I didn't grow up in the Presbyterian Church. I grew up in a denomination where questions like are you saved? and statements like, "You need to get saved," and "I'm saved," were uttered almost every time we gathered. It wasn't until many years after I had been adopted into the Presbyterian family that I came to understand that a better way to talk about what these people were referring to is to say "I, we, You are 'being' saved."
The difference is important and so I thought I would write a bit about being saved. There are actually two things that most Christians believe is happening because of what Jesus has done. Those who trust Jesus as Lord and Savior, are "justified" and they are "sanctified."
Justification is the forgiveness, the "slate wiped clean," part of what Jesus did for all those who follow him. Justification is a part of what happened when Jesus lived and died descended into Hell and was raised again. There are several, "theories of atonement," that try to describe how Jesus' life, death and resurrection justifies us, makes us clean and wipes away all sins for those who believe in Jesus. Each one is descriptive and satisfying in some ways and incomplete and troubling in other ways. Still Christian people agree that it makes a difference that Jesus lived and died and was raised from the dead. Presbyterian belief is that Justification is effective once and for all. Jesus didn't just die for the sins that were committed up to the point when you profess your faith in Jesus. If you accept Jesus' free gift of forgiveness you have accepted forgiveness for sins past, present and future.
The Bible also teaches that God was not just interested in accepting and forgiving me "Just as I Am," and leaving me in the condition in which I was found. That would be sort of like finding a poor and hungry person and saying to them, "God loves you. You are forgiven for your sins." and walking away from them. We do that sort of thing. We have a different understanding of how God relates to those who are mugged by sin and left to die on the side of the road.
I have heard many Christian people say, when they are talking about justification and sanctification, that God loves us enough to accept us just as we are. However, God loves us too much to leave us that way. Not leaving us the way that God found us is the part of the salvation that is called sanctification. In one sense those who are being saved can talk about their sanctification in the past tense. They have been sanctified because of their association with Jesus. His goodness and perfection is substituted for their imperfection and corruption.
In another sense our sanctification is not finished until it is finished. Lately I have come to understand that even the "work in progress" that I am, is a function of God's graciousness, not of my own concerted effort. It's a mistake to say that justification is God's work and sanctification is our work. We are permitted to partner with God in the work of sanctification, but it is God's work.
Salvation, (justification and sanctification) is by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. Paul says as much in Ephesian 2:8-9, "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God-- 9 not the result of works, so that no one may boast."
Don't ask me if I am saved, as if I have achieved some status or arrived at some milestone. I am being saved. Often in spite of myself.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Musings on Being Sent
This is a new beginning. I have been a blogger before. That is, I have set up a blog before, but the problem with anything like a blog or a journal or any other sort of discipline is that in order for it to make any difference at all you have to do it every now and then.
I'd like to be able to keep at a task like a blog or a journal so that I can see the arch of change and progress or lack of progress in my life over time. I reason that if I don't observe where I've been spiritually and imagine and pray about where I'm being led, I may be right on course, but I am missing out on the joy of knowing and observing that truth.
It's like so many things in life. The communication about what is happening is as important as the happening itself. If we care about someone and never tell them, nothing changes in our relationship. My objective truth never impinges on your reality if I stay silent. My ability to enjoy relationship with you and your ability to learn and grow and enjoy what a relationship with me would offer you is impacted by my ability to communicate.
It's true that it's not all up to me. You bear some responsibility as well but a healthy life giving relationship is watered and nourished by good honest communication. duh!? The point is that if I grow in some way and don't write it down and process it, there is a real possibility that the growth is sort of like the tree falling in the woods when no one was around to hear it or see it. Did it really happen? Does it make any difference? So talking about what is going on is important, even if the things that are happening don't seem important at all.
There is nothing to be gained by living an unexamined life. There is nothing to be gained by remaining at the center, never moving out beyond the circle of your own experience. This thought and many others are illuminated for me by the observation that God is moving out from the center of divine being. By definition, God is stretching beyond the boundaries of divinity to express love for that which is outside of God. In 1 John 4:8, 16 John says "God is love." Love is not content to remain silent and passive and unobserved.
God has always been relating. Within the Godhead, the one thing that we know for sure is happening is relationship, self revelation sharing and communication. "Let us make man in our own image," says God in Genesis 1:26. God who relates, shares, speaks chose to move out from that center, the starting place for all being and thought and action, and create being and thought and action.
Ultimately God moved out beyond the boundaries between creator and creation in the person of Jesus. Jesus said to his disciples, As the Father has sent me I am sending you. The movement of creator and creation is out from the center. The title of this blog is, Polite Imposition. It's a phrase that I believe captures the sense of an episode recorded in Luke 10:1-12. In this passage Jesus tells the disciples to go out and knock on people's doors with their hands empty and without provisions for themselves with the expectation that the people would bring them into their homes and feed them and shelter them.
Does that strike you as a bold and risky imposition. The Gospel is clear that the boldness the risk and the imposition are all real there is nothing timid or safe or backwards about the mission of God. It is also a polite imposition in the sense that there is a real, though it is somewhat troubling, choice that is preserved for the one to whom God's people are sent. That preservation of choice is not something that is to be violated. It is not to be violated even though it seems clear that the chooser is doing something against his or her own best interest.
In the same way that Jesus accepted as inevitable that people would reject him and did not gather an army of angels to back him up, the disciples are told to leave peacefully if the door is slammed in their faces. The words about shaking the dust off of the disciples feet and reiterating the truth that the Kingdom of God has come near, are about the disciple leaving the outcome of the encounter in God's hands rather than giving in to the temptation to press the issue, or worse to exact punishment for the household's rejection of God's good news right then and there.
The polite aspect of the imposition that Jesus has instigated is parallel with Jesus choosing not to "get back" at the Pharisees and scribes, and the Roman authorities who wrongly executed him. It would have been such a satisfying scene in the drama if the risen Christ had appeared to Caiaphas the high priest or to Pilate the Roman Governor, or to Herod the King. In making his resurrection appearances to the disciples alone Jesus, in a sense, has shaken the dust off of his feet. But Jesus did more than that at the moment of his crucifixion. Jesus forgave those who rejected him and prayed that the Father would forgive them.
What's more there is no crucifixion in Luke 10. The truth is that for most of us sharing the good news that the kingdom of Heaven is near doesn't result in persecution or imprisonment or execution. Luke 10 says for us to wedge our way into peoples' lives and put ourselves into their hands so that they choose to accept us and God's mission or they choose to reject us and God's mission. When the disciples did so in Luke 10 the result was astounding. Luke 10:17 says, The seventy returned with joy, saying, "Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us!"
Our fear of rejection is based on the real possibility that we will be rejected, but that fear robs us of the experience of being a part of what God is busy doing in our lives and in the lives of people who are waiting for us to knock on their doors and impose ourselves on them. The Gospel is about being a polite imposition on the people to whom we are sent in the same way that Jesus imposed himself on us. Don't permit fear to rob you of the joy that God intends for you.
I'd like to be able to keep at a task like a blog or a journal so that I can see the arch of change and progress or lack of progress in my life over time. I reason that if I don't observe where I've been spiritually and imagine and pray about where I'm being led, I may be right on course, but I am missing out on the joy of knowing and observing that truth.
It's like so many things in life. The communication about what is happening is as important as the happening itself. If we care about someone and never tell them, nothing changes in our relationship. My objective truth never impinges on your reality if I stay silent. My ability to enjoy relationship with you and your ability to learn and grow and enjoy what a relationship with me would offer you is impacted by my ability to communicate.
It's true that it's not all up to me. You bear some responsibility as well but a healthy life giving relationship is watered and nourished by good honest communication. duh!? The point is that if I grow in some way and don't write it down and process it, there is a real possibility that the growth is sort of like the tree falling in the woods when no one was around to hear it or see it. Did it really happen? Does it make any difference? So talking about what is going on is important, even if the things that are happening don't seem important at all.
There is nothing to be gained by living an unexamined life. There is nothing to be gained by remaining at the center, never moving out beyond the circle of your own experience. This thought and many others are illuminated for me by the observation that God is moving out from the center of divine being. By definition, God is stretching beyond the boundaries of divinity to express love for that which is outside of God. In 1 John 4:8, 16 John says "God is love." Love is not content to remain silent and passive and unobserved.
God has always been relating. Within the Godhead, the one thing that we know for sure is happening is relationship, self revelation sharing and communication. "Let us make man in our own image," says God in Genesis 1:26. God who relates, shares, speaks chose to move out from that center, the starting place for all being and thought and action, and create being and thought and action.
Ultimately God moved out beyond the boundaries between creator and creation in the person of Jesus. Jesus said to his disciples, As the Father has sent me I am sending you. The movement of creator and creation is out from the center. The title of this blog is, Polite Imposition. It's a phrase that I believe captures the sense of an episode recorded in Luke 10:1-12. In this passage Jesus tells the disciples to go out and knock on people's doors with their hands empty and without provisions for themselves with the expectation that the people would bring them into their homes and feed them and shelter them.
Does that strike you as a bold and risky imposition. The Gospel is clear that the boldness the risk and the imposition are all real there is nothing timid or safe or backwards about the mission of God. It is also a polite imposition in the sense that there is a real, though it is somewhat troubling, choice that is preserved for the one to whom God's people are sent. That preservation of choice is not something that is to be violated. It is not to be violated even though it seems clear that the chooser is doing something against his or her own best interest.
In the same way that Jesus accepted as inevitable that people would reject him and did not gather an army of angels to back him up, the disciples are told to leave peacefully if the door is slammed in their faces. The words about shaking the dust off of the disciples feet and reiterating the truth that the Kingdom of God has come near, are about the disciple leaving the outcome of the encounter in God's hands rather than giving in to the temptation to press the issue, or worse to exact punishment for the household's rejection of God's good news right then and there.
The polite aspect of the imposition that Jesus has instigated is parallel with Jesus choosing not to "get back" at the Pharisees and scribes, and the Roman authorities who wrongly executed him. It would have been such a satisfying scene in the drama if the risen Christ had appeared to Caiaphas the high priest or to Pilate the Roman Governor, or to Herod the King. In making his resurrection appearances to the disciples alone Jesus, in a sense, has shaken the dust off of his feet. But Jesus did more than that at the moment of his crucifixion. Jesus forgave those who rejected him and prayed that the Father would forgive them.
What's more there is no crucifixion in Luke 10. The truth is that for most of us sharing the good news that the kingdom of Heaven is near doesn't result in persecution or imprisonment or execution. Luke 10 says for us to wedge our way into peoples' lives and put ourselves into their hands so that they choose to accept us and God's mission or they choose to reject us and God's mission. When the disciples did so in Luke 10 the result was astounding. Luke 10:17 says, The seventy returned with joy, saying, "Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us!"
Our fear of rejection is based on the real possibility that we will be rejected, but that fear robs us of the experience of being a part of what God is busy doing in our lives and in the lives of people who are waiting for us to knock on their doors and impose ourselves on them. The Gospel is about being a polite imposition on the people to whom we are sent in the same way that Jesus imposed himself on us. Don't permit fear to rob you of the joy that God intends for you.
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