I don’t like removing a quote entirely from its context and slapping on a heading that doesn’t quite fit but I hope that the above heading does justice to what Ben Witherington was writing in his Romans commentary regarding Romans 1:16-18.
“One can say, ‘I have been saved, I am being saved, and I will be saved,’ but not ‘I am saved,’ if by that one means that the process of salvation is already complete. There is always the working out of salvation with fear and trembling to be done while one lives in the flesh (Phil. 2:12), and there is also the matter of deliverance from final judgment or through Christ’s judgment in the future. One is not eternally secure until one is securely in eternity, not until one has passed through all three stages of salvation.” (Paul’s Letter to the Romans: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary, 51).
One Response
I agree.