Do You Need to Be Saved?

Living Faith is a declaration of faith of the Presbyterian Church. You can download it at presbyterian.ca. We suggest you read the passage being discussed each month.
Additional reading:
How Does Jesus Save? (September 2009) and Sola Fide (April 2012).

Living Faith 3.6 (Salvation in Christ)

I was sitting in my office looking out at teenagers making their way to school. I thought to myself, “How many of them think about salvation? How many of them believe that the thing they need most deeply, beyond success in their studies, their relationships, their future, is salvation by God?” And yet, the opening words of Living Faith 3.6 are all about salvation. The statement never questions whether anyone cares about salvation. Following our Presbyterian forbearers, Living Faith considers the bigger question of how we are saved, not whether we care or ever worry about it. It makes me realize how different the times are in which we live compared to the times of the Protestant reformers. Using the example of the apostle Paul, they developed the kind of language we find in this section: “Salvation comes from God’s grace alone received through faith in Christ. From all eternity, and through no merit on our part …. we are made acceptable to God. Before the world was made we were chosen … predestined to be like Christ and to serve God.” This is powerful stuff… unless, of course, we just don’t care.

In the time of our forbearers there was no question that people were hungry for salvation and anxious about it. The real debate was focused on how it happened, not whether it was of ultimate concern. People had to be taught right doctrine about God, themselves and the world, about their relationship to God and God’s intention and will for them as human beings. This was of ultimate concern.

In Jesus’ day it was a little different. While still concerned about the how of salvation, there was little distinction between the spiritual and the material dimensions of life. Most people were concerned about the tyranny of domination by Romans, religious aristocrats, corrupt kings, legalistic religious and militant nationalists, about food, clothing, shelter, social safety and stability. The devil and his minions tormented people’s bodies as much as their souls. Salvation was of ultimate concern for them, too, and they needed a messiah to save them.

But we don’t live in Jesus’s day or the day of the reformers. We live today in a more prosperous part of the world, where the problems and challenges of life are often hidden beneath anxieties about making it, living our passion in relationships and careers, having enough to retire comfortably, freedom to travel and do other things we want to do … But do we need salvation?

As a preacher who is working out my theology week by week wrestling with the scriptures and my own experiences and those of my people, I’ve come to some realizations at this stage of the journey. Jesus says that he came not for those who are well but for those who are broken in some way and know they need healing; that it is those who are forgiven much who love much; that he came not to call the “righteous” but “sinners” to repentance and forgiveness—salvation. The word salvation itself comes from older words related to healing and making whole. This means that unless someone recognizes they need healing and wholeness and that this is of ultimate concern, then salvation has little significance for them.

I’ve come to realize that we live as Christian communities in a time akin to that of Jesus; those who are broken or fully consciousness of their vulnerability will hunger for the healing and wholeness of salvation. It is those who recognize their limits and yearn for communion with a great Other, and with others who are also in touch with their vulnerability, who will embrace worship and recognize their need for a spiritual community centred on the gospel. Those who are successful, popular, happy all the time (or who don’t want to face reality), those who feel strong, confident, safe and secure will not be compelled by the gospel in the same way. Maybe we know something about the reality of the human condition that they don’t?

Well, what many of us realize is that recognizing our need for healing and wholeness may be the catalyst to the salvation of God. And this journey through healing to salvation may lead us to begin to see ourselves and our world in a whole new way. We may begin to discover abundance, beauty, peace, hope and love not outside but through our brokenness, vulnerability and fragility. Not by denying it or running away from it but by developing courage, wisdom, insight, compassion and generosity through which we may discover ourselves before God and see God working in us to mend our vulnerable, broken world. Is this not what the cross of Christ is all about?

So, what does it mean to be chosen, predestined, called to an eternal purpose and all that? Perhaps it’s about the joyous experience of having been found in our need and transformed on our journey so that we become partners with God and others in community, reaching out to the world in compassionate service, inviting others to friendship in a fellowship of salvation.

What about those young people walking to school? Could some of them discover they need something all their schooling, success, popularity and health can never provide? Can they realize that the deepest yearning in them is for something only God can give? That they are really in need of spiritual healing and wholeness, that they are vulnerable and fragile, that the richest beauty and love in them can only flourish when they offer up their created potential in the service of a God who calls them and has a dream for them that is much larger than the small dreams this world teaches them to go after?

We hope and we pray. But we gather to worship and listen for the healing, saving word of God in our vulnerable, fragile communities, rejoicing that we have been called and destined by God for glory through no power of our own, but by sheer grace beyond comprehension. What a treasure to share with those who are hungry for some really good news … For salvation!