Positional Salvation

What does it mean that salvation is not just positional?

I've been thinking lately about the relationship between grace and salvation... the love that compelled Him to the cross, and the grace manifest in Christ's essence. A few days ago, I posed the above question to myself. What does it mean that salvation does not simply define our position to the Father (meaning He sees us a righteous through the lens of the cross), but that it also defines our relationship with the Father (meaning how we interact based on our position secured through the cross).

My study Bible has a footnote on salvation that helped me grasp its more active aspects: the inclusive word in the Gospel encompasses all redemptive acts and process: justification, redemption, grace, propitiation, imputation, forgiveness, sanctification and glorification. Salvation has been (deliverance), is being (healing), and will be (preservation). It is complete, yet ongoing.

Salvation is by grace and through faith. (See Eph. 2:8)

The grace makes it once sealed and forever secure; the faith makes salvation active.

Continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose. (Phil. 2:12b)

The Grace that drew me to Him guarantees my salvation positionally, and faith serves to deepen my relationship with Him, thus allowing He who began a good work to carry it on to completion, bringing Himself the Glory He rightly deserves.

It is such a small role we play... it is His calling Grace and His work in us, yet He lets the faith of a mustard seed, in imperfect and stubborn human beings, display His goodness to the world.