The doctrine of Redemption is the fundamental mystery of our holy religion- whosoever believeth in it shall not perish but have everlasting life in which to try to understand it. (Ambrose Pierce)
indeed, what? as canadians, we can stumble over the answer to this question simply for fear of telling someone else how to live their life. however, when we, for all our stumbling, realize that our own answer is decidedly more cluttered by religion than Jesus’ answer was, or than Peter’s or Paul’s answers were, it is then that we are able to throw off our cultural baggage and move forward in both our understanding and our sharing of God’s grace.
we run hard in our quest for redemption.
look around: people do amazing things for their community in search of their place in this world. coaching teams, performing in community theatre, organizing hip hop groups in the inner city, serving at camps for the disabled, teaching children bible stories at church- we want to be part of a work that makes the world a better place and establishes a legacy that will somehow live on after we’ve gone. we want to leave a good mark and our quest for purpose, for redemption, drives us.
but sometimes we get things backwards. mistakenly engaging in these community-building activities with the hope of somehow attaining salvation through our involvements. these involvements should be the expression of salvation, not a means of somehow accomplishing it.
but when asked the big redemption question, paul answers with a hyperlink: 'click on BELIEVE and follow the instructions.'
receive hope and then live it out in obedience.
that's the redemption deal.
but remember:
the ‘living it out’ is not where the religion comes in-
it’s where the light shines out
6 comments:
It's not as easy as you make it sound...I have heard this 'gospel PR' before...the claim needs more to it to fill it in.
If it were as easy as 'believe and be saved' the next obvious question would be...'believe what Paul'?
I believe strongly in God's grace and that all who come are accepted with no qualifications to be met at the door. However, one's life is in following God is about 'belief'...what does it mean to 'believe something'? What is this something we are believing - God or his words?
I believe in gravity - nothing I do will change that. That's similar to believing in something Jesus did 2000 years ago - like atonement. It just is and no amount of confession or non-confession can change that.
I believe in treating people with respect. However, this hinges on whether I actually do it or not for the belief to be true/accurate/honest. This is the belief being asked for in the NT by Jesus, Paul, and any writer of a gospel or letter. Belief should be followed by making's one reality match one's words...then one can say when they see it 'told you he believed in respecting people'.
As for who we follow, it is God. God at a distance mind you - but God nonetheless. What is not a distance is the teachings, the written word, we can easily read and be inspired by that. We will connect with God however it happens (in the spirit)...but we need to follow what was taught to show we are part of this thing.
ha ha- good stuff, jason.
as I make it sound?
hmm. methinks you didn't click the link. no big deal- it just takes us to a tiny piece of the story of paul and silas with the jailer in acts 16.
in any event, there's a few things that have, perhaps, gone without saying:
1) this is a snippet of a larger talk. i'm trying to post more often and make the actual posts shorter. better for discussion. (who wants to read lengthy sermonizing online?)
2) in the scriptures, we are rarely given full conversations. from these heavily edited highlights we have to try to figure out what happened and what message this has for the lives we are living today.
3) in reading the snippet of a talk that is based on a snippet of scripture which paints a general picture of a life-changing experience taking place, as bruce cockburn once sang 'two thousand years and half a world away' we are probably dealing with a fairly broad margin of error.
so i guess we can leave no more than 5000 characters in a comment now. anything longer should be a new blogpost or something.
what is this- twitter?
anyway, i am continuing on from the comment previous responding to jason's thoughts and questions on belief.
***
the acts 16.29-34 bit goes like this:
29The jailer called for lights, rushed in and fell trembling before Paul and Silas. 30He then brought them out and asked, "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?"
31They replied, "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved—you and your household." 32Then they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all the others in his house. 33At that hour of the night the jailer took them and washed their wounds; then immediately he and all his family were baptized. 34The jailer brought them into his house and set a meal before them; he was filled with joy because he had come to believe in God—he and his whole family.
so you've posted a couple great questions that, i think, actually summarize my conclusion for this bit:
"...(a) what does it mean to 'believe something'? (b) What is this something we are believing- God or his words?" (SVS)
a) in my view (and i'm pretty sure scripture has my back on this one) to truly believe is live out that belief. if the belief is that Jesus Christ is the hope for all- indeed, that believing in this about him leads to the redemption of our own lives, pain, fallenness and all to be used in God's larger design, then i think to live this belief is to somehow reflect in one's own actions, interactions, relationships etc the truth that is held and the love motive that runs behind it all. the degree to which one succeeds in pulling this one off on a day to day basis becomes testimonial to the life-changing hope in Jesus Christ to which this person clings.
ha ha... and the degree to which one fails to pull this off, acting in selfish insolence, emotional aloofness or legalism also becomes testimonial. luckily for the whole world, there is some supernatural engagement here that seems to be able to keep things spiritually moving forward in spite of really awful misrepresentations (like crusades, klan marches and even rock record burnings) of God's grace.
people get things wrong all the time.
however, if we're trying to identify whether we're believing in God or God's words, we might already be wandering a bit.
i mean, the passage here says that paul and silas 'spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all the others in his house.' what word is that? how much of the torah was part of that life-changing word that was shared? how much of it was quoted from the sermon on the mount? the jailer was probably a non-jewish person, as was his house... so anything coming to him that was not steeped in the pantheistic belief system of his youth would probably come as a challenge to him culturally and theologically- he might have even been thinking that he was converting to judaism and to the teachings of a jewish rabbi named yeshua ben yosef. we don't know.
what we do read here is that directly following the acceptance of 'the word of the Lord' he takes the battered paul and silas to his home and offers them kindness and restoration of dignity- bathing, nursing wounds, offering his food to them and treating them with honour. (notice he sets a meal for them? it does not say that he and his household ate with them... it's an eastern world thing. probably the stuff of a whole nother blogpost sometime.) then he returns them to their place in the prison because this was where they are supposed to be within the way of things. although their imprisonment- albeit legitimate due to the presence of magistrates at their flogging and incarceration- is unjust, the spoken 'word of the Lord' seems to also include within it a call to surrender and acceptance of the penalties for civic disobedience underneath the law.
so so much for my comments on not wanting to read or write sermons online...
part3
***
later on in the chapter, we see that paul and silas are freed legitimately anyway, and are escorted from the jail to make sure they don't go back in and preach more of this counter-cultural message to anyone else. all this talk about hope is pretty scary stuff to the current way...
(tangent: gibbon's theory on the fall of rome holds that it was Christianity that brought the whole thing down, what with all that talk about grace, forgiveness, love-driven social action etc. according to gibbon the presence of Christianity made rome weak. this makes that moment in franco zeffirelli's 'Jesus of Nazareth' film when pilate looks out and, in an attempt to appease the mob, offers to release a prisoner quite ironic. after all, which of these guys is the greater threat to the state: the terrorist or the street preacher?)
in any event, to try to discern whether we are believing God or believing God's words is tricky. our creeds hold that the bible is the revealed word of God. to remove this from our regimen for gaining an understanding of our role in God's redemption plan of the world would be to resort to some kind of uninformed zen mysticism.
the journey may not start with belief, but belief is what ushers us out of the natural, empirical and explainable realm of the physical limitation and into the realm of infinite spiritual possibility.
All I can say, good long answer (lol). I agree with what you are saying 100%...I think it makes good sound sense and is a hoeful message to those oppressing people or even the oppressed (remember this is happening around a jail).
i know, i know...
long answering was the main reason that i stopped blogging awhile back. still, thanks for sucking me in!
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