Albert Einstein wrote that the fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there is no risk of accident for someone who’s dead. It is true that the dead are dead and therefore cannot fear anything. However, the fear of death remains our greatest fear. It need not be so because salvation is freedom from all fear especially the fear of death.

 “Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and will not be afraid; for the LORD GOD is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation.” With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation (Isaiah 12:2)

The biblical meaning of salvation is deliverance from oppression. To bring salvation is to rescue from disease, the threat of danger, terror, anxiety or fear.

God does not bring salvation, God is salvation.  To know God is to know salvation, to trust God is to receive salvation, to receive salvation is to experience deliverance from fear because the act of trusting defeats fear.  How do I trust? Trust is an act of the will. In trusting I do two things, I believe God and I disbelieve my inner negative self-perception of being helpless, anxious and overwhelmed. As I affirm my belief in God, my trust and self-confidence grow but so does my disbelief. Now anxiety and fear begin to wither because the negativity that watered the soil in which they grew is now replaced by the waters of salvation. They lose their stranglehold on my mind, which strengthens me to further affirm my trust in God.

In trusting I do two things, I believe God and I disbelieve my inner negative self-perception of being helpless, anxious and overwhelmed.

The awareness of the eminence of death evokes the deepest fear of the human heart. Salvation is deliverance from the fear of death, the mother of all fears. The knowledge that you are delivered from the fear of death then imparts spiritual and emotional energy to create a new stronger self that can resist the negative power of fear. As you affirm your deliverance, spiritual energy flows to the new self.

The unshakeable belief in your deliverance opens the well of salvation within you. This is what Jesus meant when he said: “He who believes on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living waters (John 7:38). This awakens the joy of salvation. But you cannot rejoice in salvation and live in fear. if you are living in fear and anxiety you have lost the meaning and experience of salvation.

The increasing awareness of the magnitude of your deliverance from the fear of death awakens love; you love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and body and as you love him, He perfects your love and perfect love casts out fear. 

if you are living in fear and anxiety you have lost the meaning and experience of salvation.

The metaphor of the well of salvation takes us to John 4 where Jesus stops at Jacob’s Well and a woman, needing deliverance, comes to draw water. Jesus is the embodiment of this passage. He is salvation. He says to the woman, if you knew the gift of salvation and who it is that is asking for water, you would ask him, and he will give you water that you will never thirst again. To thirst is to feel acutely the desire to be free of crippling effects of fear and the loos of hope. Bob Marley sang “in the midst of water the fool is thirsty.” Deliverance is offered yet we chose to live in bondage to fear, anxiety and hopelessness.