Saviour of the World

I was struck this evening while reading in the book of John how the Samaritans came to believe in Jesus as the "saviour of the world". Maybe it's just the wording that caught me, but it's an encompassing statement. If you want to know why Christians are so in your face about their religion, then this statement captures the spirit of their message. With so much emphasis on relativism and localisation of beliefs, here is a statement that one man - God within a man, but one physical man - is the be-all and end-all of creation. That's the first surprise of that statement; the second is the concept of "saviour". We would all like the world to be saved - in general I'd say people know something is wrong and that the world needs fixing. Some like to believe we can do it ourselves, despite our failings since the beginnings of our existence. Here is a man whose claim was to be the one to save the world as we so wished. This statement is a good starting place then for the question: who is this saviour of the world?