Introduction
When I was in college, CliffsNotes were displayed behind the bookstore counter, covering all the books and topics students would be tested on in the coming semester. Now, far be it from me to consult one of these cheat sheets, but there they were. SOMEBODY must be buying them, having neglected to do their homework on a timely basis. The notion was this: you don’t have to read the whole text, read the CliffsNotes and get what is essential while avoiding what was optional. It strikes me that somebody needs to do this for the average man in the street, who knows nothing about the Bible or all that has been written about it. Where is theology that accords with Antoine de St. Exupery, who when contemplating his biplane observed, “perfection is achieved not when there’s nothing more to add, but when there’s nothing more to take away?”
The purpose of this exercise is to document the critical issue of how God deals with mankind, and what is expected of us by way of response. Folks, that’s all that really matters, and it isn’t that complicated. It’s rumored that Karl Barthe, no stranger to overkill in his own oeuvre, was asked towards the end of his career what he had learned about theology. His answer? He quoted the child’s ditty, “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” Just so. Short of wholesale reductionism like this, let’s see what can be said about God and his dealings with us that is essential, correct, and brief. Our audience, lost and hurting, deserves nothing less.
Question: How Does God Deal with Humanity?
How does God deal with man? In two ways: forensically and effectually. There is a logical priority here, so they should be dealt with in order.
By forensically I mean legally. Because God is moral, and because we’ve been created in his image, we exist in a moral relationship with him. That means that there is a hierarchy in our relationship: he is in a position of authority, and we are in a position of subservience. These are not popular notions, but that doesn’t detract from their veracity. God’s position of moral superiority is inexorable and immutable, and is characterized by a divine sovereignty of volition. God can and does do what he wants, when he wants, and there’s not much we can do about it, not that we should want to.
This is what allows us to talk about what is right and wrong. Things are right or wrong to the extent that they coincide with this divine will. To be right, you must be in accord with divine will. Anything else is to be wrong. Thus, right and wrong are discovered only by revelation; they are received by us as subjects in God’s creation. Want to know right from wrong? Read the Bible. From its stories we can infer all we need to know of God’s moral requirements.
So we find ourselves in a moral relationship with God whether we like it or not. It follows that that relationship can go one of two ways; well or poorly. The Bible is a story about how it went well for a chapter or two, then went poorly, and then, through God’s persistent and patient work, started to go well again. When our representative, Adam, ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he caused two problems for himself and all his children. First of all, he brought moral guilt upon all humanity. On account of his disobedience, God was now at enmity with man. He was mad at us. The second problem Adam caused was that his actions killed the spirit of man, and we lost our ability to be in touch with God. As Jesus says, God is spirit, and those who would worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. The symptom of this spiritual death is that we are incapable of doing right, and are only capable of doing wrong. We are weak, we lack power to do anything worthwhile from a moral or divine perspective. When we try to do right, we fail, and we blame God for exposing our error because it stands in stark contrast to his abiding holiness. So not only are we guilty in God’s sight, we are also hobbled in actual fact. We are at enmity with God. We are mad at him.
Now God has a dilemma on his hands. What to do? First of all, he can start over with a better cast of characters. This is what he did in the flood, when he decided that only Noah had anything on the ball. Yet in the end, starting over changed nothing, and that approach was forever abandoned; God gave us the rainbow. Secondly, God could simply go over the rules again, and hope that the trouble was caused by an information deficit. This is the story of the Old Testament. On the off chance that the Jews simply needed some guidance and encouragement, he gave the Law through Moses and correction through the Prophets. Needless to say, nothing changed here either. Even though the Jews had all the information they needed, and rituals that addressed their moral quandary, they continued to evince the guilt and powerlessness common to man as a result of the Fall.
Our problems with God have consequences in our relationships with the rest of Creation as well; we fight one another, the created order, and ourselves. Sickness, death, estrangement, violence; all are symptoms of a prior schism with our Creator.
Finally, God can undertake reform on his own, unilaterally. If man’s the problem, by leaving him out of the process perhaps an effective remedy can be found. This is the story of the New Testament. Here we have God getting to the root problems of moral guilt and powerlessness, not patching things up with a band-aid. The way he does this is through his Son, Jesus of Nazareth. As Paul says in Romans 5:9,10, he justifies us by the death of Christ, and he saves us by his life. Redemption involves not one but both of these activities.
In order to solve the problem of our moral guilt, God came up with a plan called the substitutionary atonement. It’s based on the principle that when a law is broken, the guilty party must pay with their life. As Scripture says, “without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness.” It works in this manner: God selects somebody who is without sin, who is not guilty, and assigns to them the guilt or responsibility for the crime that has been committed. The punishment that is due the guilty party is put on this innocent party. The grace or freedom that was due the innocent party is then transferred to the guilty party. A great exchange takes place, whereby the innocent pays the price owed by the guilty, and the guilty are accorded the liberty due the innocent. Hardly fair for the innocent, but who are we to complain? The only problem with this plan is that nobody on earth could be found to function as an innocent sacrifice. All people, imbued with sin, fail on the first requirement that the victim be themselves innocent. For this plan to work, somebody had to be found who was not subject to the hereditary sin that bedevils all mankind. This is where Jesus of Nazareth comes in. Not having a human father, he doesn’t have the heredity of sin the rest of us do. He, alone, of all people born on this earth, qualifies to function as the scapegoat in this plan of redemption. Just as God provided a ram for Abraham so he didn’t have to sacrifice Isaac, God provides his own son to take our place as the intended sacrifice. As Abraham said to Isaac, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” By offering himself in our place, Jesus upholds the perfect holiness of God, while enabling sinners to have communion with God once again.
This tells us something about God’s nature. He is willing to pay the price for humanity to be redeemed through his own suffering. This magnanimity is why we worship God.
Viewed this way, we understand the cosmic significance of certain events in history. Specifically, we see that as of Good Friday, judgment has been passed on human sin for all people, in all places, and for all time. There is no limit to the power of the blood of Jesus. As Scripture says, he died for the sins of the whole world. As Jesus further says, all sins and blasphemies uttered against the Son of Man will be forgiven. We will never be judged for the wrong we do, our sins of commission. No longer need we be ashamed for our nakedness, as Adam was, for we are now clothed with Christ, to use Paul’s expression. In a very real sense, God is no longer at enmity with us; he is no longer mad at us. The curtain separating God from man is torn in two, and we can boldly enter God’s presence as children.
Good Christian ministry stresses the effectiveness of God’s actions on Good Friday. As of then, our sins are washed away. It is important for people to know this. This is why we baptize infants who are oblivious to their spiritual condition. All people, infant and adult, stand justified by that one-time, unrepeatable, forensic transaction whereby the Father judged sin in the person of his Son without reference to our knowledge or participation.
Easter, therefore, is derivative in its importance. It is significant not just because Jesus is found to be alive, but because of WHY he’s alive. The Law prescribed death as a punishment for moral transgression. When Jesus died for our sins, the Law was satisfied. Having been satisfied for all time and eternity, it ceased to exist; it was fulfilled. When it ceased to exist, the penalty it prescribed, death, was also vitiated. The resurrection of Jesus Christ proves that the whole of mankind is now rehabilitated in God’s eyes. We are in Christ, as both relational metaphor and legal reality.
One problem solved, one to go. If divine intervention on our behalf stopped with Good Friday, we would be abandoned to an endless cycle of spiritual tumult. Moral effort would lead to failure, failure to guilt, guilt to confession, confession to forgiveness, forgiveness to renewed effort and subsequent failure. God, in his love, for us, knows that we need not only legal forgiveness but also effectual help. We need to be changed in reality as well as exonerated legally. To do this, he again turns to his son Jesus. He forgives us through his death, but to use Paul’s terminology in Romans 5:9,10, he saves us through his life.
Paul makes a clear distinction between these two activities, justification and salvation, as does the author of the Letter to the Hebrews. This distinction is also implicit in all of the parables and in the words of John the Baptist. What we gather from Scripture is that in addition to the judgment passed on sin on Good Friday, there will also be a judgment leveled on fruitlessness at the consummation of the age. Matthew 25 portrays this as a separation of the sheep from the goats, and the distinguishing criterion will not be sin committed, but rather righteousness squandered. Nobody is judged for wrongs done, but all will be judged for the good not performed. John the Baptist refers to this when he says that the axe is already laid to the root of the tree that does not bear fruit. Jesus, in his parable of the wedding garments, states that all are invited to the wedding feast, both good and bad (universal justification,) but the guest who is found to be without wedding garments is cast out, for he does not have the fruit that is expected of those who would put themselves in the Spirit’s service.
Many attribute the Pauline distinction between justification and salvation to Hebrew parallelism. This is wrong. Until the reality of TWO judgments for different problems is realized, Christian soteriology makes no sense. Once you do make the distinction, then everything falls into place. The idea of salvation is that we have been put in Christ’s position legally, but our nature is unchanged. Only when the Spirit of Christ enters us effectually does that essential nature change, and we can have the power to do right. In addition to being in Christ, we need Christ in us. This is the normative expectation of the Bible story, yet it’s not widely understood by Christians. Many act like Mary Magdalene, who recognized Jesus after his resurrection. In her enthusiasm she clings to him, not wanting to let him go. Yet Jesus chastises her, saying that to cling would be wrong, as he must return to the Father to complete his redemptive work. Should he not ascend, he would not be accorded the authority to shed his Spirit abroad over all humanity as happened on Pentecost. Uninformed Christians, many of whom appreciate their justification, nevertheless do not know that God has done more for them than merely forgive them. He has also made it possible to recover their spiritual capacity lost at the Fall and be a successful spiritual creature once again.
The experience of trying to live without a personal Pentecost is called back-sliding, and results in that spiritual treadmill described earlier. People who have this experience usually do one of two things. Either they persist in trying to please God with their own efforts and become neurotic, unattractive religious humbugs, or they can give up and reject Christian morality as impossible, and become religious liberals.
Question: What Does God Expect from Us?
The experience of spiritual renewal being described here has been given many names: being born again, baptized in the Holy Spirit, filled with the Holy Spirit, regenerated, being saved or being converted. They all attempt to describe the same reality, that the individual, born a two part person with a body and a soul, is as of salvation a three part person, with the addition of the Holy Spirit of the risen Lord Jesus entering into their being. The details of the experience vary as gifts of the Spirit vary, and it is a mistake to make some aspects of the experience normative for all. What is normative, however, is that the conscious mind will have a new awareness of God’s moral authority, as well as a new capacity for obedience to that authority. Evangelical denominations tend to associate this experience with adult baptism, while churches with historical consciousness tend to associate it with Confirmation. Because individual experiences vary, some conclude that this whole process of personal regeneration is optional. This is a grave mistake, and lies at the root of the incapacity of the Christian Church we see today. Again, the Bible suggests the following bilateral symmetry:
| Actor | Man’s Problem | Attitude as of the Fall | Solution | Historic Event | Extent | Our Position Relative to Christ | Associated Sacrament | 2
Judgments |
Role of Christ | Event in Theological Terms |
| God | Guilt | Enmity with Man | Blood of Christ | Good Friday | Universal | Us in Christ legally | Baptism | On Sin | Savior | Justification |
| Man | Power-
lessness |
Enmity with God | Life of Christ | Pentecost | Particular | Christ in us effectually | Eucharist | On Fruitless-ness | Lord | Salvation |
We see that two actors have two perspectives that lead to two problems requiring two solutions, both involving the Son of God. One solution does not involve our participation, just our appreciation. The other solution, because it impinges on our will or volition, DOES involve our participation. To the extent that we accept the idea that we must cede our will to God, all will go well. To the extent that we take umbrage at God’s requirements, we will not be allowed to participate in God’s salvation. Thus, the seemingly random experience of spiritual regeneration is not due to God’s caprice or “election,” but rather our willingness to acknowledge our position of moral servitude. To be more specific, God links the outpouring of the Holy Spirit to our attitude towards that document written by that same Spirit, the Bible. If we go to God and say, “I want your spiritual blessings in the here and now, but I’m going to argue with what the Spirit has caused to be written in the past,” then I’m pretty sure God’s going to withhold further spiritual revelation until that attitude changes. He doesn’t, as Jesus said, cast his pearls before swine. This reality makes it hard for people-first types to get anywhere with God. If we cling to our liberal notions about freedom of the will in all its permutations, we will find ourselves bereft of true revelation.
Here it’s appropriate to address the attention paid by many Christians, notably Protestants, to the terms election and predestination. Reading the Bible from a Western, or Greek perspective, these terms seem to suggest that God chooses some for salvation and others for damnation without regard to individual volition or behavior. Although this conclusion does uphold God’s sovereignty, it does violence to his character as a loving Creator. It is helpful to note several things about how the Bible uses these terms. First of all, it can be argued that they are used exclusively when addressing Gentile readers, or speaking of God’s treatment of Gentiles. Rather than argue that God is arbitrary, the terms suggest that God, in his eternal counsels, knew of the spiritual needs of Gentiles and in his love included them in his plan of redemption. Until the coming of Christ, the revelation of God was limited to Jews. With the coming of Jesus, however, that revelation was opened up to Gentiles as well, in what Paul calls the “mystery of God.” By using the terms foreknowledge, choice and election, the Biblical authors are assuring their Gentile readers that they, too, are objects of God’s love and eligible for inclusion in his plan of redemption. Further, these terms should be understood in the light of Eastern or Jewish intent. Typically, Easterners do not think in terms of individuals, but rather in terms of families, tribes, nations or other groups; types if you will. What these terms really state is that ALL those who submit to God’s plan of redemption, without regard to race, are eligible for eternal felicities. The idea of double predestination, wherein God damns some arbitrarily as individuals is a pernicious and false reading of Scripture. The term predestination never refers to assigning some to heaven and some to hell, but rather to stipulating that benefits will accrue to believers in this life, and not just in the life to come. We are predestined, for example, to conformance to the nature of Christ or adoption as sons, while we yet live. This is not to suggest that God’s plan of redemption cannot be frustrated. God does allow us to damn ourselves. In the words of Oswald Chambers, “The condemnation is not that I am born with a heredity of sin, but if when I realize Jesus Christ came to deliver me from it, I refuse to let Him do so, from that moment I begin to get the seal of damnation.”
Christians are forever fighting about whether or not we can “lose our salvation.” Certain terms, not found in the Scriptures, such as “eternal security,” have been coined to introduce the notion that “once saved, always saved.” These conundra have their root in poor Biblical exegesis. As said before, justification is universal, while salvation is particular. It’s not so much that one “loses” their justification, but that the introduction of a second judgment renders acquittal at the first nugatory. It is entirely possible to experience the joy of forgiveness and moral justification, and eventually be cut off and burned as a fruitless branch. The branches that are burned in John 15:2 were originally, in Jesus’ words, “in me.”
So if God doesn’t save or damn as individuals arbitrarily, what does he look for? Roman Catholics typically have answered ritual fidelity, fundamentalists have responded by saying the avoidance of certain attractive sins, and dispensationalists have said God looks for knowledge. None of these is correct. Technically speaking, God’s not looking for anything positive at all, but rather something negative. He doesn’t want us to do anything, but to stop doing something. He wants us to exhibit two qualities, both of which are negations. First of all, he wants us to be honest; honest about our inability to do anything morally good or correct on our own. He wants us to stop protesting our innocence. Then, he wants us to be humble. Humility is a willingness to accept his intervention and aid. Lacking the power to do any good thing ourselves, as Paul laments in Romans 7, we invite him to come and do in us what we can’t do ourselves, and to give him all the credit for it. God doesn’t want to improve us, he wants to replace us; a very different thing. All this comes back to our perception of God’s moral authority. Do we grant him all authority, or do we reserve moral authority for ourselves?
Perhaps it’s best to go back to the beginning to discover what God is looking for by way of response from us. When Adam ate of the tree in the garden, he saw that he was naked and ashamed, and ran from God. He was mad at God. As of Good Friday, however, we are “clothed with Christ,” and no longer stand naked nor in need of being ashamed. Therefore, what God’s now looking for from us is that we accept this new legal standing, and stop running from him. When he offers us the Spirit of his son Jesus as a gift, we should accept it in trust that it’s a good thing, and not judge, whine or run away as if we believe it to be an evil trick. To run from the Spirit is to commit the one sin that will not be forgiven, which is described as blaspheming the Holy Spirit. When you refuse the offer of a personal Pentecost, or reject the words of the Bible that were written by the Holy Spirit, you recommit Adam’s sin, nail Christ to the cross all over again, and cut yourself off from spiritual power and the possibility of bearing fruit. We may exist, but we are not alive.
Jesus has two titles: Savior and Lord. He is the Savior of all, no matter what you know or acknowledge. He is your Lord only by a matter of moral transaction: will I do what my Lord says?
What we’ve shown so far is that God deals with man in two ways and only two ways. There is no mystery, no fuzziness, no vagueness about his dealings with man. Although our experiences of God differ and he defies being placed in a box according to our wishes, nevertheless God’s plan of redemption is as consistent and immutable as he is. From his dealings with us, we can conclude what he expects from us. Specifically, he doesn’t expect from us things we cannot do ourselves. He doesn’t expect us to be perfect or even good. He doesn’t expect us to come to him with works, but only true, solid sin. He doesn’t expect us to change things we cannot change. What he does expect, as stated before, is honesty and humility. All who submit to God’s plan of redemption are predestined to new life now and elect to participate in the life to come. Those who reject the plan as onerous, too degrading or whatever, are in effect arguing with God and will find themselves deprived of his plan’s benefits. As John 5:22 says, you cannot honor the Father without honoring the Son, and as John 12:48 says, you cannot honor the Son without honoring the Word he speaks as Lord. If a person is not in touch with God, it’s because they have put conditions on their submission to his Word.
Why all this effort of God’s part? For two reasons. First of all, man was destined for holiness, not destruction. God intends to put creation back on the right footing it was on in the beginning. But now it is not based upon something as ephemeral as man’s ability to understand and obey. The new Kingdom of God is based upon resolute and absolute obedience of the Son of God who redeems all by his death and animates all by his Holy Spirit. The second reason the Father goes to all this trouble is that a bride must be found for the Son. Just as Abraham sent his servant back to his homeland to find a bride suitable for his son Isaac, and Isaac for his son Jacob, so, too, the heavenly Father sends his Son to earth to find a suitable bride. One who is chaste, spotless, responsive and obedient. This can only be a bride who has been purified by the blood of the Cross of Good Friday and animated by the Holy Spirit on Pentecost. Like all good stories, the story of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is at its root a love story. The object of love gets into trouble, but through the perseverance of the lover, all obstacles are overcome, the marriage takes place, and they live happily ever after.
Question: Is All This Doctrine Important?
Now why all this effort to establish doctrine with regard to what’s known as soteriology, the doctrine of how we’re saved? The last time people fought about this was 400 years ago. Weren’t all the salient issues resolved then? Actually, no. And all the vituperation that’s flying around today about what constitutes Christian behavior is a direct result of having either forgotten received truth or having new, unresolved doctrinal issues.
Perhaps the most pernicious result of doctrinal laxity is the notion that there is no role for humans to play in their own redemption. John Calvin and his acolytes went so far as to say that we have no control over our eternal destinies; it’s decided by God, and arbitrarily at that. Therefore, when ethical questions arise, it’s hard for Christians to say what right behavior is, or that there’s a standard for morality at all. The answer to this quandary is to remember that there are two judgments, one for sin and one for fruitfulness. The former is taken care of by God unilaterally on the Cross on Good Friday. In spite of what Calvin said, there is no limited atonement regarding sin. On the other hand, something is expected of us by way of response to that reality, and that is a negation of our freedom so powerfully exercised at the time of the Fall. We are expected to recognize the incompatibility of our moral freedom and the Lordship of Jesus Christ, and to cede that freedom to him as Lord. This is not a pleasant process, and is therefore one that many, indeed most, shy away from. This explains why justification can be universal, but salvation is not; most lack the moral character necessary to stop running from God and let the Holy Spirit have his way with us.
If this is true, the consequences for our approach to pastoral ministry are legion. Everything we do as Christians should be directed towards helping others come to a right conclusion about the deleterious effects of moral free agency, that they might consciously place themselves under the moral authority of the risen Lord. Listen to what an astute pastoral counselor, Bill Gillham, has said.
“Biblical counseling seeks to lead the believer to the end of his strength – regardless of how productive (or nonproductive [sic]) such ‘strength’ may have proven to be – and into the certainty of Christ’s strength through him! The Holy Spirit, often through the school of adversity, always works against the believer’s dependency upon the flesh. Ultimately his flesh becomes nonproductive [sic] by Supernatural design at which time many seek counseling. The counselor who uses techniques generated by lost men to help such a believer cut his losses is interrupting God’s process of bringing that Christian to the end of his personal resources. The more ‘skilled’ and ‘effective’ the counselor, the more he sets God back to square one, having to begin the breaking process all over again.”
The same note is echoed by Oswald Chambers, who writes:
“One of the severest lessons comes from the stubborn refusal to see that we must not interfere in other people’s lives. It takes a long time to realize the danger of being an amateur providence, that is, interfering with God’s order for others. You see a certain person suffering, and you say – He shall not suffer, and I will see that he does not. You put your hand straight in front of God’s permissive will to prevent it, and God says, – ‘What is that to thee?’ If there is stagnation spiritually, never allow it to go on, but get into God’s presence and find out the reason for it. Possibly you will find it is because you have been interfering in the life of another; proposing things you had no right to propose; advising when you had no right to advise.”
This perspective runs completely counter to what many consider “Christian” behavior and proper “pastoral” care. When we are asked to minister to the homeless, alcoholics, drug users, sexually promiscuous, serial adulterers, or what have you, relief of their immediate suffering may be exactly what God does NOT want you to do. When symptoms of spiritual death are removed, there is little incentive to go to the root problem, which is organic separation from the Holy Spirit. Bad soteriology leads to bad pastoral theology, each and every time. The debates that rack the Church today are unmistakable evidence that theology was neglected yesterday.
Answer
Although I would never have depended upon a CliffsNotes while in college, I do believe there was a disclaimer somewhere in each volume that said something to the effect that reading the Notes was not a substitute for reading the actual work. It was intended, it said, to complement the original work to enhance understanding of what you’ve already read. I echo that, perhaps vain, entreaty, with regard to the Bible. Is this a comprehensive summary of the contents of the entire Bible or the self-revelation of God? Of course not. But just like the CliffsNotes, this summary may just serve to help you pass the only test that counts, the test of your response to the love of God as found in the death and resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. That’s a test for which there is no make-up, no retest, no recovery. But tests are only bad when you’re not prepared. If you’re prepared, they’re a chance to show what you know: that God is love, and has already done all that is needed to solve our two problems of moral guilt and powerlessness. That, if you ask me, is pretty good news.
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