Have You Been Saved?

It has been said that there are at least six different meanings for the use of saved and salvation among Latter-day Saints. While this is true, it is not scripturally accurate. This blog post will focus on the scriptural use of the words save, saved, saveth, and saving in understanding salvation. Future blog posts may study the use of other words such as salvation, kingdom of God, eternal life and so forth.

Scripturally, there are three uses of the words save, saved, saveth, or saving. One is in reference to salvation, another is in reference to different kinds of temporal or physical saving, and the last is a different use of the words save and saving meaning except. This last meaning is very easy to decipher.

The total number of instances of the words save, saved, saveth, and saving in all scripture are 740 (in 708 verses). Of these, 288 instances (in 279 verses) use the word to mean 'except.' The remaining 452 instances (in 436 verses) refer to either eternal salvation or differing types of mortal or temporal saving. Outside of the Old Testament it is fairly easy to decipher the difference between the two. However, having attempted to do so in all cases, I count 261 instances (in 251 verses) referring to eternal salvation and the remaining 191 instances (in 185 verses) refer to other forms of saving. I could split some of the remaining 452 instances into a third category, an ambiguous category where it is not clear which of the other two is being referred to, but as of now I have not chosen to do so.

One way to help understand salvation is the use of these words in conjunction with prepositions. Prepositions that I found in relation to these words in order of their frequency were: in, by, through, from, with, at, according to, to, of, and after. Other verses answer various questions such as: who saves, who is saved, what must be done to be saved, what must be done to save, what is saved, what saves, how many are saved, saved when, saved how, what has the purpose of saving, and there may well be others. In this blog post I will focus on the 80 verses that have prepositions in conjunction with the words save, saved, saveth, and saving.

There are 29 verses that use the preposition 'in' connected to being saved. The majority of them (16) refer to being saved in the kingdom of God either directly (11) or with similar names (5) such as the everlasting kingdom of the Lamb, his [the Father’s] kingdom, the kingdom of my Father, the celestial kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of heaven. Three others refer to being saved in a time - that day, the day of the Lord Jesus and mine own due time. Three refer to being saved in Christ the Lord. One refers to being saved in the grace of God. One refers to women being saved in childbearing. The remaining five refer to the state of those who cannot be saved, in ignorance and in sin.

There are 16 verses that use the preposition 'by' connected to being saved. There is not much consistency with the use of this preposition. There are three that state that we are saved by grace and two that state that we are saved by fire. There are three that refer to some aspect of the gospel. One of these states that we are saved by the gospel, another by obedience to the principles of the gospel and the last by obedience to the laws and ordinances of the gospel. The remaining eight are all different stating that we are saved by the Lord, His life, hope, the foolishness of preaching, by all means, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost (baptism), the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and faith in His name.

There are 11 verses that use the preposition 'through' connected to being saved. There are six that refer to being saved through Christ, His atonement, or His atoning blood. There are two that refer to being saved through grace. The last three refer to being saved through faith, repentance, and the redemption of God.

There are 9 verses that use the preposition 'from' connected to being saved. There are three groupings for these. The first is being saved from sin, sins and uncleannesses. The second is being saved from death, hell and everlasting destruction. The last is being saved from this untoward generation and from the corruption of the world.

There are 5 verses that use the preposition 'with' connected to being saved. Two verses mention being saved with the right hand of God, two mention being saved with an everlasting salvation, and the last refers to being saved with fear.

There are 5 verses that use the preposition 'at' connected to being saved. All five are consistent in that they refer to a specific time. Four state 'at the last day' and the last states 'at that great and last day.'

There are 5 verses that use the other prepositions, according to(2), to(1), of(1), and after(1) connected to being saved. This is how they go: according to His own purpose and grace, according to His mercy, save them to the uttermost, saving of the soul, and saved after all we can do.

I find it interesting that much of the christian world puts so much emphasis on being saved by grace when there are only seven verses, out of the 80 listed above, stating that being saved has anything to do with grace and only four of those are actually in the bible. As a side note, I only found two biblical verses that refer to grace related to the term eternal life and one that refer to grace related to the term salvation. That makes a total of 7 New Testament verses connecting grace to the subject of salvation. That makes about 8% of instructive verses about grace (87 in the New Testament) that have to do with the topic of salvation and about 3% of verses on the topic of salvation (216 in the New Testament) that have to do with grace.

This is not to say that the subject of grace is not important or essential to salvation, it is, but it is saying that if you restrict your understanding of salvation to the New Testament and then further restrict it to the 7 verses that connect grace to salvation your understanding of salvation will be severely limited.

I intend to continue researching the topic of salvation in the scriptures as well as other related topics and presenting them, but time will tell how fast I can do this. Only reporting on 80 out of the 436 verses isn't enough to fully understand the topic as well as those not in the 436 mentioned above which use different words to understand the same topic.

Going back to where I started, it has been said that there are at least six different meanings for the use of saved and salvation among Latter-day Saints. While this is true, it is not scripturally accurate. I will present as my opinion that scripturally, there are only two correct uses of the idea of being saved and it is referring to being saved from the first death with other mortal conditions and being saved from the second death with its associated conditions. The 80 verses presented in this blog post support this opinion.

Salvation, being saved in the kingdom of God, to stand or dwell on the right hand of God or the Father, and eternal life are all synonymous terms scripturally and equate to being saved from the second death in the kingdom of God into one of His three glories and their respective degrees. Exaltation, celestial glory, a fulness of the Father, or a fulness of the glory of the Father are not scripturally equal to the words in the previous sentence.