Steven Cole has a good discussion on salvation writing…
As I’ve often said, salvation is a radical word. You don’t need saving if you’re in pretty good shape. All you need then is a little help. You need saving when you’re perishing and are helpless to save yourself. The Bible uses a number of metaphors to show that we are desperately helpless and unable to save ourselves.
It says that we were dead in our sins (Eph. 2:1; John 11).
It pictures us as blind (John 9; 2 Cor. 4:4), lost (Luke 15), leprous (Luke 5:12-14), crippled (Luke 5:18-25), deaf (Mark 7:31-35), and hardened in our hearts (Eph. 4:18).
Salvation means that God came to us while we were His sinful enemies (Rom. 5:8, 10), rescued us from our helpless condition, and gave us new life as His free gift.
As William Hendriksen put it (New Testament Commentary, 1 & 2 Timothy, Titus [Baker], p. 232), “God has delivered us from the greatest of all evils and he has placed us in possession of the greatest of all blessings.”