SAVIOUR. The title Saviour was given in ancient times to deities, and to eminent men, such as kings, princes, and heroes. In the Old Testament it is used of ordinary men (Neh. ix. 27) and of God. In the New Testament the term is applied to God (Luke i. 47, etc.) and to Jesus Christ or the Messiah (Luke ii. 11; Acts v. 31; II. Peter i. 11). J. M. Robertson points out (Pagan Christs, 1911) that the title was given by the Greeks to Zeus, Helios, Artemis, Dionysus, Herakles, the Dloscurl, Cybele, and .Esculapius. But there is nothing remark able in this. The word is an ordinary one. The important question is : Was it used of Jesus in an ordinary sense? The fact is that it was not. It was always used in a moral sense. It was popularly under stood to mean that Jesus, by converting men from sin, would save them from the future punishment which would otherwise befall them. In Jesus' own under
standing of the term, it evidently had a more spiritual meaning. This is clear from the famous utterance : " For whosoever would save his life shall lose it; and whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel's shall save it " (Mark viii. 35; Luke ix. 24; Matthew xvi. 25). To save a man is to bring him to realize fully in this present life that to live in a material way and sense is not really to live at all. The material sense of life must be lost that the spiritual and real sense of life may be gained; and when this is gained eternal life is already present. This is the sense in which Jesus was the Saviour : he saved men from a false sense of life, and so from death. Cp. Thayer-Grimm, Greek-English Lexicon to the N.T., 1896.