Salvation is indeed a process!

"For by grace you are being saved (este sosōsmentoi), through faith." (Eph 2:12)

This picture called "no soul lost" depicts Paul Jackson's comment on the salvation process. He says, Salvation has beginning, a middle, and an end-Justification, sanctification and glorification.

For the further clarification he gave the well travelled "lifeboat analogy":

The unredeemed life is as if we were about to perish on a crippled ship threatening to sink as a result of sustaining irreparable damage in a menacing storm. Lifeboat arrive to rescue us and begin the perilous journey to the safety of the shore. Once in the saving vassal, however, the storm rages on. No one is quite sure when the storm may dissipate or when another may erupt on the way to safety. While we may experience smooth sailing for the time, we very well could be smothered with peril again. Reaching the safety confines of the shore is the ultimate goal.

Making the exchange from a sinking to a saving vessel is the initiation of salvation, or justification; the voyage in the lifeboat is the working out of our salvation, or sanctification; and reaching the shore is our final arrival in heaven. This is the consummation of salvation, glorification.

I'm doing greek for this summer and these thoughts are taken from the text book.[1] The greek grammar formation called "periphrastic verb" in the perfect participle of "este sosōsmentoi" (Eph 2:8a), gives us the "continuous force" of the participle. This reason, Paul Jackson suggested a new reading, "For by grace you are being saved, through faith," implying the salvation as process and not an one time event.

“Striving, thinking, learning, still –Let me follow thus Thy will,

Till my whole glad nature be –Trained for duty and for Thee.”[2]

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[1]William Mounce, Basics of Biblical Greek (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003), 278-79.

[2]Handley Carr Glynn Moule (1841-1920), Bi­shop of Dur­ham (1901).