lgio-14^ where first the sinning one is compared to a sheep gone astray and to be sought, and then, to give the motive for this search after the subjec- tively lost, Jesus adds : ' Even so it is not the will of your Father who is in heaven, that one of these little ones should perish' {dTrdXrjTai) ; that which is already lost in the one sense must be diligently sought, lest it should be lost in the deeper, abso- lute sense. And the deliverance from this final dTToiXeta, as well as the deliverance from the other lost condition, is aw'geadai, aurrjpia. Thus in Mk 16^6 « to be saved ' is the opposite of ' to be con- demned'; in Jn 3^6.17 of < ^o be judged' and 'to perish,' in lO"- 1» of ' to be destroyed,' in 12« of ' to be judged.' This d7rwX«a, however, not less than the other ' being lost,' is equivalent to death. It is a losing of the life (fvxv, Mt lO^^ 16^5, Mk 8^5, Lk 924. 23^ jjj 2225) ; its opposite is ' to have eternal life' (Jn 3i« lO^s), or 'to be raised up at the last day' (6^^). Thus it appears that salvation in its specific religious sense is still viewed throughout as a delivei-ance from death and an introduction into the sphere of life.
(2) The second question was whether ' salvation ' is conceived eschatologically or as something ex- perienced already in this present life. It has been answered in principle by the above, for present salvation coincides with deliverance from subjec- tive spiritual death ; eschatological salvation coin- cides with deliverance from objective death in the Judgment. In a number of the passages already con- sidered the reference to the present is very plain. To the woman who anointed Him Jesus addressed the words, 'Thy faith has saved thee.' Of Zacchseus He declared : ' To-day is salvation come to this house ' ; and in the following statement — ' The Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost,' — the 'saving' must belong to the same time as the ' seeking,' i.e. to the present time of our Lord's earthly ministry. In Jn 12'*'' the saving of the world for which Jesus has come is a present thing as distinct from the judging of the world for which He has not come, but which is reserved for the future. In Mt 121 the sins of the people being the evil from which Jesus saves, the salvation is viewed as a present one. In other passages the eschatological reference is equally obvious. ' He that endures to the end shall be saved ' (Mt IO22 2413). Mt 16^5, Mk 8^5, Lk 9^* speak of the finding or saving of life in the future Judgment as condi- tioned by the willingness to sacrifice one's life here. This is clear from the context (v.^^ [„ Mk., v. 2'' in Mt. = V.26 in Lk).
The point of the saying is not, as often interpreted, that for one kind of life, physical life, given up, another kind of life, spiritual life, will be received in return ; in vi^hich case the future tenses might be purely logical, and no eschatological reference implied. The meaning is that for life, in its general sense, sacrificed by accepting physical death, life in the same general sense will be received in reward through the escape from death, when Jesus comes to judge and to render every man according to his deeds. As Zahn observes, the distinction between two kinds of 'life' or 'soul' is scarcely in harmony with the Hebrew point of view, according to which the ' life ' or the ' soul ' is frequently called ' the only one ' (Com. on Matthew, in loco).
Eschatological is also the reference in the ques- tion of the disciples recorded in Mt 1925, jyi^ lO^s, Lk 1828 'Then who can be saved?' The question was called forth by Jesus' declaration, that the rich would with great difficulty enter into the Kingdom of God, which was in turn called forth by the question of the rich young man, 'What shall I do, that I may inherit eternal life ? ' Here ' to be saved ' = ' to enter the Kingdom ' = ' to inherit eternal life,' and the qualification of life as eternal, as well as the further context, — St. Peter's question about future rewards, and our Lord's answer to this, — prove that the whole discussion is eschato- logical in its scope. Mt 2422 || Mk 1320 ' Except
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these days had been shortened, no tlesh would have been saved,' is best understood as follows : The temptation in these last times will be so severe, that, if their duration had not been kept within certain limits, all men, even the elect, would have fallen away, and so no flesh would have been ulti- mately saved in the Day of Judgment.
This interpretation seems to be required by the fact that the shorteninj^ of the days is for the sake of the elect. Tlie mere preservation of physical life could have no special bearing upon the destiny of the elect, since, even when killed in the body, they would be sure to inherit the Kingdom ; the whole repre- sentation concerning the possibility of none being saved, and the elect falling away and the shortening of the days, is, of course, conceived from the human point of view (cf. Zahn, Com. on Matthew, in locu).