Rev. John Tamilio III, Pastor
Salvation. It’s one of the central doctrines of the Christian faith. Christians believe they are saved by the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. The very word saved means that a person was rescued from peril. Therefore, when we say that we are saved by the atoning work of Jesus, we need to ask what are we saved from? Think of it another way: if you were in a dangerous situation, let’s say you were in a lake flailing about because you can’t swim, and I threw you a rope and pulled you in to shore, you’d probably thank me for saving your life. After all, that is what I did. If you were walking down the street and I did the same thing (threw you a rope and asked you to hang on tight while I pulled you to safety), you’d think I was either joking or crazy. Why? You are in no immediate peril! So, if we say that Jesus has saved us, he must have saved us from something — something treacherous.
Traditional theology says that Jesus saves us from Hell. The reasoning works thusly: because of Original Sin (which we inherited from Adam and Eve) and the sins we commit in thought, word, and deed, we are guilty. Seeing that our God is pure and perfect (the epitome of righteousness), God cannot have anything vile or sinful in his midst. Psalm 5:4 states it clearly: “For you are not a God who delights in wickedness; evil may not dwell with you.” Therefore, a sinful humanity must be purged of such depravity if we are to bask before the throne of God in heaven. Jesus attains this for us on the cross. By paying the price for the penalty we deserve, we are justified before God. Jesus bridges the gap sin created between us and our faultless God. As the Apostle Paul told the Romans, “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (6:23).
So, there’s the “theological” explanation. That is the reason for the crucifixion and the resurrection. But other than preparing us for an eternal audience with God, we still have to grapple with the word salvation. If we are saved, we must be saved from something. What is that something?
Many will say Hell. If we are not reconciled with God by accepting the sacrifice Jesus made on our behalf, we face alienation from God. That is actually an apt description of Hell. Whether you envision it as a place of never-ending torture run by a man with horns and a red point tail carrying a pitchfork or not, Hell is the place where God is not. It transcends nightmares.
The traditional Christian belief is that our sins would consign us to such a fate, but Jesus redeems us from that. His sacrifice is on our behalf. He achieves what we cannot. But it isn’t a one-time thing. We continue to sin, because we are a broken creation. I love what the theologian H. Richard Niebuhr said about this. Niebuhr, who used to teach at Yale Divinity School, is a theologian in our Congregational tradition. Anyway, “a street evangelist [once] asked him, ‘Are you saved?’ [and Niebuhr] answered, ‘I was saved on Calvary. I am being saved by faith right now. I shall be saved when the Kingdom finally comes.”[1] There is something holistic and ongoing about this that I love. It essentially makes the claim that salvation is not some one-shot deal: profess Jesus as your savior, become baptized, and congratulations. You’ve made it.
This is why I love the line in the United Church of Christ’s Statement of Faith that reads, “God seeks in holy love to save all people from aimlessness and sin.” We’ve already talked about the sin part. What about aimlessness? It seems as if the UCC is saying that we are saved from walking around with our hands in our pockets — that we are saved from just wandering about with nothing to do. Surely, the crucifixion doesn’t save us from boredom!
But that is not what this means. Roger Shinn claims that this is more of a cultural problem. He wrote about this back in 1990, some thirty-five years ago. I can only imagine what he would say now. Aimlessness is epidemic. We do not look at the world; we look at our smart phones. We do not interact with people; we text them. It’s even to the point that we’ve all but stopped thinking; we let Chat GBT do that for us. Chat GBT is part of AI (artificial intelligence). You ask it a question, and it will do everything from giving you a response to writing it out for you in your voice — as if the idea came from you. I can think of nothing more aimless than ceasing to think. Maybe we are the true automatons who will roam the earth with glazed, expressionless eyes when the zombie apocalypse occurs.
Jesus saves us from that. He gives our lives purpose. Being saved is an invitation to become part of a community that worships and serves God.
[1] Dorothy ad Gabriel Fackre, Christian Basics: A Primer for Pilgrims (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1991), 92.