I was listening to a colleague preach recently and he mentioned how the Bible speaks of salvation in three tenses: past, present, and future. Somewhere along the way I’d heard or read that before, but not for a long time. It got me thinking whether it was really true. It wasn’t difficult to think of several Bible passages to support it.
If we’re Christians, we typically think of salvation only as something that’s happened in the past. Certainly the Bible speaks that way. For example, Eph. 2:8 famously says, “For by grace you have been saved through faith…” We can unpack that in various ways, including from the perspective of Christ’s finished work on the cross or from the perspective of our election, or from the moment the Holy Spirit worked faith in our hearts. All of it refers to salvation in the past tense. In the past, Christians have been saved from the curse of sin.
The Bible also refers to salvation in the present tense. This is less familiar. We could think here of 1 Cor. 1:18, “For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (cf. 1 Cor. 15:2). In the original Greek, “being saved” is indeed in the present tense. But what does it mean? This is referring to our sanctification – to that work of the Holy Spirit by which sin is being driven out of our lives. By this ongoing reality in the present, we are being saved from the power of sin.
Finally, the Bible also refers to salvation as something that lies in the future. Yes, perhaps surprisingly, there’s a sense in which you’re not yet saved, even if you’re a Christian who’s resting and trusting in Christ alone for salvation. There are numerous passages speaking in this way – let’s just take two. In 1 Pet. 1:9, the Holy Spirit speaks of believers in the future obtaining the salvation of their souls. Heb. 1:14 speaks of the angels as those who are sent to serve “those who are to inherit salvation.” This is pointing ahead to the final benefit of Christ, a benefit Christians here have not received: glorification. In our glorification, we will be completely saved from the presence of sin.
Some think grammar is irrelevant and unhelpful. Yet as we’ve seen above, the Bible uses grammatical categories of past, present, and future to refer to the vitally important spiritual truth of our salvation. When you see a Bible passage that speaks of salvation, ask yourself: is this past (from the curse of sin), present (from the power of sin), or future (from the presence of sin)?
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