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Category: Salvation (Page 24 of 34)

Groaning. Still.

June 26, 2012 / / 0 Comments

“We ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait.” ~Romans 8:23

Our Scriptures do not hide the fact that disciples of the Christ do suffer. In fact, the Bible highlights it. As people who identify with and follow the One who came to overturn the values of this world, we’re going to inevitably share in the rejection and the trials Jesus suffered himself. Creation groans. We groan. The Spirit groans.

That’s just the way it is.

Committed Christian living always rubs the world the wrong way at some point. And it leads to suffering. But those sufferings — which are happening right now and are very real — don’t even begin to compare to the glory, which is also a very present and very real thing.

The glory already exists. It’s already a done deal. It’s just not fully given to us yet. It’s just not fully revealed to us yet.

Not yet.

We live in the tension of Scripture’s “already, but not yet.” The Kingdom of God, our eternal salvation, the defeat of sin and death, our Lord’s ultimate reign — it’s here. It’s already happened. And, at the same time, it’s all still to come. So we wait. And while we wait, we groan.

“We hope for what we do not yet have and we wait for it patiently.” ~Romans 8:25

Lord, come quickly.

Allan

Our Lord’s Patience Means Salvation

June 21, 2012 / / 2 Comments

For some reason — from the very beginning, in fact; check Genesis 3 — we have always decided that we know better than God.

We decided that God’s limits on us were oppressive. We rebel against our Creator and we sin. We blame Satan. We blame each other. We rationalize our actions and justify our sins. We argue with God about it. And in our sin, he clothes us. He covers us. He protects us and provides for us.

We kill our brother. And God puts a mark on us so we won’t be destroyed.

Every other chapter in Judges paints a dark picture of the rebellion of God’s people. They only do what’s right in their own eyes. They’re worshiping Ba’al; this is no little thing; this is full-blown apostacy. They forsake the Lord. They turn their backs on him. And God delivers them again and again and again. Even the deliverers are lousy. Barak refuses to obey God so Deborah gets the credit. Jepthah was a fugitive outlaw who sacrificed his daughter. I can’t find one redeeming thing about Samson. Even Gideon made a golden idol out of the people’s earrings. And God keeps rescuing his people. Again and again.

We see it all through the kings and the prophets: idolatry and rebellion and sin, pride and arrogance and defiance, doubt and disbelief. And, again, it’s been this way from the start.

After God makes a covenant with Noah, Noah gets drunk and naked. After the covenant with Abraham, Abraham panics and takes Hagar so he can have a son. God makes vows to Israel and they respond by building a golden calf before the words on the tablets can even set. After the covenant with David, the great king attempts to break all Ten Commandments in one weekend — and nearly does!

After 1,500 years of these adulteries, surely the Lord our God is going to sue for divorce. Certainly he’s going to destroy these ungrateful, unfaithful, stubborn people and start over. Or just quit.

No. The Lord our God sends Jesus. In an act of astonishing grace and incredible patience he sends his Son.

He. Sends. Jesus.

“He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” ~2 Peter 3:9

Our God is eternal. He always was and always will be. God is more than willing to let entire centuries go by, to let whole milennia pass, as he carefully works out his eternal purposes.

God is still patient. God is still waiting. He is patiently waiting for people to repent. He doesn’t want anyone to perish. He wants everybody to be saved. In Romans 2, Paul says it’s this patience of God, the richness of his kindness and tolerance and patience that leads to repentance. God’s patience is a big part of what saves us! In 1 Timothy 2, we’re told that God wants everybody to be saved. That’s why he waits. Praise God for his patience!

“Our Lord’s patience means salvation.” ~2 Peter 3:15

Peace,

Allan

Discover the Good News

May 8, 2012 / / 0 Comments

We’re exploring chapter by chapter Leroy Garrett’s “What Must the Church of Christ Do to Be Saved?”  In our increasingly post-denominational, post-Christian world, Garrett writes that we must make some significant changes if we are to remain a truly viable tool for God. The fifteenth of those suggestions is to center and focus our preaching and teaching and living on salvation from God in Christ, not on church ordinances and church histories and church rules.

Discover the Good in the Good News

Garrett points to the New Testament sermons of Peter and Paul and observes that they were centered on Christ and him crucified. They were all about God’s grace and his free gift of eternal life in the risen Jesus. New Testament sermons are about God’s great love as it’s revealed in the life, death, and resurrection of his Holy Son. That’s the Gospel! That’s the Good News! Jesus died for the sins of the world to redeem the world back into a righteous relationship with God!

Garrett says it’s wrong to preach sermons about baptism for seven straight nights and then call it a Gospel Meeting. But that’s what we’ve done.

Recent studies by some of our own scholars reveal that there has not been much good news in what we have called “gospel preaching.” In a 1988 article in the Gospel Advocate, F. W. Mattox explains that Church of Christ preachers have left it to “denominational preachers” to preach grace, faith, and the atonement while they “went about straightening out their misunderstandings of the place, action, and order of faith, repentance, and baptism in obtaining church membership.” Mattox notes that while others preached the atonement of Christ but not baptism, we preached baptism but not the atonement of Christ.

Garrett cites a study conducted by Bill Love in which Restoration Movement sermons from the early 1800s through the 1950s were analyzed for content. Compared to the 33 sermons found in the New Testament in which all 33 centered on the atoning death and resurrection of Jesus, our own Church of Christ sermons are embarrassingly weak. Love found the cross and empty tomb mentioned in only 25-percent of the hundreds of sermons he studied.

According to Love, 56% of the sermons during the Stone and Campbell generation contained the Gospel. But that number falls to 23% during the G. C. Brewer and Foy Wallace era. In the first two generations, before the Churches of Christ became a separate group, preachers referred to the cross an average of 52% of the time. Since then, the rate falls to 25%. Love’s conclusion is that “our focus moved from Christ crucified to his church, a subtle but destructive shift. Once our sickness took hold, we grew weaker and weaker, more and more anemic. Without the gospel, we lost the source of our faith.”

Yes, I’m afraid we have been guilty of diligently studying the Scriptures and believing that by them we have eternal life. At some point, sooner not later, we need to start preaching and teaching again that salvation is not found in the Bible, it’s found in the One to whom the Bible points. Forgiveness and reconciliation and eternal life are not found in the church, but in the One the church worships and serves. We’ve been guilty of maintaining a religion when we should have been maintaining a relationship with the Savior of the world.

More to Garrett’s point, he closes this chapter by claiming there are two “gospels” we can preach:

We can tell the world it is lost and must repent to be saved. Or we can tell the world what the Bible says, that just as in Adam all died so in Christ are all made alive, that all people are saved, so one only needs to accept the free gift. We can look at the world and say every one is lost except those the Bible says will be saved, or we can look at the world and say every one is saved except those the Bible says will be lost. Which is good news: You are lost, therefore repent; or You are saved, won’t you accept it?

The Church of Christ has had it backwards and has consequently preached bad news. We have preached that every one is lost, while the Bible teaches that every one is saved. Every one is saved except those who refuse the free gift.

Let’s preach the glorious good news. God has saved you through Christ, taking away all your sins. Won’t you accept it through faith and baptism?

Peace,

Allan

Be Assured of Salvation

April 30, 2012 / / 0 Comments

The Mavericks played the absolutely best game they possibly could have Saturday night and still lost to the Thunder in OKC. Durant and his boys are going to take it in five games. Last night Derek Holland looked overmatched, Josh Hamilton pulled something in his back, Ron Washington got tossed out of the game on his 60th birthday, and the Rangers lost their first series since last fall. And the Cowboys used their top draft pick on a guy who just set the record for the lowest score on the Wonderlic intelligence exam in NFL draft history. Tough weekend.

~~~~~~~

Let’s resume our chapter-by-chapter look at Leroy Garrett’s “What Must the Church of Christ Do to Be Saved?” The book is a compilation of suggestions Garrett makes for us if the Church of Christ is to have a redemptive role and an effective ministry in our rapidly changing world. We reach the halfway point of the book today with suggestion number ten:

Have an assurance of our own salvation.

Garrett claims that our members “do not know we are saved; we hope we are.” I know what he’s talking about. I hear it all the time. My own brothers and sisters in Christ talk about their eternal salvation in hesitant, halting, uncertain terms. “I hope I am.” “I pray that I am.” “If God will just give me a tiny back corner in the basement of heaven, I’ll be happy.” “I’m trying as hard as I can.”

The by-product of such uncertainty is a lack of joy. One thing Church of Christ people aren’t, in spite of many noble qualities, is a joyous people. We have little joy because we have little assurance. We don’t talk like people who are assured of their salvation. We don’t sing that way. We don’t pray that way. That is why our singing is unexciting, our prayers dull, and our services generally boring. Take a look at our Sunday morning service at most any of our churches. Is it a funeral? Where is the spontaneity? Where is the joyous excitement of being a Christian? Who would seek solace from a troubled world among folk who go at their religion with a yawn and a sigh?

Garrett says Church of Christ people are scared to live and afraid to die. We have no joy because we’re not really one hundred percent sure we’re good with God. Despite the clear teachings of Holy Scripture, our people have doubts and fears about their standing with God. They’re uncertain. They wonder if they’re doing enough. They wonder if they’re good enough. They wonder if they’ve loved enough or served enough or worked enough. (By the way, the answer to those questions is “No, no, no, no, and no.”)

Garrett’s dead-on analysis is that we really don’t believe in the grace of God. We would never say it, but the reality is that, for the most part, Church of Christ folks actually believe in salvation by works. We’re taught this at an early age. We think and talk this way. We practice this way. It’s been unambiguously modeled for us and by us for decades. Seriously.

We are saved by being baptized in exactly the correct way for exactly the right reasons. We stay saved by taking communion on exactly the correct day — and only on that correct day — in exactly the correct way. We keep ourselves saved and we save others by studying our Bibles and reaching the exact same correct conclusions about all the exact same doctrines. This is what makes us unique. This is what makes us distinctive. This is what sets us apart from all the others. We’ve got it down right. And since we know so much about God’s plan and God’s will, we’d better be about doing it exactly right.

No wonder we’re so uncertain and nervous! Who could possibly measure up to all that? If I’ve misunderstood a part of that doctrine or I’ve misinterpreted part of God’s will or I’ve done something in a worship service that’s not entirely in the proper order, then my salvation must be in jeopardy. I’d better figure things out and get right with God.

We must start believing in the Gospel of the grace of God, the basis of which is that salvation is his free gift to us. There is no work that we can perform to attain it. There is no way for us to buy it. We can’t be good enough to deserve it. There is no power that can wrest it. It is a gift, a free gift, that is ours only because of God’s philanthropy. In short, we must come to see what has been in holy Scripture all along: “By grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God” (Ephesians 2:8).

“[God] has saved us and called us to a holy life — not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given to us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time.” ~2 Timothy 1:9

“I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him for that day.” ~2 Timothy 1:12

“He saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy.” ~Titus 3:5

“To him who is able to keep you from falling and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy!” ~Jude 24

Look, I don’t believe in “once saved, always saved;” but I sure don’t believe either in “once saved, barely saved.” We are saved by God’s grace. We are redeemed by his mercy. It’s a free gift from our Father. And if we can ever all get our brains and our hearts and our souls around that, we’ll be freed from our own hangups to live and praise and worship and serve with great gladness and joy. Finally, we’ll be able to forgive people we haven’t been able to forgive before because we’ll be drawing on God’s goodness instead of our own. Finally, we’ll be able to accept those we’ve never been able to accept before because we’ll be depending on Jesus’ righteousness and not our own. We’ll be able to love every man, woman, and child on this planet in ways we’ve never been able to love before because we’ll be experiencing God’s unconditional love in our lives and not applying our own very conditional love to others.

It’ll be a huge shift for us. Huge. Radical. Dramatic. It’ll change us. It’ll mature us and grow us up. And it will have an eternal impact on those around us who just might see Christ in the Church of Christ for the very first time.

Peace,

Allan

Another Word on Arminius

February 29, 2012 / / 1 Comment

With Calvinism and Calvinistic theology popping up here and there more often in conversations I’m having with people inside and outside Christ’s Church, it’s good for me to be able to clearly articulate the differences between Calvin and Arminius doctrine. We’re certainly not going to solve any five hundred year old debates in this space, but writing helps me speak. So…

…another word.

What Jacob Arminius believed and taught about God’s love and grace all goes back to Creation. The creation of the world was God’s very first act of divine love and grace. Creation was for the good of mankind; it was for the benefit of people. The ultimate benefit of people is to live in righteous relationship with the Father, to have eternal communion with him. And that’s why we were created. God’s covenant with man, “I will dwell among you; you will be my people and I will be your God,” reflects his holy purposes in making us in the first place.

According to John Calvin and other Reformed theologists, a big chunk of humanity was (is) created for the purposes of destruction. Others contend that large numbers of men and women were (are) created by God and then passed over without hope or any divine intention of salvation. Arminius says, no, God’s will is for all men to be saved.

As my brother Keith put it Friday in his opening presentation on Arminian theology:

“God’s love for fallen humanity is not simply a love for justice or a vague sense of affection toward reprobate humans; it is a desire to communicate the eternal benefits of Christ to the entire race. In addition, in giving freedom to creation, God limits himself. The Reformed would stress radical divine omnipotence. Arminius would stress the divine self-limitation.”

It was risky for God to create me. He put himself on the line by making me and giving me the free will to obey or rebel, to accept or to reject, to love or to hate, to give life or to kill. In his great love for us that allows us to choose, he came to this earth to suffer with us, to die for us, to defeat sin and death in us, so we could enjoy that eternal communion with him that was intended from the beginning. He did (does) all that; and the majority of us still spit in his face. He certainly has the power to force us to accept his gifts of grace. He has the almighty power to do it. But to elect someone who is unwilling would be as unjust as damning someone who had never sinned. So we can accept his salvation or not. By his great grace, we can say “yes.” Because of his eternal love for us and the high regard he has for us as human beings made in his perfect image, we can also say “no.”

Arminius believed God’s grace does everything for us that Calvin believed it does. Everything. God’s grace is absolutely necessary for us to do any good, to make any right decision, to save us. It’s just that Arminius says the grace from God is resistible. Eternal salvation is ultimately the refusal to resist.

And that frees me to love my fellow man just as unconditionally and in just as many risky ways as my Father. It’s risky to love other people. It’s risky to give and give and give and give to people who may spit in your face. When we love and give in the manner of God and in the name his Christ, we’re going to get rejected. People are going to break our hearts. They’re going to resist our mercy and grace. But we keep giving and keep loving. We don’t stop. When we keep giving and loving at risk of great personal or corporate peril, we reflect the glory of our Father who saves you and me by the same gracious methods. We’re not allowed to pick and choose the ones we love. We’re not allowed to pre-determine who’s going to accept the good news of salvation and who’s not. Like our Lord, our will and our work is that all men will be saved.

Peace,

Allan

On Arminius

February 27, 2012 / / 1 Comment

(It was very strange to leave Love Field in Dallas following my layover last night to head “home” to Amarillo. Amarillo is my home. Strange. I found myself in the Love Field terminal defending the merits of living in Amarillo to a guy who just moved here from Denver four months ago. I was defending Amarillo. Strange. And when I got off the plane at Rick Husband and smelled the little bit of “cow” in the air, it felt… comfortable. Familiar. No cowboy boots or ten gallon hat. No belt buckle yet the size of a cookie platter. But Amarillo is home. Strange.)

Following four days with the world’s foremost scholars on Arminian theology, I have a new appreciation for Jacob Arminius and, surprisingly, the way he has shaped us. Most of us don’t even know his name. But we are deeply connected to his ways of viewing God and thinking about salvation. The longer the conference went on at Point Loma, the more I came to realize that I’m preaching this stuff. I’m already teaching this stuff. These are the things I’ve believed most of my life.

Keith summarized Arminian thought by laying out the five articles of the Remonstrance of 1610 — basically a defense of Arminius’ teachings by his students and followers just a few weeks after his death:

1) God chose to save through Jesus Christ all those who through grace would believe in him and persevere to the end.

2) Jesus Christ obtained forgiveness of sins sufficient for all.

3) Fallen humanity can think or do nothing that is truly good by free will.

4) God’s grace, which is not irresistible, is necessary for thinking or doing any good.

5) True believers are enabled by grace to persevere to the end, and it may be possible to lose this grace.

These five articles became the focus of almost a full decade of disputes and debates and conferences aimed at refuting them point by point, resulting finally in the canons of the Synod of Dort in 1619 that became for all of the Netherlands and much of Europe part of the confessional creeds. In the 400 years since, today, and for the next 400 years, I suppose, the discussions between Calvinists and Arminians will be along these same five lines.

Why does this matter? How is any of it really important? Well, how do you think about God? How do you respond to your salvation from God in Christ? The ways you view Christ’s salvation and God’s love and grace will, in large part, determine your Christian response.

These points of Arminian theology have everything to do with the questions we wrestle with all the time. For example, we know that our God is active and involved in our lives; we also know we are not just programmable robots. How do you reconcile that? We’ve all known wonderfully sacrificial servants of Christ, true disciples of our Lord, who, at death’s door, are not certain they are really saved; and others who are so certain of their eternal salvation that they believe their continued lives of sin and refusal to repent will result in no ill consequences. Where’s the correct ground between this hopelessness and carelessness?

The way we think informs the way we live.

God loves all mankind. He created us out of love and he desires that all men and women be saved to live with him in eternity, face to face. God provides the atonement for our transgressions in the sacrifice and resurrection of his Son, the atonement for all mankind. Every sin that’s ever been committed or thought and every sin that will ever be committed or thought has been paid for. Forgiven. Completely. And God’s grace to believe the Gospel story, God’s grace to put faith in Christ Jesus, God’s grace to live a life worthy of that salvation is available to all. To everybody. In equal measure. But God loves us too much to force us to do anything. He’s not going to make you. He’ll push you and compel you, his grace will cause you to know you must put your trust in him, his grace has opened your eyes to him. But he won’t force you. He won’t possess you to make you do something against your will. He loves you too much.

God loves and desires and works to save all; not just some. That’s the Christian confession. From day one.

And it motivates me to live for my Lord. It moves me to live a life of eternal gratitude to my Father. It pushes me to be serious about forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead; pressing on; attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ; adding to my faith in increasing measure. It means I, too, love and desire and work to save all; not just some. It challenges me to live in God’s grace every moment of every day, to accept his grace every hour, to give glory to God for this grace that saves me. To me, it puts all the focus and glory on a gracious Father who moves heaven and earth, who breaks through the barriers of time and space, to deliver me in all my sin. I live for that God.

Thanks, Jake!

Peace,

Allan

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