Simply stated, being lost means being separated from God.
Again, in most of our debates about salvation this "separation" isn't really a separation. Being lost, in most conversations, means standing under God's wrath. Which is bad, no doubt, but wrath is an emotional state or a legal situation. Technically, wrath isn't separation. In fact, you could argue that wrath implies connection. Wrath is a relational emotion.
True, wrath might eventually lead to separation from God, but it's this separation that we most fear.
In the New Testament, separation from God is associated with death. Being lost is being dead or subject to death. And we are subject to death because, separated with God, we lack the power to overcome and defeat death.
This is why salvation is associated with power. Salvation isn't primarily about being declared "righteous." Salvation is about being connected to a power that can give us victory over death.
Being saved, therefore, is being united and reconnected with God.
And again, to echo a point made earlier in this series, this movement from death to life is ontological. Death really means death, our bodies subject to death, decay and corruptibility. Life really means life, being infused with God's Spirit giving us victory over death.
Simply put, salvation is resurrection.
Romans 8.11
And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you.
Romans 8.19-24b
For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved.
1 Corinthians 15.42-55
So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.
I tell you this, brothers and sisters: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.
Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:
“Death is swallowed up in victory.”
“O death, where is your victory?
O death, where is your sting?”
