We’re being saved. Not “we got saved” or “we will be saved,” though both those things are true too. Salvation isn’t a one-time transaction where you sign on the dotted line and you’re done. It’s a process of healing that starts at baptism and continues until you die.
The Orthodox word for salvation is theosis, which means becoming like God. That sounds strange to Protestant ears, but it’s biblical. St. Peter writes that we become “partakers of the divine nature.” St. Athanasius put it bluntly: “God became man so that man might become god.” Not that we become divine beings ourselves, we’re always creatures. But we’re meant to share in God’s life, to be united with Him so completely that His grace transforms everything about us.
Think of it like healing from a disease rather than being acquitted in a courtroom. Sin isn’t just a legal problem where you broke God’s law and need forgiveness. It’s a sickness that corrupted human nature. We’re broken. Death has its hooks in us. Our desires are twisted, our minds are darkened, our wills are in bondage. Christ came to heal all that, not just to pay a fine on our behalf.
When Jesus rose from the dead, He didn’t just prove He was innocent or satisfy divine justice. He destroyed death itself. He took our broken humanity into Himself, healed it, and offers us that healed life through the Church. Salvation means participating in that victory, being gradually transformed from death to life, from corruption to incorruption.
This is why we can’t say “once saved, always saved.” You can’t be a little bit healed and call it good. A diabetic who gets diagnosed and takes insulin once doesn’t say, “Great, I’m cured, I’ll never think about this again.” The medicine has to continue. You can also stop taking it, which is why Scripture warns believers about falling away. Salvation offers no money-back guarantee while you’re still breathing.
But we’re not earning our healing either. Grace does the work. God took the initiative, He became human, died, rose, and poured out the Holy Spirit. We didn’t do any of that. We couldn’t. What we do is cooperate. The Orthodox word is synergy, working together with God. He offers the medicine, but you have to take it. He offers His hand, but you have to reach out and grasp it.
This is where faith and works come together, and it’s not the either-or fight you see between Protestants and Catholics. Faith isn’t just intellectual agreement that Jesus is Lord. It’s trust that expresses itself in love. St. James says faith without works is dead, and he means it. Not because works earn anything, but because real faith changes you. If it doesn’t, it’s not real faith. It’s like saying you trust your doctor but refusing to take the prescription.
The Church and the sacraments are where this healing happens. When we baptize someone, we’re not just symbolizing their decision. We’re drowning the old person and raising a new one. When we commune, we’re not remembering Jesus or feeling close to Him. We’re receiving His actual Body and Blood, the medicine of immortality. Every Sunday at St. Michael’s in Beaumont, people come forward to receive what they can’t produce themselves, union with Christ.
Fr. Thomas Hopko used to say that heaven isn’t a place you go when you die if you’ve been good. Heaven is communion with God, and it starts now. Hell is the same fire of God’s love experienced by someone who’s refused healing, who clutches their sins so tightly that God’s presence burns rather than warms. The process of salvation is learning to let go, to be changed, to become the person God created you to be.
This takes your whole life. Some days you’ll feel like you’re making progress. Other days you’ll wonder if anything’s changed at all. That’s normal. The saints all went through it. What matters is that you keep showing up, keep confessing, keep communing, keep trying. God’s grace is working even when you can’t see it, the way a seed grows underground before it breaks through the soil.
If you’re coming from a Baptist background here in Southeast Texas, this probably sounds foreign. You’re used to altar calls and asking Jesus into your heart. That’s not how we talk, but the reality underneath isn’t as different as it seems. You’re recognizing your need for God and turning to Him. We just don’t think that moment is the end of the story. It’s the beginning.
