Easter Sunday- How does Jesus save us?

1 Corinthians 15: 1-11 ; John 20: 1-18

During Holy Week we focus on Christ’s journey to the cross, and then on Easter morning we celebrate his resurrection. It is a profound thing to take time to meditate on the events that lead up to his death and resurrection- The Triumphal Entry, the betrayal, Jesus washing the disciples’ feet, the gift of the Lord’s Supper, the agonizing trial, torture, and crucifixion. We follow as his body is lovingly prepared for burial and placed in the tomb, and then we wait… and on Easter morning we celebrate the shocking and earth shattering reality that Christ has risen from the dead.

One of the obvious themes for Holy Week and Easter is salvation. Jesus has done something for us that we could not do for ourselves. He has saved us. So, this morning I want to look at what we mean when we talk about Jesus saving us.

Metropolitan Kallistos Ware was a monk, bishop, and theologian who just died in 2022. And he describes the work of Christ for our salvation in six ways.[1] The work of Salvation is described in Scripture in a number of ways. This is a bit like a diamond. There are many facets that reflect the light as we turn the stone between our fingers. These are six of those facets which we see in Scripture. And there are likely more that we could include as we explore this mystery.

Before we look at these, Kallistos Ware wants us to be mindful of 4 guidelines. 

First, we and the world are the ones who need to be changed and transformed, not God. 

 Second, we should beware of ways of thinking that separate Jesus from the Father, or that set them against one another. They are one, as the Trinitarian God. 

 Third, the cross should be thought of as an expression of Jesus’ life- it makes sense with the rest of his life as an integrated whole. 

 And fourth, the work of Christ to save us makes an actual difference in the world, not just in our subjective feelings.

The first of our six ways of understanding salvation is Christ as teacher. Jesus reveals truth and exposes ignorance. John 1:9 says, 

“The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.”

 Christ saves us by teaching us the truth- the truth about God, about us, about the world, and about how to live. … This way of understanding Christ’s work is limited and can’t be the whole picture. It is a very important part of the picture, but this image can’t stand on its own as the whole of salvation.

The second way of understanding salvation is Christ as ransom. This uses the metaphor of being enslaved, or imprisoned, and Christ has worked to set us free. Mark 10:45 says, 

“the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”

 And Galatians 5:1 says, 

“For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.”

 The price to set us free was heavy- It cost the death of Jesus on the cross.

Kallistos Ware warns us, however, to be wary about identifying who the ransom is paid to. Though, many of the Church Fathers thought that the ransom was paid to Satan, and thought that humanity (by their own sin) had submitted themselves to slavery and imprisonment in that dark kingdom. … But Kallistos Ware encourages us not to focus on who the ransom is paid to, rather, we should think about Christ’s action to free us from bondage.

The third way of understanding salvation is Christ as sacrifice. Christ’s death on the cross points to the Old Testament sacrifices, and fulfills them. … We can look at the Exodus story, where God’s people are protected from the death of the firstborn through the sacrifice of the Paschal Lamb, whose blood was used to mark their doors (Ex 12). Paul, in 1 Corinthians 5:7 says, 

“For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed”,

 and in the Gospel according to John we hear John the Baptist point to Jesus saying, 

“Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!”

 Jesus is like this Passover Lamb, whose blood protected the people from death. Likewise, his blood saves us from eternal death.

We can also look to the feast of Yom Kippur (The Day of Atonement), where one goat took the sins of the people into the wilderness, which was thought to be the dwelling place of demons. And another goat was sacrificed, and the blood was used to cleanse the sanctuary and atone for the sins of the people (Lev 16). Thinking about this, John’s letter says, 

“[Jesus] is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.”

 When Jesus instituted the Eucharist, he took the cup of wine and said, 

“this is my blood of the new covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (Mat 26:28).

Sacrifice is a mysterious thing, and we could spend a lot of time talking about this. Sometimes it is understood in terms of substitution (that he died on behalf of us, even instead of us), and satisfaction (his death addresses the injustice of our sin, especially in the way God’s honour is mocked by our sin), but those aren’t necessarily the primary ways that sacrifice was understood in the Bible. We don’t have the time here to go through how sacrifice worked in the Bible, but it is enough to say that sacrifice was one of the ways that the church understood the saving actions of Christ. In love, profound love, Christ offered himself for the healing of the sin of the world- and by his blood, to rescue us from everlasting death.

The fourth way of understanding salvation is Christ as Victor. Christ is in a cosmic battle with the forces of evil. His is fighting to rescue us from the forces of Sin, death, and the Devil. This is good versus evil, and light versus darkness. In Colossians 2:15 we read, 

“And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.”

 In John’s first letter we read, 

“The Son of God was revealed for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil” (1 Jn 3:8).

 In the Eastern Orthodox Church they have a beautiful song that repeats the line, 

“Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death.”

 Through suffering love, Christ battles the forces of evil. This isn’t just about the cross. This is about his whole life, and it culminates in his death on the cross, and he comes out the other side victorious in resurrection. Jesus, in his love without limits, is triumphant over the ways of evil.

The fifth way of understanding salvation is Christ as Example. Jesus is the supreme example of love in action. When we see the depth of his love for us, love that has no limits, it draws us in. His love is like a spiritual magnet that draws us to him. In the Gospel according to John, Jesus says of his cross 

“And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself” (Jn 12:32).

 His love is a power that changes things in a real way. Even a human parent’s love for their child will dramatically change the life of their child, compared to if love is not present for that child. If that is true for a human parent, then how much more dramatic and powerful is the love of God poured out in Christ for us. His love changes us. His love changes the world.

And finally, the sixth way of understanding salvation is as Exchange. Just as we exchange presents on Christmas, so the life of Christ can be understood as a kind of exchange. In 2 Corinthians 8:9 Paul says, 

“For you know the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich.”

 He received the poverty of our broken humanity, our weakness, our suffering, and in exchange he offered us divine grace. In Peter’s second letter we read, 

“Thus he has given us, through these things, his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of lust, and may become participants in the divine nature.”

 In exchange, he has offered to us the possibility of participation in the divine nature. St. Irenaeus said, 

“in his unbounded love he became what we are so as to make us what he is.”

 St. Athanasius said, 

“he became man that we might become god”.

 Or, it can be translated to say, 

“He was humanized that we might be deified.”

 Salvation is about the transformation of our whole person. It’s not just about a change in our status before God. It is about our transformation into who God has always meant us to be. Gregory the theologian said that 

“the unassumed is unhealed”.

 Christ assumed the fullness of human nature to himself, so that he might heal and transform us. There is more that could be said, but I think that Bishop Kallistos Ware has given us a wonderful vision of the images of salvation that we find in the Bible. And we don’t have to pick one of them, in fact, we shouldn’t. These all come to us as ways of understanding a deep and profound mystery. In Christ, God loved you so much that He went to incredible lengths to save you. He desires to see you healed in deep and profound ways that you can’t imagine. Christ has risen from the dead, and he offers you the benefits of what he has done, because he did it for you. AMEN


[1] From a lecture given by Metropolitan Kallistos Ware (Timothy Ware), in a lecture series called “The Way”. Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies, Cambridge, UK