Good morning beloved!

“SOZO” is a greek word that you will find throughout the New Testament.  It is always interpreted as “Salvation”, but has a much broader meaning than just being saved.

“SOZO” is a pervading, all-encompassing peace and wholeness that restores, preserves, and saves.  I learned it like this:  “SOZO” means: saved, healed, delivered, preserved, protected, made whole, kept safe and sound.

Religion teaches that God is only significant when we get to heaven after we die, but Jesus wants us to be connected to us right now!  It’s so important that we don’t limit our relationship with God in terms of simply going to heaven ~ He wants to have an impact on everything we do and every situation we encounter.  Through the shedding of His blood, Jesus has perfected everything that impacts us.

God’s love is an active and powerful force in our lives right now!  Jesus gave Himself for our sins, to deliver us NOW, not some undefined point in the future.  This is God’s will.  Galatians 1:4-5 says this:

  • I greet you with great words, grace and peace!  We know the meaning of those words because Jesus Christ rescued us from this evil world we’re in by offering Himself as a sacrifice for our sins.  God’s plan is that we all experience that rescue.  Glory to God forever!  Oh, yes!

We can only escape the evils of this world if we’re careful not to neglect Jesus’ blood and what it gives.

I like Ephesians 2:7-10 from the Message translation.  It declares,

  • Now God has us where He wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus.  Saving is all His idea, and all His work.  All we do is trust Him enough to let Him do it.  It’s God’s gift from start to finish!  

We don’t play the major role.  If we did, we’d probably go around bragging that we’d done the whole thing!  No, we neither make nor save ourselves.  God does both the making and the saving.  He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join Him in the work He does, the good work He has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.

By God’s graciousness, we are saved through faith.  It’s not by our own efforts, but His unmerited, unearned favor that makes us partakers of salvation.  God has saved us completely and thoroughly by “SOZO“.  Hebrews 7:25 says,

  • Therefore He is able, once and forever, to save completely those who come to God through Him.

I love how this Scripture says, “TO SAVE COMPLETELY“, which means in every way possible.  When Jairus asked Jesus to lay His hands on his daughter and heal her, the Scripture says in Mark 5:23,

  • Jairus begged Him earnestly, saying, “My little daughter lies at the point of death.  Come and lay Your hands on her, that she may be healed, and she will live.”

Guess what this word, “HEALED” means. You got it -“SOZO“.  He saved her from death.  

One more ~ When Jesus delivered the man who was possessed by many demons in Luke 8:36, the word used here was “SOZO“.  So, “SOZO” also means deliverance.

Family, FAITH is what activates God’s “SOZO“.  We are made whole and prosperous through Jesus.  We can have “nothing missing” and “nothing broken” in our lives because of the Lord Jesus.  He released His wholeness to us when He took our sins.  2 Corinthians 8:9 declares,

  • For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that you through His poverty might become rich.  

James declares that Father’s character in this way:  He says in chapter 1, verse 17,

  • Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, Who does not change like shifting shadows.

Blessings from the Lord Who makes us truly rich, with no sorrow attached to it.  We can see this clearly from Proverbs 10:22,

  • The blessing of the Lord brings wealth, without painful toil with it.

Being rich God’s way makes us completely whole.

Thanking God for His “SOZO“,

Lisa Gordon

Assistant Pastor

Jesus City Church