signs-thinking_about

Thinking about Salvation

Within a few months of my encounter with the Light, I

heard within me the words, “Preach Christ.” While the claim

that God does indeed still speak is central to all that follows,

this is the only time in my life that I can say I have “heard” the

voice of God.

The message “preach Christ” was profoundly difficult for

me. At that time in my life I distrusted preachers and didn’t

know much of Christ. But since the message was undeniable,

I knew that the direction of my life was set. First I had to gain

a language that would make preaching Christ even an intellectual

possibility. Words like “grace,” “sin,” and “salvation,” which

have already appeared in this introduction, were not unknown

to me—but they did not have any living content for me or for

people in the circles in which I moved.

Even more of an obstacle was my impression, as an outsider

to the evangelical church where I presumed such words were

current, that salvation was thought of primarily in terms of

personal “fire insurance.” I was repulsed by a concept of salvation

so individualistic and essentially selfish. Fear of a sulfurbelching

hell had never been a motivator for me or my friends.

Furthermore, in my experience, the churches that talked “salvation”

seemed unconcerned with—if not hostile to—the great

issues of peace, ecology, racism, equal rights, and economic justice.

If their notion of salvation wasn’t devoid of ethical content,

it seemed to be narrowly restricted to sexual prohibitions.

I’d seen surveys that claimed that the “born again” were ethically

indistinguishable from their “unsaved” brothers and sisters.

I had grown cynical about the reality of the salvation they

proposed because it seemed so foreign to the character of the

Jesus of whom I had read and of the life for which I yearned.

As I worked on the question of what it might mean to

“preach Christ,” I discovered something that must seem obvious:

the term “Christianity” actively embraces a huge spectrum

of ideas about even its most fundamental truths. Many ways

of thinking about the atoning work of Christ have found wide

acceptance in the history of the Christian church, and—this

really surprised me—in its basic creedal affirmations, the

church has made no effort to pin down the question of how

Christ’s death “saves.” What wisdom! As if any formulation

would be able to somehow “capture” the fullness of the breadth

and depth of what Jesus accomplished in his life, ministry,

death, and resurrection. And yet, I realized, how people conceive

of salvation influences both the way they live and how

they share their faith.

The range of thinking about the saving work of Christ has

often been summarized in four theories of the atonement: the

ransom theory, the satisfaction theory, the moral influence theory,

and the substitutionary theory. Each enjoys a measure of

biblical support. Each grows out of different understandings

of just what “sin” is and how God works in human lives.

According to the ransom theory, Christ’s death is the climax

of a cosmic drama in which Christ overcomes the forces

of evil. Satan has rights over humanity because of human sin

and evil. The law of justice requires that God cannot overlook

human evil—but out of love, God, in Christ, pays the penalty

owed to Satan because of it. Satan, however, discovers he has,

in a sense, been tricked: God’s love is greater than the law of

justice and, in the resurrection, life and love swallow up death

and hatred. God takes Satan captive.

The satisfaction theory bears close relationship to theories

of kingship that prevailed in the Middle Ages in Europe.

The holy God’s sovereign honor was so deeply offended by

humanity’s rebellion that it could never be satisfied by any human

effort or sacrifice. Jesus Christ, the sinless Son of God,

offered himself as the pure sacrifice, satisfying God’s offended

honor. This opened the channel for the communication of

God’s grace through the sacraments and for the operation of

the Holy Spirit in the lives of sinful men and women.

Often contrasted with the satisfaction theory, the moral

influence theory of the atonement emphasizes that Christ is

the great Teacher. Above all, by the sacrificial and selfless love

he displayed on the cross, Christ arouses a responsive love in

people of faith. It is this love on which our reconciliation and

forgiveness rest. The cross reveals how humanity rejects God’s

love, but also how God graciously overcomes that rejection.

When we allow that example to penetrate our hearts, our relationship

to God is transformed, and we have been saved.

The substitutionary theory of the atonement has been the

dominant formulation, particularly among evangelicals since

the Reformation. A recent formulation of it says in part:

God “justifies the wicked” . . . by imputing . . . righteousness

to them and ceasing to count their sins

against them (Rom. 4:1-8). Sinners receive through

faith in Christ alone “the gift of righteousness” (Rom.

1:17; 5:1; Phil. 3:9) and thus become “the righteousness

of God” in him who was “made sin” for them (2

Cor. 5:21).

As our sins were reckoned to Christ, so Christ’s

righteousness is reckoned to us. This is justification

by the imputation of Christ’s righteousness. All we

bring to the transaction is our need of it. . . .1

This is the theory behind “the four spiritual laws.” Because Jesus

substitutes his life for ours, when God looks at us he sees

only the purity of Jesus. Jesus pays the penalty for our sin on

the cross.

Each of these theories has its strengths and weaknesses. The

ransom theory glories in God’s sovereign power in the cosmic

conflict between good and evil but can seem distantly removed

from human experience. The moral influence theory, its flip

side, perceives Jesus as simply another great teacher, reducing

salvation to human effort. In contrast, the satisfaction theory

emphasizes the majesty and grace of God toward society as a

mass, as the substitutionary theory does toward the believer as

an individual, but these two theories, each in its own way, tend

to sever the atoning work of Christ from ethical transformation

and thus to undercut God’s demand of holiness.

In this book, I reflect on atonement through the lens of the

new covenant promise that was first articulated by the prophet

Jeremiah. My purpose is to find a way to describe salvation that

is more adequate to the whole biblical vision: the atoning work

of Jesus on the cross not only presents us as acceptable before

God by God’s declaration (justification), but actually changes

believers from the inside so that they begin to have in actuality

the righteousness that God requires (sanctification). In using

this approach, I am guided by the joyful cry of evangelicalism,

“by grace alone, through faith alone, because of Christ alone.”

Biblical salvation is based in grace and truth, thus fulfilling the

law of God.

I have found it helpful to concentrate on how the Bible uses

the terminology of salvation and to couch what I have to say

solely in biblical imagery and biblical language. In all that follows,

my text is littered with passages of scripture. This does

not mean that I (or anyone else) can avoid interpretation when

it comes to reading scripture or selecting which passages to

quote, so it is only fair to tell what principles I have used.

The first principle is that the canon of scripture, and the

text of scriptures as we have them now, are inspired by God

and are authoritative in matters of faith. Historical and critical

studies help us know how to read the texts but do not give us a

basis for choosing some texts as more authoritative or inspired

than others (nor for resorting to presumed earlier or more “authentic”

constructions). A second principle is my belief that the

texts should be read for what the words say; if a text is silent

on a question that interests us, we have to be content with the

silence. It is important to distinguish when the scriptures are

describing human actions and thoughts as opposed to when

they are attributing thoughts and actions to God. Finally, the

great thing is to “fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter

of our faith.” Jesus Christ is the interpretive key, and in him the

law and the prophets have their fulfillment.

While I would never claim to be a student of Karl Barth,

into whose great Church Dogmatics I have only dipped, I aspire

to approach scripture with his appreciation for the primacy of

the word of God in contrast to the demythologizing school

of his contemporary, Rudolf Bultmann. There is a story that,

once, during a lecture on the Book of Genesis, a student challenged

Barth with the question, “Do you yourself really believe

that the serpent spoke in the Garden of Eden?” Barth replied,

“In the end, whether the serpent spoke or not is not important;

what is important is what he said!” I hope to emulate the

intentional naiveté of that response.

Any truly adequate understanding of the saving work of

God must acknowledge that salvation wrenches believers out

of the alienation and isolation of their individual lives and

thrusts them into the great historic company of the people

whom God is blessing and forming to be a blessing to others.

Salvation is for individuals, but it is also a community enterprise.

Salvation is the root of personal righteousness, but it is

also the root of the social justice and peace for which the earth

longs.

I hope this book will be helpful to individuals and will also

provoke the formation of small groups to “walk in the Light”

together—opening up the inner places of their lives before

God and one another. To that end, I have attached two appendices

with materials that can be used by groups to carry

on exploration of the ideas found in the main text. The first

provides discussion questions for each chapter. The second

takes questions developed in my faith tradition—the Friends

church (also known as Quakers)—as a basis for what we call

“worship sharing.” I am confident that not only will piety and

love of God deepen, but holy boldness will enable believers to

seek together to shake off the personal and cultural “sin that so

easily entangles.”

It is all a gift from God. Love, life itself, and hope for a new

heaven and a new earth; none of this is our doing—it is all

grace. In the end, the thesis of this book is that the community

of those who are gathered together in this faith can become

the sign of God’s saving power, now and into eternity.

I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he

may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner

being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ

may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are

being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that you

may have the power to comprehend, with all the

saints, what is the breadth and length and height

and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses

knowledge, so that you may be filled with all

the fullness of God.

Now to him who by the power at work within us is

able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we

can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and

in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever.

Amen. (Ephesians 3:16-21, NRSV, my emphasis)

_______________________________

1 “The Gospel of Jesus Christ: An Evangelical Celebration,” in

R. C. Sproul, Getting the Gospel Right: The Tie That Binds Evangelicals

Together, Baker Books, 1999, Appendix 2.

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