Sin as been emphasized by all religions, including Christianity, as the obstacle to salvation. Even for those New Age belief, sin has to be rationalized off as non-existence.
Salvation has been defined as forgiveness of Sin by Christians through Christ by faith. Christianity is differentiated from all other religions as "Done" vs "Do". All other religions require believers to do good work, to abstain from desires, in order to attain "salvation". For Christianity, the work of salvation has already been done by Jesus Christ and so believers only need to receive the completed work of Jesus by faith to attain salvation. Nevertheless, this is still looking at Salvation from a Performance viewpoint - even though it has been done by someone else, Jesus Christ. This performance viewpoint upset many pre-believers --- they cannot accept the fact that murderer could go to heaven without being punished by just believing in Jesus Christ at the last moment. They ask where is the justice? We have to explain at length that the justice and punishment have been served by Jesus on the Cross.
May be we can look at salvation from another angle. What is the purpose of Salvation? The substitutional death of Jesus Christ on the cross is the process to attain an objective. What is this objective?
The objective is to restore the relationship between God and man. God created man to have intimate fellowship with Him. This fellowship is broken by man lack of trust shown in his choice to believe the Devil rather than God. Intimate relationship between two parties, like husband and wife, need to be built on the same life-form. Man and dogs could have some form or close relationship but not intimate relationship. They don't even the speak the same language. For man to have intimate relationship with God, man needs to be rebirth with a God-kind of life. The way is made possible by Jesus Christ taking the form of man and dying for man's sin to satisfy justice and be resurrected by the Holy Spirit and birth into God's new Zoe life form. Man have to be rebirth into new God-Zoe life form through the path opened by Jesus Christ so that we can be restored back into intimate relationship with God.
Salvation is not about making man good (performance based,work righteousness) but about life-transformation, a rebirth, into a new God-life form, through Jesus Christ, so as to have an intimate relationship with God - the original purpose of man creation.
A better word for salvation might be Reconciliation between God and Man. (added 1 Dec 2008)
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