Why is Salvation Necessary? Salvation part 3

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Note this is part 3 of a multipart series, Please start with Part 1. Part one has an outline you can use to follow along as we study the topic of salvation:

Brothers, What Shall We Do? 

Why is it necessary?

Two forces are at work against sin in this world. It can seem to some that they are working in opposition to each other, however the relationship between the two is synergistic. One feeds on the other, creating a new reality where sin is nonexistent.

A.    God's Holiness

The living God that Christians worship is personal, relational, and holy. By personal I mean that He exists with character traits that make Him intelligent, and He acts with a will. He is distinguished from and acts upon His environment[1]. By relational, I mean that He seeks fellowship with others, namely humans[2], who share certain traits with Him. God's Holiness is where the clearest distinction between God and humanity is made. God is necessarily different from people because He created them and everything else in this existence ex nihilo, and we cannot create in that fashion. Our creativity is bound to the material. We can have ideas and we can make many bold plans, but the physical world binds us. While we can mold the world around us, we can't create a new world. Our ideas may be our own, but their implementation requires input from a Creator. We borrow His stuff to make them real. His holiness is not limited to His ability, He's also substantively different than us. People are a combination of material and immaterial. God on the other hand is spirit. He's not tied to this existence to be complete. God is holy because He creates apart from His creation and because He is substantively different from His creation[3]. These are quantifiable attributes of the holiness of God. God is also of a different quality. Put briefly, God is holy because He does no wrong. There is nothing in His being to permit evil. God is not limited by His temporal circumstances so that He makes ignorant choices that result in evil, nor does He deliberately cause evil to come to pass. In contrast to man, God rises up to bring justice to the earth, to the terror of those who do wrong. Consider Isaiah:

Isa 33:1-14  Ah, you destroyer, who yourself have not been destroyed, you traitor, whom none has betrayed! When you have ceased to destroy, you will be destroyed; and when you have finished betraying, they will betray you.  (2)  O LORD, be gracious to us; we wait for you. Be our arm every morning, our salvation in the time of trouble.  (3)  At the tumultuous noise peoples flee; when you lift yourself up, nations are scattered,  (4)  and your spoil is gathered as the caterpillar gathers; as locusts leap, it is leapt upon.  (5)  The LORD is exalted, for he dwells on high; he will fill Zion with justice and righteousness,  (6)  and he will be the stability of your times, abundance of salvation, wisdom, and knowledge; the fear of the LORD is Zion's treasure.  (7)  Behold, their heroes cry in the streets; the envoys of peace weep bitterly.  (8)  The highways lie waste; the traveler ceases. Covenants are broken; cities are despised; there is no regard for man.  (9)  The land mourns and languishes; Lebanon is confounded and withers away; Sharon is like a desert, and Bashan and Carmel shake off their leaves.  (10)  “Now I will arise,” says the LORD, “now I will lift myself up; now I will be exalted.  (11)  You conceive chaff; you give birth to stubble; your breath is a fire that will consume you.  (12)  And the peoples will be as if burned to lime, like thorns cut down, that are burned in the fire.”  (13)  Hear, you who are far off, what I have done; and you who are near, acknowledge my might.  (14)  The sinners in Zion are afraid; trembling has seized the godless: “Who among us can dwell with the consuming fire? Who among us can dwell with everlasting burnings?”

“Who among us can dwell with the consuming fire?” This question defines the difference between us and God. What can we do in the face of such a one as the Lord? He is Holy, and in His holiness, He will not tolerate our sin.

 

B.     God's Love

There are a few scriptures even the most skeptical of people on earth hope are true, one of which is 1 John 4:8 “Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.” They don’t necessarily want to believe any of the rest of this chapter, but they want to use this verse a bludgeon for attacking God’s holy righteous judgement of sin. “The argument was that if God is truly love, then God could not bear to lose any of God’s creation”[4] said one retired Unitarian Universalist preacher when talking about why he left the Presbyterian denomination. How then, can both be true?  God is Holy, God is Love. In solving this problem let’s first look at what is being assumed. Just because God is Love does not mean that this is His preeminent characteristic. Rather, the “two basic sides of His Moral nature are His holiness and His love.”[5] These aspects are equal and complimentary. Because He is Holy and Loving, He has surely made a way for sinners to have their sins “washed away.”[6] God’s Love is what makes the verses after 1 John 4:8 so important:

1Jn 4:8-19  Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.  (9)  In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.  (10)  In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.  (11)  Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.  (12)  No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.  (13)  By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.  (14)  And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world.  (15)  Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God.  (16)  So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.  (17)  By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world.  (18)  There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.  (19)  We love because he first loved us.

In reading this passage several things become apparent to us:

1.                  God has made love know to us in his actions by sending His son to die for our sins.

2.                  Those abide in this love abide in God through His Spirit

3.                  These people who Love God and abide in Him have confidence on Judgement Day because God’s love perfected in them, has cast out all fear of judgement.

 

It seems to me that if God’s Love and God’s holiness are working in concert to bring people to salvation, we need to understand what that means. These people, who loved God, received testimony from the Apostles about what they needed to do to experience the Love of God.[7] It is important to go to scripture to find out what the Apostles taught concerning what the Loving, Holy God has done to assure us salvation.

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Quick link to Part 4:

How Does Salvation Happen? By The Grace of God!

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[1] This is partially revealed to us in Exodus 3:14 “God said to Moses, “I AM WHO IAM.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’”

[2] Ezekiel 34:11-24; John 4:23

[3] Isaiah 6:3 and Revelation 4:8 Reveal that God is constantly praised as Holy because he fills the earth with His Glory and He as the Almighty, is eternal (was, is, and is to come).

[4] https://www.mlive.com/living/kalamazoo/2010/09/a_place_to_belong_after_faith.html

[5] Jack Cottrell, The Collect Writings of Jack Cottrell (The Christian Restoration Association, Mason OH, 2018) 3:67. See also Romans 11:22.

[6] Acts 22:16.

[7] 1 John 1:1-4

Hey, That's Me, in the Cracks....

I confess,

Sometimes it feels like I get a little lost in all that happens. I'm left alone when I want to be talked to. I say "I'm OK", but mean "Something's wrong, but I don't know how to explain it". Some days I just wish to speak and be understood, to be taken plainly. I'm in the cracks, stuck, and I'm not sure I'll get out. When I think about it, I guess the feeling I have comes from being marginalized. I've been "Nothing Buttered"* into an identity separate from how I see myself, and what I've been told I am by God.

In this post I'm stretching to describe the strange Malaise I feel toward existing in the here and now and the Malice expressed toward me by this world. These M&Ms are poison pills that taint my effectiveness at holiness in ways both subtle and obvious. It's hard to try when you show people just a little of who you are and they scoff and deride you. It should be expected that the world would hate me (hate us), but when it happens, it happens in so many strange little ways. I feel like I could fight the world if the rules were the same for both groups, but ultimately they're not.

Consider this: Culturally, Christians are called to bear our Cross with Jesus. I understand in my mind what this means. I must lose constantly. I'm a condemned man. I must be reviled. The State is against me. That's not optional. ultimately all human government is against God because all government seeks to perpetuate itself over and against the governed. In America we attempt to insulate ourselves from this fact through democracy, law, and something called "Checks and Balances" but ultimately our government seeks the same domination of the governed either through regulation, taxation, or compartmentalization. Regulation and taxation are obvious, because Christian or not, we all feel some burden from regulation and taxation. Compartmentalization is something different. I believe Government (big G intentional) attempts to shuffle people into a category that they can label and then they can sell their customized reality of "the best life". Society and Government needs us in a box to produce for them, make them tax dollars! They do their best to try and convince us to be "quiet and content" while making sure we are their definition of quiet and content.That's the rules that change. This world will try to tell us what it means to "...lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. " (1 Timothy 2:2, ESV) but we can't let them. We have to go to the Bible and get the Word on Godliness, peace, quietness, dignity. Get out of THEIR box!

I'm trying to breakout of my box all the time. Today it's tiresome. It's always tiresome, mainly because I desperately want to take the easy way out. I want to flow on the path of water. Sometimes that is a feature, today it's a flaw. There's no quick "Grace!" and it's over. Holiness is a long slog toward something we can't fully comprehend, and yet is always happening. There's no room on the cross you're carrying for all the things we do and partake of to make this life easier. All creation groans after what we perceive, that this world is passing. It will burn. It must burn. It isn't holy, loving, selfless, or warm. "Heat death" is it's ultimate end, a state of changelessness where even the fabric of the universe melts away, becoming nothing, going back to nothing, "ashes to ashes, earth to earth, dust to dust". Good riddance. Better to lose now, while we can still live forever. Better to embrace the all present presence of God, His lamb making us righteous.

To that end, I've got something in the works, Something Big. Something that I hope will be helpful and worth reading about what God calls "Salvation." I've been working on it for a while, and I'm close to a release. I've written the first post, run it by others, and the words are ready. I need to format it in Blogger, link it up to a few websites, and I need to finish one more post's worth of content. Then I'll begin releasing it weekly, Here, or on my regular blog, skattagun.blogspot.com. Maybe i'll do both...

....Keep a Weather Eye....

Wisdom and Instruction

The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction. -- Proverbs 1:7

The verse posted above is one of those "classic verses" everyone learned at some point in their walk with God, at least on the churches where I grew up. The thing about this verse that always stands out to me is how little we consider the word fear when we consider God.

Fear is something we associate we mostly associate with negativity. We should certainly be afraid of God if we we refuse to obey Him, but we if we love Him, doesn't "Perfect love cast out all fear" (1 John 4:8)?

We experience fear of the Lord for a variety of reasons:

• Past judgement by God is seen as a garauntee of future condemnation
• Fear losing salvation because of some unknown sin

just to name a couple.
We fear God because we understand that we don't understand Him. His ways are not our ways, and that causes fear because our questions can not be assured of an answer. Fear and faith are the twin internal reactions to understanding that when it comes to God, we must trust something claiming to be from Him, and as Christians, that is the Bible. We must trust that the Bible is true, that it is sufficient, and that it is instructive in our understanding of God. Let's turn our fear into faith by considering the following:
We fear judgement because of our sins: We have faith that God's plan for us is to be with Him (Revelation 21:1-4).
We fear impotence because we are finite: We have faith that we are immovable from the hand of God (John 10:27-30).

When we know the Bible, we know the fear of the LORD. It's our place for wisdom and instruction. As I become a better Believer and Servant, the more my fear becomes faith through the encouragement of the Word.