Without Hell, from what does Jesus save? This question is about the liberal versions of Christianity, the versions which don’t have a conception of Hell. Put simply, without Hell, just what exactly is Jesus saving me from?

Even the most liberal Christians say that sin is inescapable. So Jesus cannot be saving me from sin. Without Hell, he can’t be saving me from God either. Or the Devil.

I really don’t see how a liberal Jesus could be anyone’s personal saviour.



Question inspired by Nathaniel in the comments at Slacktivist.
"Liberal Christianity" is a loosely defined and wide-ranging group, and there can be many approaches to salvation, but let me describe a commonly believed approach.

While we often use the word 'salvation' as if it was synonymous with 'rescue', in the original languages it doesn't really mean that in a simple way. The word has connections with both 'healing' and 'wholeness'. It would be as reasonable to say that "Jesus heals us" or "Jesus makes us whole" as to say "Jesus saves us". In fact many 'liberal' Christians are driven by a desire to get away from a 'caricatured' Christianity, in which Jesus' only reason for coming was to make sure that we don't go to Hell when we die, and our only purpose on Earth is to tell other people how they can avoid Hell.

Thoughtful evangelicals will usually admit that Jesus does more than just rescue us from Hell. He restores our relationship with God and with each other; he saves us from the guilt which our sins have brought us; he heals us in body and mind, from broken-ness brought on not just by our own sin, but by others and by the world around us; he restores creation to the state God intended; he gives us "life in abundance". All of those things can be done not just in the future, but here and now, and all fall under the category of 'healing' or 'wholeness', and therefore also of 'salvation'. And he does them personally for each one of us.

Those are the sort of thing you will hear if you talk to a 'liberal' Christian about a Jesus who saves.