Why Jesus is not my Saviour Part 6: Salvation

I close off this series on how I understand Jesus and salvation, and why I believe I can say that “Jesus is not my Saviour” in the evangelical sense of the words, but that I can say with confidence that “Jesus is my Saviour” when those words are expounded in greater detail. I close by looking at two further understandings of salvation.

The first thing that I focus on today is that salvation is for all, part of John Wesley’s conviction about salvation: “All can be saved.” In Luke 14 Jesus tells a parable about a man who gave feast. The invited guests all had reasons not to be there, and the servants were sent out to fetch those who would never normally be able to attend such a feast.

Nobody was excluded! The banquet was packed with sinners: with the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind. People who in terms of Jewish understanding were excluded from the worshipping community due to their disability – which was obviously due to some form of sin in their or their parents’ lives. They were unclean and as such not welcomed in the temple or the community for fear of polluting others.

So when Jesus tells this parable about the kingdom, he makes it clear as to who was included, and who was excluded. The very people whom his listeners thought would be excluded are the ones who make up the feast.

“Go out into the streets and alleys” says the master of the feast, “Go out to the roads and country lanes and make them come in…”

Exclusivity is out, inclusively is in. Everybody the others would have excluded, every single person, is welcomed at the feast. And who aren’t there? The only ones who don’t arrive are those who excluded themselves for a multitude of reasons: “I’ve bought a field,” “I’ve bought new oxen,” “I just got married”.

The feast is for all, salvation is for all. Regardless of who they are they are invited to the feast. The new guests are not required to wash first, or pledge allegiance to the Master. They come, as they are!

And this is the example that Jesus always shows in his interaction with the outcasts he encounters. Not once does he require them to be cleaned up, ritually or otherwise, he never asks for a commitment or promise of loyalty. The words of Jesus are simply, “What do you want me to do for you?” and “Come.”

Secondly, today, salvation is about now. When we look at Jesus as Saviour we have to understand that salvation is not primarily about what happens after death, but is about what happens now. In the parable the feast was today! Come now! Not, you will be welcome at the feast after death.

Wesley said that all can be saved to the uttermost and was speaking about transformation in this life, Paul writes the the Philippians encouraging them to work out their salvation with fear and trembling. That doesn’t sound like “give your life to Jesus and be saved in the hereafter” to me.

Salvation, I believe, is about running the race in such a way that our lives are transformed today! Brian McLaren tells the parable of the great race:

Once upon a time, in a land of boredom and drudgery exciting news spread: “There’s going to be a race, and all who run in this race will grow strong and will never be bored again!” Exciting news like this had not been heard for a long time, for people experienced little adventure in this ho-hum land, beyond attending committee meetings, waiting in lines, sorting socks and watching sitcom reruns.

Excitement grew as the day of the race drew near. Thousands gathered in the appointed town, at the appointed place. Most came to observe, sceptical about the news. “It’s too good to be true,” they said. “It’s just a silly rumour started by some teen aged trouble makers. But let’s stick around and see what happens anyway.”

Others could not resist the invitation, arriving in their running shorts and shoes. As they waited for the appointed time, they stretched and jogged in place and chatted among themselves with nervous excitement. At the appointed time they gathered at the starting line, heard the gun go off, and knew that it was time to run.

Then something very curious happened. The runners took a step or two or three across the starting line, and then abruptly stopped. One man fell to his knees, crying, “I have crossed the starting line! This is the happiest day of my life!” He repeated this again and again, and even began singing a song about how happy this day was for him.

Another woman started jumping for joy. “Yes!” she shouted, raising her fist in the air. “I am a race-runner! I am finally a race-runner!” She ran around jumping and dancing, getting and giving high fives to others who shared her joy at being in the race.

Several people formed a circle and prayed, quietly thanking God for the privilege of crossing the starting line, and thanking God that they were not like the sceptics who didn’t come dressed for the race.

An hour passed, and two. Spectators began muttering; some laughed. “So what do they think this race is?” they said. “Two or three strides, then a celebration? And why do they feel superior to us? They’re treating the starting line as if it were a finish line. They’ve completely missed the point.”

A few more minutes of this silliness passed. “you know,” a spectator said to the person next to her, “if they’re not going to run the race, maybe we should.”
“Why not? It’s getting boring watching them hang around just beyond the starting line. I’ve had enough boredom for one life.”

Others heard them, and soon many were kicking off their dress shoes, slipping out of their jackets, throwing all this unneeded clothing onto the grass. And they ran — past the praying huddles and past the crying individuals and past the jumping high fivers. And they found hope and joy in every step, and they grew stronger with every mile and hill. To their surprise the path never ended — because in this race there was no finish line. So they were never bored again.

(McLaren, B. Adventures in Missing the Point, p 26-27)

Salvation means being rescued from fruitless ways of life here and now, to share in God’s saving love for all creation, in an adventure called the kingdom of God.

So, let me close off today by saying that I am convinced that salvation is more than going to heaven when I die. It is knowing that even in my brokenness I’m accepted, without having to do or prove ANYTHING.

Salvation is for everybody – especially those who would appear to be excluded, and those who feel especially unworthy. In fact, the more broken the better, because often it is only when we are broken that we can experience the depth of God’s love.

Salvation is about sharing in the adventure of the Kingdom of God now, today, so that my earthly, human life can be transformed to the uttermost, and my world and community can become a better place through my actions.

When we understand salvation as fullness of life today, and when we live in a relationship with Jesus as Word and as Lord, then I have no problem with calling Jesus my Saviour.

May it be so for you!

Why Jesus is not my Saviour Part 4: Salvation

I love the image of a snake that sheds its skin every year! The snake’s skin is important – and not just for belts! – it serves a number of important functions for the snake: It keeps the outside out, it protects the snake from the elements, from injury. And it keeps the insides in! It stops all the snake’s organs from flopping around all over the place – that would be a pretty sad snake with no skin!

It’s important for the snake to have that skin, but for the snake to grow it has to shed that skin every year, and this is what I have had to do in my own faith journey.

This week I continue my discussion of why Jesus is not my Saviour, and perhaps I can re-title this topic, and some folk have commented that I should rather have said, “Why Jesus is not only my Saviour, not just my Saviour”. Perhaps I could say why Jesus is my Saviour, but qualifying the words ‘Jesus’ and ‘Saviour’.

And you will remember that this is what I’m doing in this series of columns. Last week I looked at Jesus as the Word made flesh and Jesus as Lord; this week I’m looking looking at how I understand Saviour.

If you’ve been following my previous posts you will know that I’m trying to get away from the evangelical concept of “Jesus died for me on the cross; His blood shed on the cross for me paid the price for my sin”. I’m happy if you call Jesus Saviour under those terms! but with two provisos:

First, that you know why you believe it. In other words, have you done your homework? Have you studied scripture fully, not just the appropriate verses, but verses which seem to contradict your viewpoint? Have you done the theological work you need to do so that this understanding is not just something you heard at an altar call when you were 16 and responded to and have never thought through more fully?

Second, I’m happy for you to believe it and hold tightly on to it as long as it is life-giving for you and for those around you – it is so important that our faith is life-giving.

As I have said previously, I needed to move on from that understanding of Jesus as sacrifice because that image was no longer life-giving for me. Like the snake I have had to shed my theological skin. I don’t know what it must feel like for the snake, and I don’t think snakes can think the way we do, but I imagine if they could, they would wonder whether the new skin is going to work properly: what if it leaks?! And I guess that the new skin will be a little more sensitive than the old one and I’m sure it must be scary for your skin to start sliding off, and probably irritating, itchy, and maybe even painful.

But what would happen if the snake didn’t shed its skin?  There would be no growth, the old one would become worn and tattered, and ultimately not very helpful. Sometimes we need to lose the theological skin that has kept us warm and safe, and grow into a new one, and sometimes that can be irritating, scary, and painful.

So I’m sharing some of my journey, not to try to upset people who are happy and comfortable in their theological skins, but to encourage those who are not; those who are also struggling – so that maybe they will have the courage to grow into a new skin of their own. It was Paul Tillich who said,

The courage to be is rooted in the God who appears when God has disappeared in the anxiety of doubt.

And Dr Welton Gaddy who recognises that

in any individual’s life it takes a crisis of faith to come to a faith that is his or hers, not one passed on by someone else.

When we stop believing in the God whom we have been taught to follow, whether through doubt, incredulity, or busyness; when what or who we have called God ceases to have any meaning for us, what we are left with is a God we can worship honestly, and this is what I’m hoping to convey in this series.

And so please remember that this is about my journey. Your journey may be different and that’s okay! Engage me, and let’s discuss our faith!

The idea of salvation has not only always been a key concept in Christianity, but is present in the Hebrew Bible also, but more in the context of salvation from one’s enemies rather than being saved from hell. Salvation has been important in Christianity from the writings in the Christian Testament of which Paul’s were the first, right up to our own day and also in the Wesleyan heritage, with the ‘four all’s’ of Methodism defining the meaning of the gospel:

All need to be saved
All can be saved
All can know that they are saved
All can be saved to the uttermost

So I have no desire to say that salvation is not Christian, it is a vitally important part of being a Christian, rather my concern about the concept of salvation is that we have taken the term out of its original context and made it mean something different from what was originally intended.

The reality is that for many Christians salvation means little more than going to heaven one day when they die – and indeed that seems to be the central focus of Christianity today: To get oneself, and as many others as possible, to say the ‘sinners’ prayer;’ to accept Christ as personal Saviour; to have your sins forgiven and to have an assurance of going to heaven after one has shuffled off this mortal coil – even though there is no mention in the Bible of “sinners’ prayer”, “personal saviour” and little focus on life after death.

As Brian McLaren notes, if one were to ask Paul if he were going to heaven if he died tonight he would be rather puzzled by the question. He probably would had said “yes”, but for him the point of Christianity was more about people becoming fully mature and fully formed in Christ. Salvation, for Paul, was more about experiencing the glorious realities of being in Christ, and experiencing Christ in oneself (Adventures in Missing the Point, p 20).

So this week I want to suggest that God is bigger than salvation for after death, and that a bigger understanding of salvation leads to a fuller life now. I hope to show how we can see salvation as being from sin, for all, and about now, rather than something that happens when we die. I will blog about each of these concepts over the next week.

Why Jesus is not my Saviour part 3: Jesus as Lord

There is an attitude that was popular in the white South African community during the darkest days of apartheid, and it related to the involvement of churches and church leaders, such as then Bishop Desmond Tutu, in the struggle against the white government. Many whites said that the church and politics don’t mix. Faith is a private matter and people’s worship of God should have nothing to do with their political desires. They were deeply upset by their churches and church leaders when they spoke out against the government – yet how we understand Jesus has to influence how we do life.

If Jesus is the Word who spoke all of creation into existence, how we respond to that Word makes all the difference, and the very first response, the earliest creed – a creed, of course, being a measuring standard to which we compare all subsequent beliefs – was a very simple, three word statement:

“Jesus is Lord” (Romans 10:19)

There was no mention of Jesus being Saviour, although the statement was often set in that context – the meaning of salvation being a little different from what we understand today, however. I will unpack this in more detail in the next instalment. Interestedly in both the Apostles’ Creed and the earliest version of the Nicene Creed there is no mention of Jesus’ work as saviour.

But this simple, basic statement of belief, of who Jesus was, and is, was never intended as we mean it today when we say it. We will often say, “Do you accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour?” Today there is a personalised meaning to it: “My Lord” — as if we can own God!

In Roman times nobody was ever persecuted because of a personal belief, as in South Africa during the apartheid years. When the early Christians were persecuted it wasn’t because they called Jesus a personal Lord and Saviour – it was because when they made the statement, “Jesus is Lord” they were saying Jesus is Lord, and Caesar is not. Jesus is Lord, and the apartheid government is not.

It was a statement of subversive, revolutionary intent. The first Christians were challenging the authority of the Roman empire, and they were able to do this confidently in the face of persecution because they believed that in Jesus they could see God, and obedience to God was more important than playing it safe with the Empire.

This is the earliest meaning of the cross for Jewish followers of Christ in the face of Roman persecution, and so I want to unpack some biblical meanings of the cross in the light of the statement ‘Jesus is Lord’ – you’ll recognise them, but problem is we get them all confused and mixed up with ‘atoning sacrifice’ model. Marcus Borg explains this far more fully than I do in Heart of Christianity, pp 92-94.

First, Jesus, who was put to death for his politics, for his passion for God’s justice, was vindicated by God. The authorities rejected Jesus, but God raised him up (Acts 2:36). There is no mention of atoning sacrifice! This is a word of wonderful comfort for those struggling for justice!

When Jesus is Lord, second, no powers are able to overcome him because he has defeated them on the cross. They (the principalities and powers) tried their best to put him to death, to shut him up, but he triumphed over them (Col 2:15). Another encouraging image when it seems that regardless of what we do, evil triumphs!

Third, when Jesus is Lord we choose to follow him because he has shown us ‘the way’ to life in dying to an old way of being, and being raised to a new way of being (Gal 2:19-20). This is what we remember in the sacrament of baptism, and again there is no mention of sacrifice for sin. We get confused and say that the way we die to the old way of being is by giving our life to Christ and making him our Saviour. This has the result of removing our responsibility for our lives and makes the goal of Christianity salvation for heaven in the future, rather than a new way of being for today.

The fourth biblical way of seeing Jesus’ death when Jesus is Lord is as a revelation of the depth of God’s love for us, and the power of God’s love – not about sacrifice for our behalf as something that needs to be done, but rather an example of what Jesus means when he says “love each other; love your enemy.” The love that Jesus talks about looks, and feels, like an excruciating, painful death of self.

The fifth way the Bible teaches of Jesus death is familiar ‘scapegoat for our atonement’ model based on the Jewish sacrificial system, which I’ll look at in more detail next week.

I close these thoughts with the statement that Jesus is not my personal Saviour, Jesus is not Lord of my life, but rather that as a Christian there is but one power that I will answer to, and that is Jesus, even when I am called to sacrifice my comfort, my privilege and my safety for the sake of others. This is what the gospel, and healthy religion calls us to, not a personal piety that has no place in the politics of oppression.

And this is when the gospel becomes radical, powerful, and life-changing.

CONCLUSION

The second commandment cautions against making an idol of God (Exodus 20:1-6), in other words, picturing God in a way that God is not, and probably we’re all guilty of that in one way or another, creating God in our own image. But particularly, I think we’re guilty in the way in which we have painted Jesus as only a Saviour when he is so much more.

What I am saying in this series is that there are other ways of seeing Jesus: ways that shouldn’t cheapen who he is, but rather that enrich who Christ is for us. I’m not sure that it matters so much how we speak of God, what matters is how we hear him (paraphrasing Martin Buber, quoted by Borg in Heart of Christianity, p 50). In my journey I’ve needed to start hearing the Christ in other ways.

I’m not saying that I don’t need salvation. I’m not saying that I’m too righteous to need Jesus. I’m saying there are other ways of understanding Christ, and other ways of understanding salvation, which I’ll look at in the next three parts. I’m very happy if you’re comfortable to call Jesus Saviour and that is meaningful in your journey, but for me I’ve had to let go of that image, and  I conclude by quoting both Borg and Spong:

• I would rather celebrate the sacred who is right here and the God who yearns to be in relationship to us, than a lawgiver and judge whose requirements must be met and whose justice must be satisfied.
• I would rather live out a faith in which the central dynamic is relationship with God, and the world, and each other, than one in which the central dynamic is sin and guilt.
• I would rather celebrate a Christian life which is about turning toward and entering into a relationship with the one who is already in a relationship with us the one who gave us life, who has loved us from the beginning, who loves us whether we know it or not and who journeys with us whether we know it or not.

I can no longer follow a superman Jesus who swoops down from heaven to lift me up out of the world and carry back into God’s arms. Rather I seek to follow the Word who is the way, the truth and the life (Jn 14:6).

• Jesus, the way into the heart of God, the Ground of all Being (Tillich).
• Jesus, the truth through which my life can be lived with theological and human integrity.
• Jesus, the life who has made known what the meaning of life is.

And in the words of Spong, being a disciple of this Jesus only requires me to be empowered by him to imitate the presence of God in him by living fully, by loving wastefully, and by having the courage to be all that God created me to be.

Bibliography

• Borg, MJ. The God We Never Knew. HarperCollins, New York, 1998.
• Borg, MJ. Jesus. As a supplement to Borg, JM & Wright, NT. The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions. HarperCollins, New York, 2007.
• Borg, MJ. The Heart of Christianity. HarperCollins, New York, 2003.
• Spong, JS. Why Christianity must Change or Die: A Bishop Speaks to Believers in Exile. HarperCollins, New York, 1999.