Saved

“For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God;” Ephesians 2:8

Saved – The 3 P’s.  That’s the important thing about this word.  It’s a Perfect Passive Participle.  But don’t despair if you don’t remember your eighth grade grammar.  In one minute you will know why the 3 P’s make all the difference in this word.

Sozo is the Greek verb that means, “to deliver, to preserve from danger, to make safe”.  It’s an easy word to remember.  Just think of a lifeguard with the big white letters SOZO written across his wet suit.  He is the one who rescues you from drowning.

And now the 3 P’s.  The Perfect tense is a verb tense that tells us that this life saving action happened in the past but its effects continue into the present.  Jesus died.  But that wasn’t the end of the story.  What He did when He died for you continues to affect the rest of time.  It is over and done, but the legacy goes on and on.   The first P.

Passive is the mood of a verb when the action is done to the subject.  This is not something that I do.  It is something that is done to me.  I am not my own lifeguard.  When I was drowning in sin, I could not rescue myself.  I didn’t suddenly discover that I was able to breathe under water.  I was dying.  God did the work of rescuing me.  Until Jesus pulled me out of the water and gave me artificial respiration, I was dead.  I don’t get any credit for this rescue.  The second P.

Participle.  This is the tough one.  A participle is a word that describes a quality of something (like an adjective) but uses an action word (like a verb).   Sozo describes you, the one who has been rescued.  You have a new status.  You are no longer the one who died.  You are the “delivered one”.  As you lay on the beach, breathing again, the SOZO lifeguard puts a label on your forehead.  It says SOZO too.  Now you belong to the SOZO group.  You are a member of the 3 P club.

It’s over (but it continues).  You didn’t do it.  And you got a new label in the process.

Today:  This is a SOZO day.  Every time I see a P, I will count to 3.  I belong.

(one more tomorrow)