SALVATION - SOTERIA

To be set apart as a leader and servant of God Almighty, one must start with what salvation really is. Salvation of grace and mercy came by Jesus Christ. He came into the Roman world of political unrest, terrorism, and wars, which illustrated that the governments of that day had lost the ability to judge justly for its people. [Sounds much like today’s world, doesn’t it?] The lack of confidence in government caused by corruption in the administration plus the hardships of daily living caused despairing humanity to seek for hope in a saviour. From Old Testament prophecies the Jews knew their Messiah would come and deliver them from all these unreliable, worldly conditions. After four hundred years of silence from God, celestial angels announced the glorious news of a Saviour being born in the city of Bethlehem, which was hope for the Jewish people that God once again was dealing with them. Believing they were trapped by the uncertainty of life but seeking love, peace, and security, many of the Jewish priest and leaders were encouraged to believe that it was time for deliverance and a change of government. At the time Jesus was born, the needs of the people were much the same as the needs of people today. Everybody needs the Lord, and today people still look for a Saviour to heal their minds and bodies and give them peace in their hearts in a truly uncertain world of terrorists, immoral and unjust government, and atomic power. The true Saviour of the world, the Light in a dark place, came into a gloomy world that seemed void of hope. For over four hundred years the prophets, God’s spokesmen, had given no Word from God to the Jews, which caused a famine of God’s Word until John the Baptist came preaching and preparing the Way for Christ. Men and Women were longing passionately for someone to bring hope into their lives. People, even today, are still crying for love as they seek to believe in God and to experience fulfillment in knowing Him! The world wants to be persuaded that Jesus is the Man the Bible says He is, placing their confidence and trust in Him to help them with life’s problems and to give them eternal, everlasting life. Salvation comes from knowing Jesus as Lord and Saviour. Salvation is:

SALVATION in the Greek language is: Soter.
Some examples of each form of the word soter are:
Soteria, soterion, soterios, or sozein.


Soter, (root word) (salvation) can mean to deliver out of wrong mental attitudes, even rescue or deliver an idiot.

How many times have you made a wrong decision and later said, “What an idiot I was for making that decision,” but don’t despair. Even now at this point in your life, if you will run to the cross and call on God, He will begin to work things out for you. By the Word you can recognize you have wrong attitudes about some things, about some people, and, perhaps, even about yourself. When you present your wrong mental attitudes to God, in prayer, the Holy Spirit will give you understanding of how to handle your situation through the light of His Word. Then, supernaturally by His power and with your cooperation, He will show you how to change your wrong attitude to a righteous attitude. When God called me back into church, after ten years of misery and heartache in the world, the Holy Spirit prompted me to begin a daily bible reading and prayer time. Even though saved at the young age of twelve, at twenty-eight I was spiritually still a baby. I still had no knowledge of the absolute principles of God’s Word that would give me enduring and sustaining character with peace of mind. I was nervous all the time, extremely self-conscious, and easily intimidated by others. Trying to decide what I “really” believed took hours only to forget almost immediately what it was I believed. One night while I was under the influence of love, the Holy Spirit impressed on my spirit to read “only the book of Ephesians” for a month during my daily Bible meditations. Every time I opened my Bible to read out of Ephesians, supernaturally, the Word was alive as He opened knowledge of Himself and heaven to my spirit. Among other thins, I learned that I was “accepted in the Beloved.” After that month of godly values being instilled into me, no longer did I feel like I was walking “a thin red line” between sanity and insanity. My loving, caring God had begun a good work in me to show me “who I was in Christ,” and what the rewards for serving Him were. No longer did I have to be an absolute idiot (an air head), not knowing what I believed. Then, the Holy Spirit began a process of showing me my humanistic attitudes and how to change them according to the Word of righteousness. Only God can change a soul! My love and appreciation for God is so great, I can’t express it all. I can’t live without Him in my life! What a loving, adoring Father we have to transform us into His image of wisdom, knowledge, mercy, and love!

Soteria (salvation), a word derived from the root Greek word “soter,” can mean physical, emotional, mental and spiritual deliverance, preservation, salvation for national deliverance or personal deliverance.

Upon acceptance and confession of Jesus as Lord, salvation (soteria) means spiritual and eternal deliverance granted immediately by God to those who accept His conditions of repentance, obedience, and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. For this purpose God uses the gospel, the good news, as His saving vehicle or channel of salvation. Bringing peace and harmony to a person’s situation, soteria can also be the present experience of God’s power to deliver from bondage. Soteria or salvation can be summed up as all the blessings of increase bestowed through the Holy Ghost on people “in Christ” to become the family of God.

Soteria (salvation) can denote deliverance from an unhappy situation….

Excerpt from Chapter 2.