Surely you’ve read this before:
Then he brought them outside and asked, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” They replied, “Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved, you and your household.” (Acts 16:30-31 NET)
It’s the dramatic scene in Philippi where Paul and Silas had been worshiping the Lord late into night after being thrown in jail. An earthquake struck and the jailer was pretty sure his prisoners would escape, so while preparing to take his life, Paul calls out to him that there was no point in doing so because none of the prisoners had fled.
The jailer was not ignorant of their message and had a pretty good idea of their mission. In that moment he was quite certain that the deity these men proclaimed had caused the earthquake and yet moved these men to care about his life. Whatever it was they proclaimed, it was a powerful message. He was ready to listen.
And he had no pretense of knowing about whether he would go to Heaven, and likely no such concept. The biblical usage of term “saved” and “salvation” referred to something that included the man’s household if he was ready to commit to following Jesus. Evangelicals in particular choke on this, trying to explain it away. That’s because western theologians have defined “salvation” as something that does not include families in this way.
At the same time, whatever salvation is, Paul wrote repeatedly that it was not a matter of performance, and yet it was a matter of obedience. The whole New Testament says over and over again that it’s a matter of faith (Ephesians 2:8-9; Romans 10:9-10). We’ve recounted here quite often that the word “faith” refers to commitment, a feudal submission to Christ as Lord. That was inherent in the conversation Paul and Silas had with the Roman jailer in Philippi, and he clearly understood it in those terms.
Everyone should recognize that the Greek phrase translated in most English Bibles as “believe in the Lord Jesus” refers to far more than an intellectual construct. The man was being told to embrace Jesus as his divine sovereign, to submit to Him as his master and lord. It was feudalism, plain and simple.
Inherent in the question was this man being lord of his own household, and if he held an allegiance to Jesus Christ, then it stands to reason his own household would also come under that feudal submission. Indeed, that was pretty much the whole point: The man was seeking to save his human existence. This was not some esoteric personal decision. The man was directed to become a vassal of Jesus Christ with his whole human existence.
This man surely knew the risks involved in this split loyalty between Rome and Christ. The Christian teaching was hardly the first in those days to call for such a thing. There were other religions calling for people to give their allegiance to one or more deities, and to work out the balance between that and their political loyalties. He knew that the Roman bureaucracy as a whole was inclined to view this with suspicion.
Animals were said in the Bible to have souls. Heiser went out of his way to explain once how the Hebrew word translated “soul” is associated with animals, too, but was typically translated into some other English word. Whatever salvation means, it includes the whole of Creation.
The terminology of “saving your soul” was not aimed at salvation only of some eternal element of human nature. It was a reference to your whole mortal existence. Here’s where Romans 8 & 9 comes into play: You are not able to commit your human existence to Christ if He does not give you His Spirit. You can’t do it, won’t care about it, can’t even want it. (see 8:7-8).
You’ll notice all those popular memory verses about how to be saved seem to include something besides “believe” — confess with your mouth (Romans 10:10), be baptized (Mark 16:16), call on His name (Romans 10:13), stand firm to the end (Matthew 10:22), show compassion on the needy (Matthew 25:31-46), love your neighbor as yourself (Luke 10:25-28), etc. All of these are contextual statements that add up to full feudal submission of your existence to Christ.
It’s not enough to recite the formula of “asking Jesus into your heart” — a phrase and concept totally absent from Scripture. The modern evangelical chatter about “getting saved” is something quite different from what Scripture actually says. Rather, there is a steep demand for your whole existence, something you cannot do unless God has called you in the first place and placed His Spirit in you. That’s just the starting point.
If God Himself has not chosen you, then none of those “how to get saved” requirements is within reach. It’s not your place in Heaven you are saving, because there’s not a thing you could do about that. It’s redeeming your life on this earth by handing it over for God to use as He sees fit.
