From time to time some earnest soul will ask me, “Are you saved?” There is a biblically correct answer to that question: “I have been saved. I am being saved, and I will be saved.” It would make an excellent Bible study to investigate the past, present and future aspects of salvation. Check it out for yourself.
The correct answer seems a little long, however, so I usually just say: “Yes!” There must be something unfortunate about my personality, or perhaps the problem is with the kind of person who asks that question, but my questioners never seem to believe me. “But when?” they will ask in a challenging tone. I know what this really means. The questioner wants to ask, “When did you commit your life to the Lord Jesus as your personal Saviour?” He or she wants to know the particular point, at a crusade, for example, at which I made a decision for Christ. The assumption seems to be that I have never done so and they are ready to help me make that decision. Now, I could give an answer to this question also: “The summer I was 16 at the Scott Mission Camp, sitting on the diving board with the camp director.” That’s when a merely inherited family faith became real to me. I am not convinced, however, that this answer, though certainly vital for me, is the most important one.
The great Swiss theologian Karl Barth was reportedly asked this question, too. His response was: “On a Friday afternoon, in the spring, outside the city of Jerusalem, in about the year 30 AD.” That’s a better answer. A good Calvinist might even echo the letter to the Ephesians and say, “Before the foundation of the world,” in the will and purpose of our gracious God (1:4). These answers suppose, rightly, that salvation is not primarily our work or the consequence of our own choices, important though those choices doubtless are. We were saved not by those choices or decisions but by what God has done for us in Jesus. Our choice of God is made only in response to God’s choice of us. In fact, it would not be possible to choose God if God had not already chosen us in Jesus Christ.
The good news is not really that I committed my life to the Lord Jesus Christ, significant though that is in my autobiography. It is that the Lord Jesus committed his life to me, and to the world… and to you.
It may be that we undervalue the individual choice to follow Jesus. Certainly few of us are very good at inviting others to make that decision, hopefully more tactfully than my questioners. But the basic instinct of the Reformed tradition is to speak first and most gladly of what God has done, is doing, and will do for us. And that instinct may be our most important characteristic.
A last thought: the Apostle Paul describes the way we come into a full relationship with God through the picture of adoption. I have been told that in a family where there is an adopted child as well as biological children, the adopted child will eventually ask the mother whether she loves the adopted child as much as the ones born from her body. There is a right answer to that question also. “Of course I love you. I chose you.” And that is what God says to us.
