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October 16, 2005
When Does Salvation Happen?
Heidelberg Catechism, Q 21
I Chronicles 16: 23-36
Romans 10: 1-15
October 16th, 2005
The September 5th issue of Newsweek magazine devoted a cover story to Spirituality in America. This land of ours seethes with religion because people are looking for “salvation.” They may not use the word “salvation,” but they are looking for something that gives coherence to their lives right now. Salvation means wholeness, soundness of soul. And they are looking literally everywhere—from Christianity to Wicca and everywhere in between.
Rick Warren’s best-seller, The Purpose Driven Life struck a nerve with many Christians because it offers a simple, coherent guide to life here and now—in forty days, in fact—for those who had not found this guide in the church as they knew it. Forty days was how long Jesus was in the desert before his ministry began. Forty days of purpose can usher us into a lifetime of purposeful living. It is a good idea.
I can’t think of a period of my life when people were more hungry for any clue they can find to the purpose of life and more impatient with the old means by which the Gospel has been passed along. This longing I think stands behind the remarkable success of the Mormon Church, a relatively new player on the stage of religion. There are many of their ideas about God and life that I find curious and contrary to Scripture, but there is no question that Mormons are fine people. In two hundred years those good people have pulled themselves together into a remarkable community, distinctly a cut above ordinary American living.
The most recent issue of Newsweek devoted the cover story to the amazing growth of the Mormon Church. The ninety-five year-old president of the Mormon Church, Gordon Hinckley, explained the reason for this rapid growth:
“We live in a world of shifting values. The family is falling apart. Parents failing in what they ought to do. And they find in this church something that expects something of people, that has standards and holds to those standards and speaks of requirements and definitions and so on. And they find here a rock that is solid and strong and true and isn’t wavering with every gust of wind.
But there is something in the Bible’s message of salvation that I don’t hear in the air when I listen to the varieties of guidance in the religious marketplace. Something clearly a part of the Bible’s guidance has blown away.
It seems almost stodgy to bring this up. But at the heart of the Bible’s message is the fact that salvation is not merely following a good guide for living. Indeed, the Law that God gave through Moses was a remarkable guide to good living. But it wasn’t enough. The Bible teaches us that there is this fundamental problem that it calls sin. Both the Jews who had the Law and the Gentiles who did not have it sinned. Why bring up that word again? What is sin? The Second Helvetic Confession, one of the earliest of our Reformed confessions of faith, describes sin as “that innate corruption of man which has been derived or propagated in us all from our first parents.” The Westminster Shorter Catechism describes sin as “Any want of conformity to or transgression of the law of God.” Scripture tells us simply: “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” But we like better to hear good things about ourselves than to be told we may have defects.
Has sin gone out of date? Whereas we love to sing “Amazing Grace that saved a wretch like me,” we’re not big into thinking of ourselves as sinners. Sure, we make mistakes, but let’s not call them sins. Nowhere has Screwtape been more successful among church people than in promoting the idea that sin is out-of-date. I hear in church circles these days a lot of interest in affirmation, but a distinct distaste for the idea that God might need to forgive us our sin and change us. We much prefer to hear that God loves us just as we are and expects no change at all in us.
Thus sin, this deep contaminant of human nature that has brought untold suffering and separated us from God is treated as though it does not even exist. We have lived trying to get comfortable with this profound flaw in us. But how much hinges on acknowledging that something is deeply wrong in us.
If we think we have not sinned, we feel no need of forgiveness. We may repeat prayers of confession as routine parts of a worship service—because we’ve always done it that way--while feeling no need for forgiveness. If we have no sense of need for forgiveness what need do we have for Jesus Christ? Someone said to me at the last meeting of our presbytery, “Jesus Christ has become our mascot instead of our Master.” When she said this to me I was startled with how perceptive she was.
All the trappings of Christianity are front and center, but the fact that Jesus died to forgive us our sin has been buried beneath the verbiage. That He asks us to follow Him as master and Lord seems often to be a bit of pious jargon. Has Jesus become the mascot of the church rather than the Master? We balk at the idea of being told to do what does not come naturally.
I hear quite some talk of the cross these days and have oddly been charged with not thinking the cross is important. Indeed, the cross is the basic Christian symbol. But of what use is the cross if we forget that the cross owes its whole existence to the fact of my sin and yours.
In early Reformed church architecture there was quite some fascination with the rooster because it is a reminder that Peter denied Jesus three times before the rooster crowed that morning of Jesus’ trial. Roosters instead of crosses appeared on steeple tops of some Reformed churches. The rooster reminds me of my need for the cross.
We may be fascinated with the cross as a Christian symbol and forget our sin that required Jesus’ death there.
Isaac Watts gave us a wholesome perspective on the cross:
When I survey the wondrous cross
on which the Prince of glory died,
my richest gain I count but loss,
and pour contempt on all my pride.
And then the last stanza:
Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were an offering far too small,
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all.
One of the great documents in our heritage was written in a time of great conflict after the Reformation was well enough established for the reformers to start to quarrel. How confusing it was in the part of Germany where Lutheran and Reformed Christians fought each other over which kind of Reformation Christianity would be followed. In 1563 the Elector Frederick III, nicknamed “the Pious,” asked two young men in Heidelberg to write a catechism for the instruction of the young. They were confused at the fighting going on between Christians. So the pastor of the Holy Spirit Church in Heidelberg, Caspar Olevianus, and a young theology teacher at the university, Zacharias Ursinus, wrote a gentle-spirited catechism to make clear the things of God.
In the section of the Heidelberg Catechism we remembered this morning they wanted young people to know precisely what it means to have faith in Jesus Christ. They wrote that “true faith is a wholehearted trust that the Holy Spirit creates in us through the Gospel that it is not only to others but to me also that God has given the forgiveness of sin.” Faith is not something out there, a vague idea hovering like a fog over the Church. Faith is something in the heart that God creates through the hearing of the Gospel. I hear that Christ died for my sins, and something in me responds to this good news. I will not respond if I think I have not sinned. But if I know and acknowledge what I’m like, what a blessing to know in Christ I am forgiven.
When you and I have acknowledged that we need God’s forgiveness and have asked God to forgive our sin, then we have entered into that condition before God that the Bible calls “salvation.” This offers us not only peace of mind as we approach death, but guidance for a purpose-driven life now. When Christ is in our hearts by faith, we know we live in the presence of God.
This morning we read King David’s ecstatic words when the Ark of the Covenant was brought to Jerusalem. The Ark of the Covenant represented the presence of God. It is such a happy part of the Bible. “Sing to the Lord, all the earth! Tell of his salvation from day to day . . . Honor and majesty are before Him; strength and joy are in His place . . . Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice . . . Let the sea roar, and all that fills it, let the field exult, and everything in it . . . O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures for ever.”
The key to David’s joy in this psalm, that is included in the Book of Psalms, was the vivid sense of living in the presence of God. The visual symbol of God’s presence was the Ark, but it was not just that gilded box that made David happy. When he looked at it his eyes were drawn from all the vain things that charmed him usually. He was wealthy. He was powerful. He had his pick of the most beautiful women of the realm. He had everything an oriental king could claim as his right.
But none of these things could begin to compare with the delight of knowing he lived in the presence of God. In the 27th Psalm he confessed his faith, “One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I see after, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to enjoy the beauty of the Lord and to enquire in His temple.”
Through the ages Christians have built beautiful churches to try to capture the sense of what David describes here. When you and I go into a majestic cathedral, or perhaps when you enter this quiet and simple sanctuary, if your heart is so set you can feel the presence of God. But God is not restricted to a place. Whereas God in some way was locally present between the outstretched wings of the cherubim on top of the Ark of the Covenant, He was not restricted to that place. The skies and the sea and mountains and valleys and all else that God created rejoiced in God because God inhabited all His creation. Indeed, as David put it in the 139th Psalm, there was nowhere he could escape the presence of God.
Wholeness of life, living in a state of salvation means living in the continual awareness that we are in the presence of God. We may not be able to answer the question, “What would Jesus do?” But we can live in the sense of the presence of God—even if we are scrubbing pots and pans in the kitchen, as Brother Lawrence describes in his wonderful little devotional guide. The only condition in which you and I will feel out of sorts remembering we are in the presence of God is when we are doing what we know we ought not.
This is a real problem that faces us all.
In the section from Paul’s letter to the Romans we read a few minutes ago, the great Apostle laments for his people, the Jews, who had this remarkable tradition under-girding King David’s joy in the section we just read. What happened that the thrill in God’s presence that Israel enjoyed as God’s unique people disappeared? You and I who have been moved and quieted when visiting the great churches of the world have experienced only a fraction of what was available to ancient Israel. No cathedral could evoke the sense of God’s presence like the place where God was really present!
But Israel forfeited all this because it rejected the conditions of God’s continuing presence with them. Paul wrote of them, “They have a zeal for God, but it is not enlightened. They sought to establish their own idea of living rightly in place of submitting to God’s righteousness.” The nit-picking with the Law of God that gave Jesus fits with some of his fellow-Jews resulted in their straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel. They treated as important what was not and ignored the weighty matters of the way God revealed through Moses.
This was not unique to ancient Israel. We who have received the Gospel nudge that pure and simple Gospel to the side and become preoccupied with other things. Think of the matters that distress us! And so we need to let ourselves be reminded of the Gospel. We read with delight the words of Isaiah that anticipated the Gospel, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news.” How delightful that it should be there in the Old Testament. It proves our point that Christianity is the right way. But this is not the inference we need to draw. The appropriate response is faith that comes from hearing the preaching of Christ.
And the life of faith then, is a quiet and peaceful life in the presence of God. To the one who lives a quiet and peaceful life in the presence of God, it is obvious that salvation has come. Because there is soundness, health, and gratitude overflowing.
Each of us here would be glad to claim such a life. But it does not come to us as a deposit. Three hundred years ago John Bunyan wrote in prison his remarkable tale, The Pilgrim’s Progress, that so well displayed his awareness that after having come to Christ and received His forgiveness of our sin, he had entered on a pilgrimage. The Christian life is not holding onto a deposit of truth, but walking a long and difficult path.
In Bunyan’s story the pilgrim Christian could not see the wicket gate leading into heaven, but he could see faintly a light that shined through it. Evangelist tells him to follow that light. And so he tries to follow though he is distracted by his family, by Mr. Obstinate, by Mr. Pliable, by despond. Indeed, life is filled with distractions, which is why there are many people who realize they are “backsliders.” The popularity of Bunyan’s story since it was written in the 17th century has been because he taught us that the Christian life is a pilgrimage. We are either on our way or we are not.
Some of the troubles we experience either within ourselves or as we live in a community of faith such as this are due to the fact that we have not yet arrived at our destination. We’re still on our pilgrimage. Remember that salvation has three aspects. Our salvation was won long ago by Christ on the cross. But also we are being saved by the power of His life. And we shall be saved when we see Him as He is. This is the hope we have in the Gospel.
In conclusion may I say two things. First, if you have not trusted in Christ to forgive your sin and begun to call Him your Lord and Savior, I hope you will begin to be a Christian by doing so today. Second, if you are on the pilgrim way, be a faithful pilgrim, and a friendly fellow traveler to other pilgrims. Keep looking at the light. Be aware of how you can stumble and fall. And if you have stumbled and fallen, get up, claim again your forgiveness in Christ, and keep on going.
Let us pray: O Lord God, we thank you for the promise of the Gospel, that in Christ we have forgiveness of sin, and that we have in Him a way to walk, a life to live, a truth to trust and tell. Grant us not only to begin well but to continue the pilgrimage to which you have invited us. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Stuart D. Robertson, Pastor
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at October 16, 2005 09:30 AM