In the book of Romans, after explaining how we are justified by faith, Paul begins the next section of his letter by telling us,

Much more then, having now been justified in His blood, shall we be saved through Him from the wrath; for if we, being enemies, were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved in His life.
— Romans 5:9-10

As we saw in the previous Note in this series, these verses show us that even after our sins are forgiven, we are still in the process of being saved. That is because, eventually, we must all reach God’s goal for us: to be fully conformed to the image of Christ (Rom. 8:29-30; see “Being Saved in His Life” • 1). This requires not only justification through the blood of Christ, but, “much more,” transformation by the life of Christ, as Paul indicates in the verses above.

The phrase “saved in His life” may, in the entire Bible, be unique to Romans 5:10. But, what exactly does it mean? Very simply, that the ongoing salvation we have in Christ, which Paul goes on to describe in chapters 5-8, is absolutely an organic process, a process in which God’s life works within us in our inward parts to transform us to the image of Christ.

There is so much in this section! In the rest of chapter 5 we see the transfer we have had from Adam to Christ; in chapter 6, how we have been baptized into Christ to be freed from sin and our old man, so that we may walk with Christ in newness of life; in chapter 7, we see how pointless it is to try to deal with sin if we are still living in the flesh; and finally, in chapter 8, Paul shows us we have been freed in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and of death so that we can now walk according to the spirit.

As I recall, Watchman Nee gave a brief overview of these chapters in this way: Chapter 5 is the fact of our being in Adam; Chapter 6 is the fact of our being in Christ; Chapter 7 is the experience of our being in Adam; and Chapter 8 is the experience of our being in Christ. Amen!

But, even though there are so many profound points in these chapters, Paul summarizes them, before he begins, in this way: he is going to show us what it means to be “saved in His life.” In other words, the real essence of what we see in these chapters is the process by which the divine life works within us to conform us to the image of Christ.

We may illustrate this process, as Bible teachers have for over a hundred years, with the “three circle” diagram above. It shows that to be “saved in His life” means the divine life, which we first received in our human spirit through the new birth (John 3:3, 6, 1 Pet. 1:3, 23), is now working in our soul—in our mind, emotion, and will—to transform us inwardly to the image of Christ (2 Cor. 3:18, Rom. 12:2). And when the Lord returns, this life will transfigure even our body, so that, at that point, we will be fully conformed to the image of Christ in glory in every part of our being, spirit, soul, and body (Phil. 3:20-21, Rom. 8:29-30).

If we can grasp this concept, then we will understand what it means to be “saved in His life,” and have a foundational grasp of the organic aspect of salvation as it is revealed in the New Testament.

Note: For more on how salvation is worked out in the three-part nature of man, as explained by the three-circle diagrams, see Mary McDonough’s classic book from the early 1920s, God’s Plan of Redemption.

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— 6 May 2026 —