confirmed

later in the book of Revelation. In chapter 21,

God recreates heaven and earth and puts an end

to death, sorrow, crying, and pain in telemarketers.

The only Christians you'll see denying this aspect

of the fall are the radically theologically progressive

ones who deny that Adam and Eve existed, believe

exclusively in evolution and not at all in creation,

and many argue that salvation and the events

in Revelation are just allegories for human progress.

How much of the Bible can you discard and still

be a Christian? Probably not that much, so I

think that we can accept the corruption of creation

as a legitimate consequence of the fall. Now,

you've probably heard Chris mention sin nature

before. People often bristle at the concept,

finding it offensive that we were born with a

tendency to sin but are still held accountable

for it. I find it helpful to look at it from

a slightly different angle. We are material creatures

with material needs. In God's perfect version

of creation, these needs are not just met but

exceeded and without any competition between

us. In this corrupted creation, many things are

a zero -sum game. If I have a gallon of water

and give you half, now we both have half a gallon

of water. When we each drink our water, It's

gone. If I didn't share, you might die, but then

I'd have enough for tomorrow. From a survival

perspective, I'm incentivized to take the immoral

or sinful option. It's the same with food, land,

shelter, companionship, power, money, and sex.

And we want to survive, so when there's a shortage

of one of these crucial things, most people will

sin to survive. Some of the greatest evils in

history, such as the Nazi extermination machine,

occurred because people were convinced that their

survival was threatened. This constant state

of unmet needs and fears over needs being unmet

in the future makes us rebellious toward God

in every way. For instance, we might say to ourselves,

why hasn't God given me a spouse and a healthy

sex life yet? I bet he's not going to do it,

so I'm going to look at porn and sleep around

and provide my own pleasure. And then the most

controversial of the consequences are called

representational or legal, in which all humans

begin with a guilty verdict against them. Adam

is seen as the representative of humanity, so

his guilty verdict is shared with all humans.

You'll hear this called original sin, original

guilt, imputed sin, or imputed guilt. There's

a lot of different terms for it. Romans 5 is

often cited as the primary inspiration for this

doctrine. Here Paul writes, Adam's one sin brings

condemnation for everyone, but Christ's one act

of righteousness brings a right relationship

with God and new life for everyone. The doctrine

is controversial because it goes beyond what

the Bible says, and God holding someone guilty

for the actions of another violates his characters

expressed elsewhere. Adam's sin leading to a

corrupted creation where we're incentivized to

make immoral choices but are held morally accountable

for those choices seems to explain our current

situation well. But like we learned in our theological

triage session, holding this view doesn't make

somebody an illegitimate Christian. It's simply

a difference of interpretation. One final interesting

discussion is the timing of the fall in God's

plan to save humanity. In other words, did God

know that humanity would fall and devise the

plan to send Jesus to save us before he created

us, or was the plan conceived in response to

Adam and Eve sinning? The traditional Christian

understanding of God's omniscience, or perfect

knowledge, is that because God is outside of

time, he knew the outcome of the universe before

creating it. He knew that if he created humans

with free will, they would disobey him. But because

a freely chosen relationship with him is of crucial

importance to God, he couldn't create us in any

other way. So before the creation of the universe,

he had already devised a plan to send the sun

and demonstrate his perfect sense of love and

forgiveness. The only disagreement to this traditional

view comes from a heresy called open theism.

There are slight variations, but open theists

generally claim that God is limited within time

and doesn't know future events that are the result

of human free will. In other words, he knew it

was a possibility for humans to sin and may have

planned for that possibility, or he may have

been surprised by Adam and Eve's sinning and

came up with a plan to send Jesus in response.

In its extreme forms, open theism makes God fully

subject to human free will and gives humans the

ability to interrupt, change, or even thwart

God's plans. This isn't just heretical, but an

indication of an immature thought process. It's

like when I see one of the kids steal a toy from

another kid, then get offended when I make them

give it back. God is both fully sovereign and

perfectly loving, and we should do the work to

understand that instead of retreating to a comfortable

heresy. So to sum up what we've covered so far,

we know that our relationship with God has been

damaged by sin. It's created distance between

us and God, and not just us, but all of creation.

The world is not what it's meant to be. Some

even believe that we're held legally guilty by

God for Adam and Eve's sin. And if you're sitting

there thinking that fixing all that sounds like

an impossible task, you're right. We can't even

stop sinning on our own, let alone undo all the

damage that sin has caused in our own lives.

It says Paul in Romans 3 .23, Fortunately, for

us, God is good and He desires a relationship

with us so much that He made a way to take all

of the consequences of sin upon Himself. Let's

discuss the when and how of salvation now. We

often think of salvation in terms of a single

event in a person's life. The precise moment

that you heard about Jesus is said, yes. That's

not necessarily wrong, but it is a huge oversimplification,

and it doesn't give God the credit he deserves.

If we really want to understand the full scope

of salvation, we have to look at the entire process

of God working in history, the moment of Jesus'

death, the moment of an individual's salvation,

and what God did in that person's life before

and continues to do after. I like to think of

salvation in terms of two processes and two events,

one of each for all of humanity and one of each

for the individual. all accomplished by God alone

and then freely accepted by each believer. Starting

with God's actions to redeem humanity, we begin

with his work in history. It doesn't do the Old

Testament justice to be summarized so briefly,

but for the purposes of this session, let's summarize

everything from Genesis 4 to the end of Malachi

as God preparing the world and the people for

Jesus. A common question with inherent criticism

is why God waited to send Jesus, why he didn't

immediately redeem the world after the fall.

The answer is that neither the world nor the

people were ready for Jesus. We had a lot of

hard lessons to learn, and the Old Testament

records humanity learning those lessons so that

we would benefit from them in the future. Here

are just a few of the big ones. From the time

of the fall of Noah, God leaves humanity alone,

and the results are horrific. We learn from this

that an existence without God's presence is as

close to hell as one can get on earth. Fast forward

many years past the world -cleansing flood, we

see God call Abraham and found the nation that

would give birth to the Messiah. God's people

would be forced into slavery in Egypt to survive

a famine, but he would save them through Moses

and give them the Ten Commandments and the rest

of Mosaic law. As Paul wrote 1 ,500 years or

so later, God knew that the absolute moral perfection

captured in the Mosaic law was unobtainable by

humans and was meant to inform us of a need for

a direct relationship with God over a set of

rules. God's people would go on to take the promised

land and found the physical nation of Israel,

continuing to learn lessons on the need for a

direct relationship with God through the shortcomings

of the judges and the kings. Now I mentioned

that there is a process and an event, and if

we wanted to point to a single moment in God's

plan to save humanity as the moment of salvation,

it would be Jesus' death on the cross. God had

finished preparing humanity and came down to

earth taking on human flesh. As fully man, Jesus

could be our representative. But as fully God,

he could live a sinless life and take our sins

upon himself. I like to illustrate this with

the kids by writing a bunch of different sins

on pieces of paper and having several of them

hold on to the papers. I then go around with

a trash can, taking the sins and throwing them

away, which explains what Jesus did on the cross

before he died. I then put the trash can into

the kitchen and come back out, which represents

Jesus' resurrection. But the sins stay dead in

the kitchen, just like they did when Jesus came

back to life. Jesus' resurrection not only proved

that he was who he said he was, but showed that

he had the power over life and death. And then

he promised that same eternal life to all who

would follow him. What's truly fascinating is

that Jesus' death and resurrection, when taken

together, offer the solution to every consequence

of the fall. Some of these solutions will happen

far in the future, such as the fixing of creation.

More on that in just a little bit. But some of

these solutions happen immediately when a person

decides to follow Christ. More on that after

we finish talking about God's work in humanity

collectively. Now, Jesus didn't just have disciples

for company. Instead, he picked 12 men, well,

11, and then one replacement, and then Paul,

who would go on to found the church and spread

the Christian faith. The Bible calls the church

the body of Christ because it is meant to continue

the work Christ started empowered by the Holy

Spirit. The church is responsible for sharing

the gospel and making disciples who are going

to share the gospel and make more disciples themselves.

I've heard many atheists criticize God for founding

and using the church. They sneer at God and ask

why, if he's so powerful, he needs humans to

do his legwork. The truth is, he doesn't, any

more than he needed humans to do any of the work

in resurrecting Jesus or any of the other miraculous

events captured in the Old Testament. He could,

if he so chose, beam information on Jesus into

every person's head. But God exists in a tripartite

relationship with himself. There's the Father,

the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Relationships are

fundamental to God and are a benefit and blessing

to us. God founding the church and allowing us

to participate in sharing the gospel is a gift.

It's a blessing. We get to participate in God's

plan to save humanity. That's amazing. And then

finally, at some point in the future, we'll see

the events described in the book of Revelation.

There's plenty more atheist sneering directed

at God over what seems to be an overdue promise,

but it again reveals a tragic misunderstanding

of God's character. Paul writes in Romans 11

.25 that God is waiting on the fullness of the

Gentiles. What most scholars understand is God

waiting until every possible soul has the opportunity

to accept Christ. Peter is even more explicit,

writing in 2 Peter 3 .9, The Lord is not slow

in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness.

Instead, he is patient with you. not wanting

anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.

When this time arrives, there will be a final

battle between good and evil, with evil being

defeated and destroyed. Sin will be eradicated

and creation will be reborn. This is the future

solution to one of the false consequences that

I mentioned a few moments ago. Creation can't

be reborn while sin exists, for the same reason

that God had to pull back from creation when

sin entered the world. But the paradise waiting

for us is so far beyond what any of us can imagine.

while we're still trapped in these sinful bodies

and living in a fallen world. Now, if you've

been a Christian for any length of time, the

stuff we just talked about probably isn't brand

new to you. But I mentioned at the beginning

that I consider this type of deep study to be

a form of worship. I find that as I learn more

about God, I am more grateful, and I want to

become closer to Him. And if anything will have

that effect on a Christian, learning how God

applies the work that He did to save humanity

to the individual human has to be it. There may

be a lot of new stuff here. These are things

that we just can't fit into a normal church service

because they're super deep and they can really

throw people off if we don't spend the appropriate

amount of time on them. Now, one disclaimer on

this section before I start. I mentioned there

would be two disagreements between Christians

covered tonight. The first was over the concept

of original sin or us being born with a guilty

verdict applied to us because of Adam. The second

concerns the order of the steps that we're about

to look at. I'm going to present them in the

traditional historical Christian view that most

Christians hold to, but keep in mind that when

I discuss regeneration, that there's a sizable

minority of Christians who believe that it comes

first in the process. I'll explain why in our

next session on who gets saved, because those

two ideas are linked together. So traditionally

speaking, the first step in an individual's salvation

is called calling. This is when God reaches out

to a person and provides them with the information

on the gospel. Most of the time, God uses the

church to do this, as Paul writes in Romans 10,

14 -15. He says, But God doesn't hold the circumstances

of someone's birth against them. There have been

thousands of testimonies from Muslims who prayed

to Allah that he would reveal the truth, and

they received a vision telling them about Jesus.

We hear similar stories from Hindus and Buddhists

and even some Jews, but what we don't hear is

Christians getting visions for any of those other

religions, other than some very few, very fringe

cases. One crucial thing about calling is that

God continues to place primary importance on

free will. There are very few people who have

encounters with God, like Abraham, Moses, or

Paul, who experience things so dramatic that

it would be impossible for them not to believe.

Often God works for years in a person's life,

allowing them to learn lessons while protecting

them from the worst consequences, preparing them

to accept the truth of Christ freely without

coercion. That's how it was for me. I made a

lot of huge mistakes, and I was incredibly arrogant

and I needed to be humbled. But when I was finally

ready to hear and believe, God made it happen.

And that brings us to the single event part of

this process, the moment that a person goes from

unbeliever to believer. Conversion is repentance

followed by faith. When I said that I was arrogant

and needed to be humbled before accepting Christ,

it's because I was not capable of repentance

prior to that point. If someone had told me I

was living my life wrong, I would have been angry

or offended and refused to listen. But once I

was humbled, hearing about Jesus' death on the

cross filled me with sorrow. I realized that

my actions, and collectively all of our actions,

are what put him on the cross. But he went there

willingly because he loves us. At that moment,

I repented. I turned away from my old lifestyle

and my old beliefs, and I gained faith by trusting

in Christ's work on the cross. But let's be careful

here that we don't take credit for the step of

conversion. Salvation is entirely God's work,

and the most we do is say yes to accepting the

results of His gift. And again, this is the traditional

majority Christian view. We'll look at how these

steps work in another order next time. Now, at

that moment, a person is saved. But to use a

car analogy, there's a lot going on under the

hood when you turn the key. In fact, four things

happen simultaneously, and then another process

starts that runs for the rest of your life. You

see, at the moment of your conversion, the Holy

Spirit comes to live inside you. It's called

the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and he's about

to get busy. The first of his tasks is called

regeneration, and it's God's solution to the

problem of sin nature. When someone speaks of

being born again, they're speaking of regeneration.

As was Jesus when he told Nicodemus, no one can

see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.

It is a spiritual rebirth of a person as a child

of God instead of a slave to the flesh, what

Erickson calls a transformation of inclinations

and impulses in his systematic theology book.

This spiritual rebirth allows us to understand

elements of the faith that were previously hidden

or incomprehensible. Due to the Holy Spirit's

permanent presence in our hearts, our lives become

oriented toward God, and we are no longer burdened

with the irresistible urge to disobey Him. The

Holy Spirit's second task is called justification,

and the just part of the word is in the same

sense as justice, like the criminal justice system.

When we sin, we are violating God's laws. When

we break laws created by the government, we are

punished with varying degrees of severity. Being

regenerated doesn't erase our rap sheet, and

since God is perfectly just, we are still deserving

of punishment. It's at this point that the Holy

Spirit applies Jesus' work on the cross to us.

Our guilt is now legally transferred to Jesus,

who paid the price for those sins 2 ,000 years

ago. God's perfect sense of justice no longer

demands we be punished. Atheists will often criticize

this as unfair to Jesus, but they fail to understand

his immense love for us. He wasn't forced to

the cross. He went there willingly and gladly,

even though the experience was horrendous. Paul

describes the Holy Spirit's third task, called

union with Christ, in almost every one of his

letters, writing that we are in Christ, and Christ

is in us. This unity is the restoration of how

our existence was meant to be, a perfect relationship

with and complete reliance on God, where we are

filled and refreshed by his continuous presence.

When Jesus says, I am the vine, you are the branches.

If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear

much fruit. Apart from me you can do nothing.

He is referring to this renewed relationship.

Consider how Peter, an uneducated fisherman,

was able to give the first public Christian sermon

to great effect. This wasn't a work of man, but

a spiritual and intellectual enrichment made

possible by unity with Christ. In a sense, we

also share in some of Christ's experiences. Although

none of us will likely ever be crucified, we

are called to carry our crosses daily by denying

our old desires. Now, for those who agree with

the somewhat controversial idea we discussed

earlier of being born with Adam's guilt applied

to us, union with Christ is seen as the solution

to that problem. When God looks at us, He doesn't

just see us anymore. Instead, He sees a combination

of us and His Son. With our sins erased, He now

gives us credit for Jesus' sinless life, giving

us blessings that we could never earn on our

own. The final of the Holy Spirit's immediate

tasks involves the restoration of our intended

relationship with God the Father, our adoption

as His children. In Paul's letter to the Ephesians,

he writes that the Father predestined us for

adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ in accordance

with His pleasure and will. It comes with a change

of heart and understanding that when God gives

us laws like the Ten Commandments, it's out of

care and concern and not a desire to control.

It also makes us co -heirs with Jesus and all

of the Father's promises. including the bodily

resurrection of believers after the final battle

between good and evil. To me, it's also a profound

change in our conception and perception of the

Father. It's easy to imagine Jesus since he had

a human body. It's easy to feel the Holy Spirit's

presence in our hearts. But the Father has no

human body, and his immense power was seen as

terrifying to the people of the Old Testament.

We are now capable of seeing him as the loving

Father he always was, and that is an incredible

gift. Although regeneration sets us on a new

path spiritually, it's only the beginning of

a task the Holy Spirit will continue for the

rest of a believer's life, making a person more

like Christ. This is called sanctification. These

changes will include our attitudes, actions,

reactions, and desire to spend time in prayer,

Bible study, and contemplation. We may come to

love things we previously hated, like volunteering

with children. We may come to hate things that

we love, like pornography, partying, and drug

use. At the same time, God is generous and understands

that we still live in a sinful world with physical

bodies that have unmet needs. Sanctification

speeds up and slows down depending on our circumstances,

attitude, and cooperation with the Holy Spirit,

but God's grace is never removed. For instance,

God is not going to be upset that a single mother

of three young children isn't spending enough

time reading her Bible, but He will want her

to be consistent in her prayer life and in modeling

God's love to her children. At the same time,

when circumstances allow for it, he will expect

her to spend more time reading the Bible and

working on her relationship with him. Sanctification

is a wonderful thing, but it can be a source

of stress for people when they find themselves

backsliding or in tough situations like the mother

in my example. Perhaps a person was alcohol -free

for 10 years and got their life back on track,

but relapsed due to the death of a parent or

spouse. A person in this situation may worry

that they were never saved and they run away

from the faith in response. If you think of sanctification

like a stock chart, there will be steep and shallow

upward slopes and steep and shallow downward

slopes, maybe even some flat lines. But the trend

over the course of a person's life should be

upward. If a person who believes they are saved

is on a constant downward slope, that's an occasion

to examine your salvation. Just like God's saving

work for humanity concludes after the events

in the book of Revelation, so too does the individual

process of salvation. This conclusion is called

glorification, the final moral and spiritual

perfection of the believer that began at regeneration

and continued through sanctification. There's

debate over whether this occurs when an individual

dies and goes to be with God or only after the

final battle and rebirth of creation, but it's

a promise concerning the eternal life that believers

will experience. Moral perfection is made possible

through the defeat of evil, removal of temptation,

and being in the immediate presence of God. Paul

and John both describe increased knowledge and

understanding made available to the glorified

believer, and both, coming from John and Revelation,

promise glorified bodies that will never age,

die, get injured, or get sick. We will be what

God desired and meant for us to be, living in

perfect fellowship with our Creator. I hope that

this deep dive into salvation has been beneficial

for you. If you're anything like me, when I first

studied salvation in seminary, God's saving work

in history was familiar, but salvation applied

to the individual was new and captivating. I

found myself overwhelmed by how much Jesus did

and continues to do for us. It grew my faith

in an incredible way, and I hope it'll have the

same effect for you. Next month, we'll tackle

the who and where of salvation. Unlike the two

minor disagreements covered in this session,

there's been a great deal of conflict in church

history over who God saves or makes salvation

available to. I'll try to give you all the legitimate

Christian perspectives and the reasoning behind

them, and then we'll look at a bunch of common

questions people have about salvation, such as

having certainty that a person is saved, whether

a person can lose salvation, and what God does

about special situations like infant death or

people who never hear about Jesus. I've put five

questions here on the screen that I'd like you

to think about. I encourage you to not just think

about these, but pray over these and seek out

the answers in the Bible. For the people listening

to the audio version, here are those five questions.

First, can everyone choose to accept Jesus? Second,

what about people who never hear the gospel?

Third, what about babies, children, and the mentally

or physically disabled that can't understand

the gospel? Fourth, can you lose salvation? And

fifth, do you get a second chance after death?

Thank you for your time. Have a wonderful night

and a blessed rest of the month. I believe that

you are working now to pour it out. Oh, pour

it out.