What is the difference between salvation and redemption

Salvation and redemption are beautiful gifts that we are all very blessed to receive. How did you experience salvation and redemption in your life?

Did you notice any changes in your life since becoming redeemed and saved? Jewishly, this statement is a total misunderstanding of the contrast between salvation and redemption. The Messiah is the Redeemer, not the Saviour. Buddha was a Saviour, as were many others.. Saving, on different levels, is universal. Redeeming is new, and unique, to Judaism, but sadly it did not spread to Christianity.

Your problem is the juridical — and Satanic — doctrine of Atonement — also a misunderstanding of the Jewish root. I was punished by my father for believing in Jesus and made to feel guilty of betraying my Jewish background, but my comfort in life I am 68 has always come from Christian thoughts and actions. I suffered guilt and mental distress for years for resenting what my alcoholic parents both did to myself and my siblings and only found peace when I prayed and experienced true forgiveness towards them.

I have concluded that I have always followed my Christian beliefs and have always been a Catholic at heart. The people I have loved and trusted the most in my life have been Christian.

I have read extensively about both Judaism and Christianity and I do not have a problem embracing both. I am not certain this makes me a Catholic but I know I am a Christian. I was informally baptized by a friend. Do I need to be baptized by a minister or priest? Please log in again. The login page will open in a new tab.

After logging in you can close it and return to this page. What is the Difference Between Salvation and Redemption? What Redemption Means in the Catholic Faith. So, for the sake of a spoiler-free post, I will tell you their stories but not who they are. Get to the point , you say. W hat do these two characters want? One of them is seeking salvation, while the other is seeking redemption. I had to stop and think about this after I wrote it.

More often than not, they are used synonymously, especially when referring to the Christian faith. But no… they are not really synonyms. Saving someone implies protecting them.

From danger, perhaps. From death, even. Saving implies rescuing. But nothing more. Redeeming someone, on the other hand, is more than just rescuing someone. Redemption involves a price. If you redeem something, you are buying it back. If you redeem something, it is yours. But it always comes at a price.

Jesus, through his life, death, and resurrection, gave us both salvation and redemption. He saved us from death — by taking sin upon himself — and serving the punishment for that sin: death.

And because he paid that price for us, he redeemed us from sin. He bought us back to be his own. And now, if we believe in him, we not only are saved from death, but we belong to him.

We are his children. In the cases of Character A and Character B, one of them is seeking redemption, but the other is seeking salvation. This too is easy to see. Character A grew up in a dysfunctional family. As a child and teen he was abused — both physically and emotionally — by his parents. He was bullied by other children. I tried to stop him, but he would not let me. Again we stared at each other in silence, no words adequate to this communication.

And in the midst of my horror watching his beautiful drawing turn to black ashes on the table, his deed got to my heart. I understood the meaning. I took courage, as his action intended.

Before redeeming occurs, the human heart is defunct. After redeeming is accomplished, the heart is free at last to do its action, to take on its job, to fulfil its mission, in and for the world. Yes, all that is good, very good; yet, it is not the fire of love that only the heart can become the furnace for forging. This speaks of the redeemer feeling a closeness, a brotherly or sisterly love, for the redeemed ones. All part of a clan, a tribe, a common blood family.

Job, who was not a Jew and hence not part of the First Covenant, begins his story as a good man, living the good life. He is saved, naturally. It is only when the Daemonic God allows Satan to lay his garden to waste that Job breaks through to the mystery of redeeming. The promise of God to humanity in the covenantal binding seems, then, more in the foreknowing of the need for Redemption.

This is really the calling of the redeemer to be a warrior, and to take the fight to the evil one. Yahweh will not stand idly by as evil ravages the human venture. The Messiah brings a Sword of truth, and without it, the Cross of sacrifice loses its power and wisdom. The truth and sacrifice of love has a formidable enemy.

We are in a real fight to the finish. Stressing the Cross as a non-retaliation to evil, so as to avoid the Sword, is false to the paradox. Stressing the Sword as a crusading zealotry against evil, so as to avoid the Cross, is false to the paradox.

It is not for the faint hearted, nor for the temperamentally pacific. He meets it head on, in heart to heart combat. However, this redeeming of us is going to be costly for the one doing it. The sacrifice of the redeemer becomes the ransom, the key, that unlocks those needing redeeming from their jail. From this comes atoning for sins, seeking to make things better after they have gone wrong.

The injury in the fabric of human inter-relations is being addressed, and something is being done about it, to repair the rent. This is the rationale of the old truth, if one is wronged, then everyone is wronged. We are not discrete moral units.

What we do that is destructive, and fail to do that is creative, has a wide effect, because we are bound together in a complex network of relationships..

Making reparation, on an individual scale, might work perfectly well, since perhaps, by a sacrificial action, I can give you something of mine that makes up for what I took away from you by my unrighteous action. In this way, sacrifice tries to make amends for departures from and failures of righteousness.

But, to atone gets harder and harder, over time, as more and more people are affected, as human affairs get ever more complexly inter-connected. In the end, everyone ends up a debtor to others, for which of us has not done wrong and harmed other people, thereby harming the life we all share in a community?

Indeed, everyone ends up in debt, and unable to pay, unable by any sacrifice of their own to repair things. Because of this deed of atoning redemption, we become indebted to the Messiah for ending the power of the mutual debt we are all in to one another to poison all human inter-action. As we are forgiven, so we are asked to forgive. If God does not keep score, and can forgive, as the gateway into a redeemed situation for all parties to it, then neither should we be keeping score.

This atoning is not understood by many people, because we are so judgemental, so moralistic, so quick to excuse ourself and blame someone else.. This does not mean that the evil which loves darkness, because it fears exposure in and rebuke by the light, can be allowed to go on hiding in darkness [John, 3, ].

Truth must break in on spiritual evil, especially when it uses a mask of respectability, or even uprightness, to conceal its works. A third person, outside the oppressive conjunction of the two wherein one is jailer and the other is jailed, appears, and this person is able to effect the release of the latter from the former. There is, then, [a] those needing redeeming; [b] the action that redeems them; [c] the agent who performs the action; [d] the ransom the agent must pay.

Any careful examination of these elements will show that redeeming is, as an activity, very different from the activity of saving. This has a further meaning, which seems to support the claim that the covenant between God and the Jews is mainly, if not exclusively, established in respect of Redemption.

For, God vows himself, or promises to the Jews, that he will redeem them, when they come to desperately need it. God has an obligation toward Israel [Psalms, 25, 22] and hence a claim upon Israel [Deuteronomy, 15, 15]. Fear not: for I have redeemed you, I have called you by your name; you are mine. The redeeming is undertaken by the redeemer because the redeemed are his blood kin, or he regards them as like near relatives. They are dear to him, so he will pay dearly to get them released from what is vitiating them.

Redeeming is paradoxical. It is given for the sake of those who cannot help themselves one jot, nor even respond to the Gift of Salvation when offered to them. In this way, it can be said the covenantal obligation works both ways, and does not remove freedom, and choice, on the part of humanity.

In fact, Redemption does not just recover the primal Image of God in us, rather, it creates newly the beginning of the Likeness to God that, only as the redeemed, we will become. The paradox is, Redemption takes on a deeper adversary of humanity, yet by coming through this to the far shore, Redemption brings humanity into the fiery Holiness of God.

Redeeming locks horns with the implacable adversary of the human heart, the very spirit of evil, the devil who is Prince of This World. This is not some vague negativity floating in the atmosphere. For, God created the human heart as the throne-chariot of his own heart, deep to deep, abyss to abyss, fire to fire.

This final battle for the human heart does not happen in saving, but it is the key, the core theme, in redeeming. It is the mystery withheld until the 4 Slave Songs of Isaiah. Anyone who has the chutzpah to walk the road of the Messiah in this wicked world, in order to take it back from its phoney leader, will come under special attack by the Evil One. The perilous journey, and savage fight, crucial to redeeming puts God, the devil, the human heart, in an extreme situation.

The pressure is immense, the forces energised electric. He knows that, and makes horrendous last efforts. The mystery of Redemption works by Reversal. This surprises and disappoints humanity, yet the devil knows how dangerously powerful in the deeps it really is. He has not played his last card. It is all still hanging by a thread. Hasidic tradition says that regardless of the situation, time or place, it is incumbent on the Jew to see himself and the entire world in the balance, and that he can tip the scales through one single action, word, or thought.

None the less, it remains true that one person can tip the scales of worth for himself and the entire world. The urgency to act now, on the edge of debacle, arises from following God in the way of redeeming. The redemptive power of God is terrible, holy, angry, for the sake of humanity, and set against the evil that seeks to hold in chains the human heart forever, until it gives way and gives in, and ceases.

This is not a game. The devil is playing for high stakes, and so is God. Such will be the Messianic Age. Thus, the God who redeems is a Fighter; he fights the human heart, to set it on its feet and to deepen it, and he breaks and remakes this heart as his king in the world and fighter for the world, against the devil.

He who fights God becomes worthy in heart to fight the heartless way of evil in the world. Abraham lived that trust existentially. It would seem that, if Moses is the primary exemplary instrument of Salvation, then Jacob is the primary exemplary instrument of Redemption. Nor does it rule out an element of the redemptive in the story of Moses. The mystery remains to be uncovered by the strivings and tumults of Israel down the ages.

Abraham is faith as the leap of passion; but Jacob is where passion stakes itself to the ground. Yahweh has redeemed his servant Jacob. Fear not, for I have redeemed you.. Though the story of Jacob is the earliest mention of Redemption, the story of Job is older, at least as a written document.

The Left Hander, as sports people know, for example in tennis or in boxing, is harder to beat, catches you out, and also is more surprising, harder to anticipate.. The whole point of this story is that the Left-Handed God has built the suffering of the Daemonic into existence, because only the wrestlings it throws the heart into will, at the end, allow God to redeem it.

The paradox is, only the God of the storm and lightning and the torrents of wind and hail is going to turn up, for humanity, on The Day of Trouble. I am the first and the last, and beside me, there is no God. Redemption is forgotten in Egypt, and resurfaces in the story of David. He will build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.

I will be his father and he will be my son. If he commits iniquity, I will chasten him. But my mercy will not depart away from him. The same cannot be said of Moses. The former must consciously and actively bear the clashing of the lesser heart with the greater heart; this is its yoke.

God will guide such a heart, directly, in experience and through action. To follow the greater, you will be tempted by the lesser.

The latter does not have to endure the clashing of the two hearts, for it puts the lesser under strict policing, yet by this manoeuvre it also loses the greater. It eliminates the risk of error, yet the trade-off is not to take any risk with love.

The heart has to be trusted to give love to existence. Nothing redemptive will ever emerge by holding back the heart, out of the fear of it going wrong. The parable of the talents says the same. A pure heart can see God; long before that is attained, a heart curbed by honesty can hear the guidance of God. Babylon is far worse than Egypt. He got them out of the City of Corruption, but he could do nothing to get the City of Corruption out of them. His external deliverance lacked the internal restoration, and radical change, that only the Redemption from God brings.

As the Rastas know, today we all live under Babylonian Captivity. It is therefore very vital that, whereas Salvation addresses the religious and political tyranny of Egypt, Redemption opposes the outer and inner corruption of Babylon the Great, Babylon the Whore, Babylon the False Mystery.

Babylon is serious evil— not just human weakness, human folly, human wrong-doing. Babylon is the worldly city of wealth and power [literally and symbolically built on trading by sea], with vast dichotomies of rich and poor, powerful and powerless, masters and slaves; the advantaged, safe and well, are in the minority, while the disadvantaged, imperilled and ill, are in the majority.

Yet a Luciferian sheen of glamour, of sparkle, of vain and empty charisma, covers over it all, like an expensive diamond studded dress. Babylon sucks you in, and once in, it becomes hard to get out. It infiltrates your innerds, by offering you a false garden of poisoned fruits to gorge on.

Babylon is capitalism, and it began in the Middle East with the settled crop growers, building barns to store grain, the prototype for the banks. Capitalism creates the bourgeois spirit, and spreads it like an infection, until everyone is sickened on its virus. You hoard to ensure your future protection, against loss and harm. This is bogus Salvation.

This is the false earthly paradise. But monstrous and subtle evils lay eggs on this bogus saving, sucking out our juices like a vampire, dampening the fire of love in the heart, and by recourse to shallow, cold Luciferian beauty, corrupting the soul such that its real treasures are neglected, and false riches acquire an ugly glory making them desirable.. Christ urged us [Mathew, 6, ] not to be careful over what we wear, eat, and similar things; seek God first, and then these other things will be added.

She promises further delights, the more you buy into her attraction, like a naked woman strung over a fancy tomb, and if you are lured in, you will drink the poisoned chalice more and more.. We trample each other, pushing each other out of the way, to get the most from her cup. Babylon is a whole system of unconscious fantasies which rule over people in capitalism, sickening and manipulating their desire.

The real desire is for the fullness of the aliveness of being. People are puppets on a string they cannot see, nor feel, or even sense. Our redeeming will cost what is most precious to God, and to us.

In the ultimate, there is only one enemy, one adversary, one hinderer, one accuser, the Evil One. The hells that we create in the abyss of the heart are different aspects of passion under the influence of evil. This is Hades, in Greek, or Sheol, in Hebrew. The place of existential Shame.. This is Gehenna, in Greek. The place of existential Guilt.. And there is the Vacuity that drags everything downward, like a Black Hole, the Empty Void, or Groundless Abyss that we fall into, forever.

The place of existential Despair.. The Pit is the loss of Life. Hell is the betrayal of Truth. The Empty Void is the extinguishing of Faith.

All the three hellish conditions of the heart will be undercut, at root. This lack of individual righteousness and absence of collective justice will be overcome by redeeming.

Redeeming will overcome our persecution by large groupings of people who despise and abhor us. In the historical world process, redeeming has servants who facilitate it and enemies who block it. God has no favourites. He does have friends whom he calls to onerous action, and at times, he backs their deeds and they win through; at other times, he asks for their sacrifice, and they lose.

In our childishness, we want God to back us against the world, and ensure we prevail in the world.. God is not partisan for me against you, nor you against me. The truth cuts all of us.. Shall I redeem from death? O Death, where are thorns? O Sheol, where is your sting? He will swallow up death in victory; and Yahweh will wipe away tears from off all faces: and the rebuke of his people shall he take away from off all the earth: for Yahweh has spoken it.

The devil has his day, and the devil gets his due; the accusation is seriously looked at, and God has to go deeper, in himself and in us, to vindicate the venture God is embarked on with humanity.

God will end the pre-eminence and predominance of the ambitious wheelers and dealers who, in trying to come top of the heap, show cold indifference to the plight of their fellow sufferers of the human condition, and are driven by the heat of selfish desire and murderous hatred to destroy all potential rivals to their crown.

The fall of the citadel of evil in the world mirrors the fall of the citadel of evil in the heart. Redeeming will purge the heart of evil. We are ashamed, we are regretful, we sorrow, over the evil we have embraced and enacted, and we experience and undergo its injuries to others as if they were daggers driven into us.

My cold indifference makes me freeze, my heat of destructiveness makes me boil, in the grip of hellishness. This is a cathartic medicine, for it returns the heart to its truest impetus; a purifying that finally frees it to be unreservedly given, for God, to the world.

Purging is feared as punishment, retribution, pay back, by those still secretly clinging to the evil inclination in their heart. The day when the hells we have created in our heart are flushed out of hiding, and become conscious to us, is the day when redeeming has come.

Isaiah and David are the only prophets to awake to the significance of the deep floods and deeper conflagrations we pass through in the process of being redeemed. If we go through hell as Christ did, then we are resurrected with him. We enter the Messianic Age to come, right now. When you pass through the waters I will be with you, and through the rivers, they will not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you will not be burned, and the flame will not consume you.

You brought us into the net; you laid affliction upon our loins; you have caused men to ride over our heads; we went through fire and through water; but you brought us out into an abundant place. Thus Salvation loses any narrow focus only on any group of the elect, the good, the saved, and extends to one and all. Salvation ceases to be confined to heaven, but comes to earth, and becomes the Wedding of heaven and earth all creaturehood is travelling toward, the new heavenly earth.

This transformation is ontological, it is the final shift in being, and is therefore not limited to the ethical. The ethical is not jettisoned, but the ethical is overcome, in its narrowing of the gate, and the gate is thrown open. The redeemed whores and redeemed tramps and redeemed criminals will enter the kingdom of heaven first, and despite their existence having never been saved, they will be the first to taste the future fruits of heaven married with earth, the ultimate in Salvation.