COLLECTIVE SALVATION (SANTAMARIA)

 COLLECTIVE SALVATION

 

The New Testament does not preach either a lonely, privatized “me-and-Jesus” gospel or a faceless, collectivist salvation-by-group-identity; it preaches a salvation that is deeply personal and fiercely corporate—God saving a people in Christ, by sovereign grace, one sinner at a time.

“Collective salvation” is the idea that God saves a group—a people, a class, a nation, the Church—as a group, and that the individual’s destiny is bound up with belonging to that group and its destiny. The New Testament verb for “save” is usually σῴζω (sōzō), and the noun “salvation” is σωτηρία (sōtēria). The question is not simply, “Has this individual been saved?” but also, “What people has God saved, and who is included in that people?” This doesn’t make the individual unimportant, but it shifts the emphasis away from a purely private transaction between “me and Jesus” toward belonging to a community, a covenant, a body. Much modern Western Christianity tends to frame the gospel almost exclusively in individual terms—“Have you accepted Christ?” “Are you born again?”—whereas the Bible keeps asking: Who are “you” (plural)?, which people are you part of, whose story do you share?

 

Scripture is thick with corporate language. God saves Israel from Egypt as a people (λαός, laos), promising, “I will take you (plural) to me for a people, and I will be to you a God.” The Old Testament regularly speaks of “my people” (λαός μου), not just scattered individuals. There is also covenantal solidarity or “federal headship”: Adam’s sin affects all who are “in him,” and Christ’s obedience justifies the many who are “in him.” Paul’s key texts—Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15—contrast being “in Adam” (ἐν τῷ Ἀδάμ) and “in Christ” (ἐν τῷ Χριστῷ). The preposition ἐν plus the dative here is not just spatial; it marks sphere or solidarity: to be “in Adam” is to share his condemnation, to be “in Christ” is to share His righteousness and life.

The Church, likewise, is not simply a pile of saved individuals but the body (σῶμα, sōma) of Christ, His bride, a holy nation (ἔθνος ἅγιον, ethnos hagion), a people for his own possession (λαὸς εἰς περιποίησιν, laos eis peripoiēsin, Titus 2:14; 1 Peter 2:9). Even the vocabulary is communal.

 

The very word “church,” ἐκκλησία (ekklēsia), means “assembly” or “called-out gathering,” not “my private spiritual life.” The New Testament rarely portrays a healthy Christian as detached from Christ’s people. In that sense, biblical salvation is both individual and corporate: God truly calls, regenerates, and judges individuals, yet He simultaneously forms them into a people.

 

Old School Baptists lean very hard into this corporate language, but in a distinctly non-modern way. Gilbert Beebe could say, in classic supralapsarian style, that “the people of God are the church of God, and the mystical body of Christ,” existing in Christ as their Head from eternity. Samuel Trott, unpacking Song of Songs 4:7, insists that the Church as a whole—the “body of Christ”—is composed only of those who are actual believers, “born of God,” covered with Christ’s righteousness so that “there is no spot” on her in a legal sense. Their corporate view is not, “the institution saves,” but “the elect body in Christ is viewed and loved as one.”

ROMAN CATHOLIC & GREEK ORTHODOX CHURCHES

 Different Christian traditions develop this “collective” dimension in different directions. Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox theology emphasize that salvation is in and through the Church. The Church is the communion of the saved, the mystical body of Christ, and grace is ordinarily communicated through her sacraments. The old maxim “outside the Church there is no salvation” is an ecclesial form of collective salvation: one is not saved as a spiritual atom, but as a living member of Christ’s body. Here, the “collective” is sacramental and mystical rather than political. 

REFORMED CHURCHES

Reformed and covenant theology also affirm a collective dimension, but cast it in terms of election and covenant. God saves the elect (ἐκλεκτοί, eklektoi)—a definite people given to Christ—and that elect people is historically expressed in covenant communities, first Israel, then the Church. Salvation is intensely personal; one must be born again (γεννηθῇ ἄνωθεν, gennēthē anōthen). Yet one’s status is still bound up with being “in Adam” or “in Christ,” in darkness or in the Church. The primary “collective” is the company of the elect in Christ, not simply any earthly nation or economic class.

 ANABAPTISTS

Some Anabaptist and radical communities lean even more visibly into salvation as shared life in a kingdom community. For them, salvation is not only justification but being drawn into a distinct people with a shared way of life. The Sermon on the Mount becomes a social order for a visible community rather than a purely personal ideal. Salvation thus appears very “collective” in practice, as the redeemed form a concrete counter-society.

OLD SCHOOL BAPTISTS

Old School Baptists fit oddly but interestingly into this map. On the one hand, they stress eternal union and the body of Christ as a chosen people. On the other hand, they fiercely resist the idea that human institutions or “means” collectively produce salvation. Beebe mocks the popular revivalist formula: “We must use the means of grace… and then we must say that God has done it all,” treating that as a lying system that makes human devices look indispensable to salvation. Trott likewise insists that faith is not “a means of salvation” but gives believers to see “their salvation as already complete in Christ Jesus.” Hassell, summarizing the Black Rock spirit, condemns money-based “religious confederacies” that present human organizations as “the most important and indispensable requisite for the conversion and salvation of the world,” calling such schemes “Egyptian or worldly alliances” that God never instituted. (Supralapsarian) For Old School Baptists, the body is real and corporate, but God alone saves and preserves it—no confederacy, program, or denominational machine stands between Christ and His bride.

In modern theology and activism, “collective salvation” often takes on a more explicitly political or socio-economic character. The focus shifts from individual sin to structural or systemic evils such as racism, capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchy. “The oppressed” are spoken of as a saving subject, defined in terms of race, class, or nation, and “salvation” is redefined as liberation from political oppression, economic justice, and social reconstruction. Here, the “group” is typically defined by sociological categories rather than by union with Christ. 

In this framework, collective salvation can mean that God is saving an oppressed group as a group, and that true salvation consists in the liberation of that group from structures of domination. At its best, this reminds Christians that sin is not only personal but also social and structural, and that the gospel has implications for justice. At its worst, it degenerates into a quasi-Marxist political eschatology with a thin Christian veneer: “Our group’s victory equals salvation,” and the kingdom of God collapses into revolution, party program, or social project. Critics, particularly conservative evangelicals and Old School Baptists, argue that this abandons substitutionary atonement, repentance, and personal faith, and replaces “Christ saves sinners” with “history saves classes” or “the revolution saves the oppressed.”

There is also a darker form of collective salvation in nationalist and racialized ideologies. Here, the claim is that God has a special saving plan for our nation, our race, or our ethnic group as such. In extreme versions, this becomes, “Our people are the chosen race,” or “God will vindicate and glorify our nation above all others.” This fuses easily with Christian nationalism, ethnic supremacism, and “chosen nation” myths. At that point, collective salvation is little more than baptized tribalism, with biblical language pressed into the service of national or racial pride.

Because the phrase “collective salvation” is so fuzzy, several distinctions are crucial.

First, there is the corporate dimension of biblical salvation: God saves a people, Christ dies for His bride, and believers are one body. Only a hyper-individualistic spirituality denies this. Beebe, commenting on Ephesians 4, describes Christ’s ascension gifts as “gifts bestowed for the edification, succor and support of those who are of the household of faith,” clearly seeing the ministry as a corporate provision for the whole body. (Sovereign Redeemer Books) He also notes that even disciples with “one talent” are “solemnly obligated to exhort one another, and so much the more as they should see the day approaching,” echoing Hebrews 10. (Sovereign Redeemer Books)

Second, there is ecclesial mediation: Catholic and Orthodox theology place salvation ordinarily in and through the visible Church and her sacraments, while Protestants critique aspects of this but still insist that ordinary Christian life is life in the gathered church (ἐκκλησία). Old School Baptists, while fiercely independent congregationalists, still see the visible church as the God-appointed sphere in which the elect walk, are instructed, and are visibly separated from the world, but they resist saying that any visible organization is itself the channel of σωτηρία in a strict, conditioning sense.

Third, there is political or ideological collectivism, where group identity—class, race, nation, gender—becomes the central unit of salvation and history, and personal repentance and faith are sidelined in favor of activism and group liberation.

Fourth, there is a secular parody: totalitarian regimes promising the “salvation” of the people through the Party, the Leader, or the Race, a kind of collective salvation with God replaced by the State. Whenever someone speaks of collective salvation, we have to ask: collective in what sense—Church, elect, class, nation, race, humanity? And saved from what, by whom, and unto what?

In a soft, biblical sense, then, collective salvation means that God redeems a people in Christ rather than merely isolated individuals, and that those whom He saves are saved into a body, not into a private spiritual bubble. In a stronger and more controversial sense, collective salvation can mean that an individual’s destiny depends primarily on belonging to a particular earthly group—a church institution, nation, class, or race—and that salvation is defined more in social or political terms than in terms of sin, judgment, and eternal life. Theologically, the task is to hold both truths together without allowing either to devour the other: individuals are genuinely and personally saved by Christ, and those individuals are gathered into a real, concrete people—the Church—whose shared life is itself part of the salvation they have received.

Alongside this corporate shape, the New Testament also stresses that mutual care within the church is one of God’s ordinary means of preserving believers in the faith. Here, the Greek grammar does a lot of quiet work.

In Ephesians 4, Christ gives apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers “for the perfecting (καταρτισμός, katartismos) of the saints” and “for the edifying (οἰκοδομή, oikodomē) of the body of Christ,” until they reach “unity” (ἑνότης, henotēs) in the faith and grow up into Christ. The image in verse 16 is of a body “fitly joined together” (συναρμολογούμενον, synarmologoumenon) and “knit together” (συμβιβαζόμενον, symbibazomenon), making an increase of the body “unto the edifying of itself in love.” The purpose clause in verse 14—“that we be no more children tossed about”—shows that this whole structure of gifts and mutual speaking of truth is designed so that believers are not destabilized by “every wind of doctrine.” That is preservation through community, without turning pastors into little saviors.

Paul’s letters provide further examples. In 1 Thessalonians 3, he sends Timothy “to establish you” (στηρίξαι ὑμᾶς, stērizai hymas) and “to comfort you” (παρακαλέσαι, parakalesai) concerning your faith, so that no one would be shaken by afflictions. The very verbs carry the sense of stabilizing and coming alongside. His anxiety “lest the tempter had tempted” them shows he viewed Timothy’s ministry as a God-appointed means of steadying and protecting them.

In Colossians 1, Paul describes his preaching—“warning every man and teaching every man”—with the aim that “we may present every man perfect in Christ.” The verb παραστῆσαι (parastēsai, “to present”) is sacrificial and eschatological; he labors so that they will stand mature and intact before Christ, which is preservation language.

In Romans 15, the strong are to bear the infirmities of the weak and seek their neighbor’s good “unto edification.” The vocabulary of οἰκοδομή again appears: mutual consideration is ordered toward building up, not allowing the weak to collapse. In Galatians 6, those who are spiritual are to restore (καταρτίζετε, another katartizō word) a brother overtaken by a fault, and to bear one another’s burdens. Restoration and burden-bearing are preservation-in-action: they mend what would otherwise tear.

Paul also teaches in 1 Corinthians 12 that God has “tempered the body together” (συνεκέρασεν, synekerasen) so that there be no schism, and that the members should have “the same care one for another.” Shared care among the members is God’s design to prevent fragmentation. In 1 Timothy 4:16, he tells Timothy: “for in doing this thou shalt save (σώσεις, sōseis, future active) both thyself and them that hear thee.” The future indicative here doesn’t mean Timothy is a redeemer; it means his watching life and doctrine is a real, instrumental way God keeps minister and congregation in the path of salvation.

In 2 Timothy 2, the servant of the Lord must be gentle, apt to teach, patient, meek in instruction, “if God peradventure will give them repentance.” The human side is enduring, teaching, correcting; the divine side is “God gives repentance,” and the result is that they “recover themselves out of the snare of the devil.” Patient pastoral care is the ordained instrument of divine rescue.

Non-Pauline texts make the same point, and the Greek makes it very sharp. Hebrews 3 warns believers: “Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief.” The remedy: “Exhort one another daily” (παρακαλεῖτε ἑαυτοὺς καθ’ ἡμέραν). The verb παρακαλεῖτε is present imperative, second person plural—“keep on exhorting each other day by day”—“lest any of you be hardened (σκληρυνθῇ, sklērynthē, aorist passive) by the deceitfulness of sin.” Ongoing mutual exhortation is set forth as God’s ordinary means to prevent hardening and apostasy.

Hebrews 10 calls Christians to “consider one another to provoke unto love and good works,” not forsaking the assembling of themselves together, but exhorting (again, παρακαλοῦντες) one another as the Day approaches. Corporate worship and mutual exhortation are ordinary means of perseverance, not optional extras.

James 5 declares that if someone strays from the truth and another turns him back, “he who converteth the sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death” (σώσει ψυχὴν ἐκ θανάτου, sōsei psychēn ek thanatou). That is remarkably blunt: the brother’s action is described as “saving” a soul from death, precisely because God uses human intervention as His instrument.

Jude directs believers: “Keep yourselves in the love of God” (ἑαυτοὺς ἐν ἀγάπῃ θεοῦ τηρήσατε, tērēsate). The aorist imperative suggests a decisive, guarded stance as a community. Yet Jude begins his letter by addressing the saints as those “who are kept (τετηρημένοις, perfect passive of τηρέω) by Jesus Christ.” God keeps them; they must keep themselves. That tension is resolved when we see that their self-keeping takes concrete form in building themselves up in the faith, praying, and rescuing others—“others save (σώζετε, sōzete) with fear, pulling them out of the fire.”

When these passages are taken together, a clear pattern emerges. God alone ultimately keeps His people; He who began a good work in them will complete it, and He is able “to keep (φυλάξαι, phylaxai) [them] from falling” (Jude 24). Yet He ordinarily does this through real, concrete means: pastors who guard life and doctrine, a body that builds itself up in love so believers are not blown about by false teaching, daily exhortation that prevents hardening, and the restoration of the fallen that “saves a soul from death.” Old School Baptists are entirely at home with this pattern: Beebe’s exposition of Ephesians 4 and the parable of the talents treats the ministry and mutual exhortation as gifts Christ Himself “delivered” to His servants for the good of His household, not as Arminian “means” conditioning the will of God, but as sovereignly appointed instruments by which the elect are fed and kept. (Sovereign Redeemer Books)

Mutual care in the church, then, is not an optional extra. Within the New Testament’s logic—and in Old School Baptist reading of it—it is one of the ordinary channels through which the preserving grace of God reaches and keeps His people, a deeply “collective” reality that never erases the personal, and a deeply personal reality that never dissolves the church into a pile of religious lone rangers.

1. What the “typical evangelical” position looks like

Obviously, this is a generalization, but in much contemporary evangelicalism (especially revivalist/decisionist forms), salvation is framed roughly like this:

• The central question:
  “Have you accepted Jesus as your personal Savior?”
• Salvation is primarily:
• An individual decision (“praying the sinner’s prayer,” “inviting Jesus into your heart”),
• A personal relationship with Jesus,
• Verified by your own subjective assurance and maybe a remembered crisis moment.
• The church is:
• Helpful, but functionally optional—a spiritual service provider,
• A place where already-saved individuals gather for worship, programs, and resources for “my walk with God.”
• The gospel is often presented as:
• A transaction: you (singular) bring your faith, God gives you forgiveness and heaven,
• With the church playing a secondary, supportive role after the real action is over.

The grammar of evangelical speech betrays the theology:
“I got saved,” “I accepted Christ,” “my quiet time,” “my ministry,” “my calling.”

NT plurals—you all, the saints, the brethren, the church, the body—tend to get swallowed by the singular. “Church” becomes the background of the story whose main actor is me.

2. Contrast Between This Viw and the One in this article

Your essay pushes in almost the opposite direction, without denying personal salvation:

1.  Subject of salvation

o   Evangelical individualism:
Subject = the individual soul.

o   Your essay:
Subject (biblically) = a people, a laos, a sōma, a holy nation, a bride.
The individual is saved among those people.

2.  Structure of salvation

o   Evangelical: the decisive moment is my decision, “the moment I got saved.”

o   Our View: the decisive structure is federal headship—“in Adam” vs “in Christ,” chosen in Him before the foundation of the world, Christ loving the Church and giving Himself for it.
The individual’s “moment” is real, but it’s participation in a larger story.

3.  Means of preservation

o   Evangelical: preservation is often cast as me + my spiritual disciplines (prayer, Bible reading, etc.), sometimes with a light ecclesial assist.

o   Our View: preservation is strongly ecclesial and communal—Eph 4, Heb 3, Heb 10, James 5, Jude.
Christ “gave” gifts (pastors, teachers) for the edification of the body, so “we” aren’t tossed around by false doctrine. Daily mutual exhortation, restoring the fallen, pulling them out of the fire—all of that is God’s way of keeping His people.

4.  Role of the church

o   Evangelical: church is the gathering of already-saved individuals, frequently optional if you have podcasts and a quiet time.

o   Your essay: the church is the ekklesia Christ actually redeemed, the sphere in which salvation is lived, guarded, and experienced. It’s not a vendor of spiritual goods; it’s the body that builds itself up in love, and that building-up is a means of salvation’s ongoing application.

5.  Old School Baptist nuance

o   Modern evangelicalism: “I go to church because I’m saved.”

o   Old School (Beebe, Trott): “The church is Christ’s bride and mystical body, loved and chosen in Him, and the visible assemblies are the manifesting of that people in time—but no human institution conditions salvation itself.”

o   They hold a very high corporate view (body, bride, elect people), while savaging both Rome’s sacramentalism and modern “means” systems that treat organizations and methods as necessary to “get people saved.”

Our view basically says to evangelical individualism:

You’re right that salvation must be personally known and experienced—but you’ve turned “personal” into “private,” and you’ve decapitated the corporate life of the church from the very idea of salvation.

3. Where the typical evangelical position is getting something right

It’s easy to bash the individualistic stuff, but there’s a real baby in that bathwater:

1.  Personal repentance and faith

o   Jesus and the apostles call persons to repent (μετανοεῖτε) and believe (πιστεύετε).

o   No one is saved merely by being swept along with the crowd or by vague membership in a religious group.

2.  Experimental/experiential religion

o   Old School Baptists themselves were fanatically insistent on experimental religion:
a felt sense of sin, a personal revelation of Christ, an inward work of the Spirit.

o   Beebe and Trott would roast any notion of “salvation by church membership” as fiercely as they would roast decisionism or mission-board machineries.

3.  Moral responsibility

o   Evangelical preaching often does what the NT does: looks a sinner in the eye and presses you—you are guilty, you must repent, you will stand before God.

o   Corporate language can be abused to hide personal guilt in “structures” or “systems”; evangelicalism at least keeps the sharp edge of personal accountability.

4.  Assurance as personal

o   Paul does say “Christ loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal 2:20).

o   It’s not wrong to say “I am saved” if it means “Christ, the Savior of His people, has indeed had mercy on me.”

So, individualistic evangelicalism is right to insist on personal encounter, personal repentance, personal trust, personal assurance—and Old School Baptists, at their best, hammer that drum too, just with very different music.

4. Where evangelical individualism badly overcorrects

That said, it’s hard to deny that typical evangelical culture often:

1.  Turns “personal” into “private”

o   My sins, my quiet time, my choice, my ministry; the church becomes an optional accessory to my journey.

o   But biblically, to be “in Christ” is to be baptized into one body (1 Cor 12:13), not to be a free-floating spiritual freelancer.

2.  Forgets the plurals

o   Epistles addressed to “the saints,” “the church,” “you (plural).”

o   Commands like “exhort one another daily,” “bear one another’s burdens,” “confess your sins one to another” are not suggestions for super-Christians; they’re basic Christian life.

3.  Downplays the church as a means of preservation

o   Hebrews is very explicit: neglecting assembling and mutual exhortation is how you drift.

o   Evangelical culture often acts as if the real danger is missing your devotional app streak.

4.  Converts ecclesiology into programming

o   Instead of seeing the body as organically building itself up by every joint supplying (Eph 4:16), evangelical practice can treat the church as a machine: staff-led, event-driven, consumer-shaped.

o   The “body” becomes an audience, not an organism whose members actually need each other for faith’s survival.

Old School Baptists, for all their quirks, tend to see this: they emphasize gathered worship, mutual exhortation, discipline, and pastoral oversight as God’s ordinary means of keeping the saints, while refusing to call those things “means of getting people regenerated.”

5. Where a “collective salvation” emphasis can go wrong

On the other side, your essay also maps out the dangers:

• Roman Catholic / Orthodox versions can make visible communion with the institutional Church function like the decisive condition of salvation.
• Political / liberation versions can turn a sociological group (class, race, nation) into the subject and object of salvation, collapsing gospel into politics.
• Nationalist versions can baptize tribalism and wrap Christ around the flag.

Even in more modest forms, strongly “collectivist” rhetoric can:

1.  Blur personal responsibility and agency

o   If all the weight falls on “we” and “our story,” it’s easy to evade my sin, my unbelief, my need of repentance.

2.  Over-mystify “the church”

o   Talk of “the Church” in the abstract can mask the messiness of actual local congregations that must discipline, admonish, forgive, and sometimes divide.

o   Old School Baptists, interestingly, keep the church very concrete: specific congregations, covenants, discipline, letters, minutes. No abstract entity saves you.

3.  Slide into quasi-sacramentalism or institutionalism

o   Even non-sacramental groups can do this: “Our denomination/movement/association is the repository of truth; to leave us is to leave the faith.”

o   That’s not far from Rome’s logic, just without the Latin.

 

So the Old School instinct (at least at its best) is a useful warning label:
Yes to the body, no to making any human structure—even a very biblical one—the sine qua non of being in Christ.

---

6. A more biblical balance: personal and corporate, not private vs collective

You can almost hear Paul rolling his eyes at both extremes.

• He says, “Christ loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal 2:20)
  and
  “Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it” (Eph 5:25).
• He talks about people being “called”, “justified”, “adopted” (very individual-feeling words),
  and about those same people as “a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession” (1 Pet 2:9).

A balanced, scriptural position could be put like this:

1.  Salvation is personal, not private

o   Personal: You must personally repent and believe; you cannot be saved by your family, nation, race, party, or church membership.

o   Not private: When God saves you, He joins you to a people; you are baptized into a body, under elders, into a pattern of mutual care and accountability. There is no “just me and Jesus” Christianity in the NT.

2.  Salvation is corporate, not collectivist

o   Corporate: God has a people, a bride, a flock, a body. Their shared life is part of His saving work—His preserving work—toward them.

o   Not collectivist: No earthly institution, ethnicity, or social class is the savior or the final reference point. “The church” is holy only as it is in Christ and under His word. Political and ethnic “collective salvation” is idolatry, not theology.

3.  Means of grace are relational, not mechanical

o   Evangelical individualism tends to reduce the means of grace to “my quiet time.”

o   High-church or collectivist tendencies can reduce them to sacraments or structures.

o   The NT picture is intensely relational: preaching, sacraments/ordinances, mutual exhortation, discipline, bearing burdens, restoring the fallen—actual people, with actual words, in actual gatherings.

4.  Old School Baptist angle (which you can mine richly as a writer):

o   They hold together:

§  Eternal, corporate union in Christ (“the church in her mystical standing”),

§  Personal, experimental conversion,

§  Concrete, congregational church life as the place where the Spirit ordinarily leads, teaches, and corrects the saints,

§  A deep suspicion of any system that says human “means” cause or condition God’s saving will.

o   That gives you a nice triangulation point:

§  Against evangelical hyper-individualism, they insist on the body.

§  Against collectivist/sacramental excess, they insist God alone saves, and the Spirit’s work is immediate and sovereign

THAT HE MIGHT SAVE SOME

When Paul says “that I might save some,” he does not mean he and God are partners in a joint venture where each contributes part of the saving power. God is the only Savior; Paul is a tool in His hand.

Let’s spell that out.

---

1. Who actually saves?

The NT is unambiguous:

• “Salvation is of the LORD.” (Jonah 2:9; echoed all over Scripture)
• “By grace are ye saved… not of works.” (Eph 2:8–9)
• “So then neither is he that planteth any thing, neither he that watereth; but God that giveth the increase.” (1 Cor 3:7)

God alone:

• decreed salvation,
• chose the people,
• sent the Son,
• Christ finished the work,
• The Spirit quickens and gives faith.

No space there for Paul to be a co-redeemer or co-cause.

2. What does Paul mean, then, by “save some”?

Take 1 Corinthians 9:22:

“I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some.”

In Greek: ἵνα πάντως τινὰς σώσω (hina pantōs tinas sōsō).
The ἵνα + subjunctive tells you the aim of his behavior—his end in view—not that he has independent saving power.

Same idea in 1 Timothy 4:16:

“…for in doing this thou shalt both save thyself, and them that hear thee.”

And James 5:20:

“he that converteth the sinner… shall save a soul from death.”

In all these, the human is an instrumental cause (means), never an efficient cause (source). Think:

God saves → through preaching, warning, restoring, and exhorting.

So Paul’s logic is:

• God alone gives life and faith.
• God has appointed preaching, pastoral care, and mutual exhortation as the ordinary channels by which that life and faith are brought to light.
• Therefore, when I preach, warn, adapt, endure, I am really working in the stream of God’s saving action, and it is proper to describe my ministry by its God-given effect: “that I might save some.”

---

3. “Workers together with God” is not a 50/50 partnership

The phrase that can confuse people is 2 Corinthians 6:1:

“We then, as workers together with him…”

That does not mean God does 50% and Paul does 50%. In the flow of Paul’s theology:

• God is the source of the work (“by the grace of God I am what I am… yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me” – 1 Cor 15:10).
• Paul is a servant, “an earthen vessel,” “a minister,” whose sufficiency is not from himself (2 Cor 3:5–6).
• “With God” here means God is pleased to use him, not that God and Paul are co-authors of salvation.

Old School Baptists captured this well: Christ has already accomplished eternal salvation for the elect; ministers and churches are the appointed means by which the Spirit makes that finished work known and experienced. Beebe and Trott hammer this point—ministers are “under-shepherds” and “instruments,” never partners adding something to Christ’s work or helping God get the job done.

---

4. So how should we phrase it?

You can safely say:

• God alone saves;
• Paul’s language “that I might save some” is shorthand for: “that I might be the means God uses to bring His already-purchased salvation home to them.”

No partnership, no co-savior, no sharing of causal power—just one Sovereign Savior, graciously pleased to use very mortal mouths.

LABORERS TOGETHER WITH GOD??

1. “Laborers Together With God” – Elder Samuel Trott

Originally published in Signs of the Times, vol. 9 (1841). It’s explicitly keyed to 1 Corinthians 3:9 (“For we are labourers together with God: ye are God’s husbandry, ye are God’s building”). It shows up in later bibliographies as:

Trott, Samuel, Laborers Together With God (1841) (YUMPU)

A modern Primitive Baptist doctrinal survey also cites it as:

“‘Laborers Together With God,’ Signs., vol 9, 1841” (pb.org)

So:

• Author: Elder Samuel Trott
• Title: Laborers Together With God
• Original venue: Signs of the Times
• Year/volume: 1841, vol. 9

You should have it in your Signs by Year / Pocket Trott ecosystem under 1841.

2. What Trott is correcting in that article

Trott is pushing back against the standard “missionary” reading:

“We are labourers together with God, in the sense that God has done His part, now we do ours, and salvation depends on both.”

He argues (in classic Old School fashion) that this:

1.  Corrupts the text theologically – it implies some kind of synergistic partnership in actually producing salvation, as though God’s work is incomplete without human cooperation.

2.  Ignores the grammar of 1 Corinthians 3:9.
The Greek is:

θεοῦ γάρ ἐσμεν συνεργοί
Literally: “of-God we are fellow-workers”.
Trott’s point (which lines up with solid grammatical reading) is:

o   θεοῦ is a genitive of possession, not “with” (there is no μετά).

o   So the sense is “we are God’s fellow-workers” (workers who belong to Him and work under Him), not “co-workers with God” in the sense of being co-causes of salvation.

3.  Turns “God of our salvation” into “God of missions” – Trott is very sharp on this. One later writer summarizing him quotes this line from Laborers Together With God:

“…well do the missionaries term their god, the God of missions, and not ascribe to Him the title claimed for our God, namely: THE GOD OF OUR SALVATION.” (pb.org)

That’s Trott in full war-paint. His point: if you say God merely makes salvation possible and human “labourers” close the deal, you’ve effectively invented a different god—a god of cooperative projects, not the God who actually saves.

3. Connection to Beebe and “no partnership with God”

Gilbert Beebe echoes the same correction in an editorial (later reprinted in vol. 5 of his collected editorials). A snippet from that volume (index snippet) summarizes his line:

“When Paul says we are laborers together with God, we are not to understand that we are fellow-…” (primitivebaptist.net)

The rest (from Beebe’s known theology) is essentially:

• We are not “fellow-authors” of salvation with God.
• We are not joint-efficient causes of regeneration or calling.
• We are instruments, under God, whose preaching and labors God may use—but He alone saves.

So Trott and Beebe are both doing the thing you asked me to stress with Paul’s “that I might save some”:

• Paul’s language is instrumental, not co-redemptive.
• Trott’s article on 1 Cor. 3:9 is a targeted demolition of the “God + man = salvation” reading.

4. Where to actually find and use the article

Given your setup:

• In Signs of the Times 1841 (vol. 9), look in the article index for “Laborers Together With God” under Samuel Trott. (YUMPU)
• In Pocket Trott 2.0, it should be under Trott’s doctrinal articles, likely cross-indexed by 1 Corinthians 3:9 / missions/means.

Once you locate it in your PDFs, that article is perfect to footnote whenever someone abuses:

• 1 Corinthians 3:9 (“labourers together with God”), or
• 2 Corinthians 6:1 (“working together with him”),

to teach a cooperative scheme where God and man “team up” to produce the new birth.

Trott’s whole thrust there is:
God alone is the God of our salvation; we are His workers, not His partners in bringing it about.