Elohenu Yeshua, Yasha / God of our Salvation, Savior

For July, each post examines an Old Testament name of God.

The Fourth of July holiday means many things to many people. Any holiday means food, family, and festivity. To children of all ages this particular holiday also means fireworks. (For my cop friends, it's the year's worst day to encounter people getting extra drunk and extra stupid.)

But to the patriotic, July 4, 1776 represents a day in history when men realized their freedom from tyranny. I use the word "realized" having in mind the definition "to give actual or physical form to a concept," and not "cause something desired or anticipated to happen; fulfill." Freedom was not fulfilled on this date. But it did become real and was given form on a fragile piece of parchment to which men sealed themselves. The fight for freedom would last another seven years until the Treaty of Paris brought the Revolutionary War to an end on September 3, 1783.

The historic patriots gained different kinds of freedom on those two moments in time, and during the intervening years. Freedom became real with a declaration, yet it did not become concrete experience until men struggled and laid down their lives to gradually make it their own—not unlike our salvation.

On one day two thousand years ago, Jesus Christ shed His blood and gave a declaration of independence from sin for every one of His followers with the shout, "It is finished!" Freedom becomes ours as a free gift, gained with our own declaration at the point in time when we give ourselves to Christ. Spiritual warfare will come to end on a future date. The intervening years of struggle are a progressive laying down of our lives to experience freedom.

Continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling.
For it is God who is producing in you
both the desire and the ability to do what pleases him.
Philippians 2:12-13 ISV

Among the names of God which appear in both the Old and New Testaments is "Savior." Two variations of the Hebrew word are:

Yasha / Savior (Isaiah 43:11; pronounced "yah-SHAH")
Elohe-nu Yeshua / God of our Salvation (Psalm 68:19-20;
pronounced "el-oh-HAY-noo yesh-OO-ah";
"Yeshua" is also the Hebrew name of Jesus)

The two words have slightly different connotations. Yesuha conveys the act of rescue or deliverance. Yasha conveys a wide or open space in the condition of safety and freedom.

Our God rescues us and gives us salvation from sin in the act accomplished by His Son Jesus Christ. He also continues to work with us to increase in our lives a condition of salvation found in freedom from sin, through the sanctification accomplished by His Holy Spirit.

"Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed." (John 8:36, NKJV)

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