Works-Based Salvation

There seems to be an understanding in secular culture that there are people who don’t belong in church, or that to go to church one has to do something first – to get right with God, or to at least wear the right clothes, or to even get their life in order a little before they bring their mess to Jesus.

It would be silly to suppose that thought was based on anything other than real interactions and experiences. Christians have, in recent history, slung some ugly words at one another for things as disconnected from street-level practicality of salvation as what instruments are used to praise the Lord our God. I have some thoughts in the works about denominational differences being made too grand, but this is even more petty than Calvinism or the timing and role of baptism.

I’ve personally been scowled at for showing up to a service during the first song. (We never went back, and I couldn’t tell you a thing about the sermon or the worship set.) None of the people who guided me grumpily to a seat knew my name, let alone anything about my spiritual life.

I know someone who had been ministering to a coworker for the better part of a year when she shared with me a conversation they had. It came up that he had wanted to go to church again, either for Easter or a local festival, like he’d gone as a kid. He didn’t go, though, because his own mother told him he “wasn’t fit to step foot in a church.” My heart breaks for him and my friend who was speaking to him. And, frankly my heart breaks for his mother.

I suppose it’s out of this heartbreak that I am inspired to put my point so bluntly: raising such barriers is unbiblical. I believe the motivation to judge others who don’t do church the way you do comes out of pride and the need to put others down to build ourselves up. And if that’s not motivation enough to repent, I’ll remind you that scripture says multiple times that individuals can be held eternally accountable for the eternal effects their actions have on others.

And to put any expectations on anyone before they seek Christ is explicitly unbiblical and goes against the very model of evangelism demonstrated by Jesus.

Works-Based Pride

Sometimes, I wonder if Christians in America truly grok the fear of God. I think many of us have tamed Him in our minds, and reduced our faith to something that comforts and consoles. Dr. Timothy Keller had a great way of phrasing the good news that I think gets at the drama of it: “The gospel is this: We are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe, yet at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope.”

I’ll meditate here on a facet of this truth, soaking for a couple paragraphs on a point as illustrated by the words of Paul:

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

Ephesians 2:8-10 ESV

Whether you believe Christians were predestined to receive God’s mercy or we accepted the gift of His grace through free will, one thing is clear: we have no grounds to boast. To boast in being saved is to boast in having ones debt forgiven. You should no sooner brag about your salvation than you would brag about falling into insurmountable debt only to have it paid off by a philanthropist. What work did you do to be saved except sin to necessitate your redemption?

You are in church ultimately by luck. The luck that God offered you His grace, the luck that you were born in a time and place where you could hear the Gospel to accept it, and the luck that someone actually took the time to teach it to you. If you truly understand these words, then you will understand that you are no better than those who are not saved except that you are better off through no fault of yours or theirs.

If you still have any doubt, then let’s go to the wisdom books of the Old Testament. At the end of the first chapter of Job, the titular character has had all his possessions, his family, everything he valued except his health turned over to Satan, and this is his response:

Then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head and fell on the ground and worshiped. And he said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.”

Job 1:20-21 ESV

There’s much to learn from this passage about lamentation and times of distress. However, I’ll focus on the truth that Job speaks: everything we have is by the power of God. We come into this world with nothing but our body, and we will one day die and leave even that behind. Even the very fact that we come into existence and have physical form is by the power of God.

There is nothing in this life to boast about. No amount of wealth, power, righteousness, or family is worthy of respect on the scale of salvation. Your upbringing and your story will be nothing in the day of the Lord, and your principles, ideals, and goals are vapor that will not help you when you face judgement. Every status and possession and relation you have today exists and is yours only because God has given it to you, and so far nobody has escaped the repossession of death.

All this to drive one point home: you have no right to look down upon those who aren’t saved. If you truly understood what the gospel means, you’d be desperate to share the gift of grace with anyone who would listen.

Jesus’ Evangelism

To restate my other point, the bar of entry to a church should be the threshold at the front door.

Jesus taught any who would listen. Much of John 3, including verse 16, is his discussion with Nicodemus, a pharisee. Mark 2:17 fits well here as well; his call is to those who are broken and need repentance and redemption. However, I think there’s a tidy case study in John 4: the woman at the well. The passage is a little long for me to quote wholesale, but I’ll still go through the interaction one part at a time.

First, a woman approaches the well around noon. Normally, women came in groups and in the morning when it was cooler; the fact that this woman is alone and avoiding the crowd means she’s likely a woman of ill repute. Not only that, but the woman was a Samaritan. I’ve described before how there was no love lost between Jews and Samaritans. Some commentaries say it’s even more extraordinary that Jesus would speak to her because rabbis usually didn’t speak to women in public.

Jesus, naturally, tells her she really shouldn’t be out looking for a man to- wait, no.

Jesus, naturally, forgoes the several societal norms and talks to her like a human being. There’s a few ways to read the tone of her response, but it’s fair to say she wasn’t expecting to be treated as normal.

Then, Jesus convicts her of- nope, wait, that’s later.

Jesus next engages with her spiritually. He introduces her to the concept of “living water”, and invites her in. As she takes his invitation, he gets more clear that this is a spiritual metaphor – what he offers is better than the Jewish and Samaritan religions, and indeed was better than all other religions as he promised eternal life. By now, it’s clear he’s offering more than avoiding the noonday sun, and she asks him to let her in on this living water.

So he tells her to stop living with – nope, we’re still not there.

So Jesus tells her to call her husband, giving her an opportunity to confess and confront her sin on her own terms. She declines.

Now, finally, and only now does Jesus confront her sin for her. Only to complete his picture of the gospel, only after establishing a relationship with her and giving her the invitation, and even giving her the opportunity to come clean herself.

So to go over it again, Jesus’ order for the presentation of the gospel is:

1. Establish a connection
2. Invitation to a deeper conversation, then explicitly to the good news that there is a better life
3. After she accepts the invitation, he shares the second part of the gospel, confession
4. And then, only after she declines to repent of her own accord does he clarify that sin and new life are incompatible

Could you imagine if his four step plan was this?

1. Paint a sign that says “turn or burn”
2. Strategically select a crowded street corner
3. Pull out a bullhorn and shout about fire and brimstone
4. Invite anyone who engages with you to escape the clutches of eternal damnation

That’s perhaps more a caricature than a modern occurrence, but the point stands: front-loading a call to repentance skips the point of the gospel, that we are redeemed by the grace of God. More practically, it also presupposes a shared knowledge of morality, a loving God, the fall of man, and a number of other things about the Christian faith. Frankly, that’s a lot to assume about someone.

Open Door Policy

Jesus’ gift of salvation is open to all, because he loves all people. As his ambassadors, we should carry forward the same love and openness. That means our job is to hold the doors of our local church wide open, and greet all people with love and acceptance. As we have been accepted by Christ, despite not being worthy, we can only hope to share the same joy of being accepted with others.

Yes, sin should be confronted, and even disciplined when appropriate. But there is a time and an order for such things, and there is generally an appropriate party to do such things – generally, someone who’s close to the sinner, who is part of their faith journey. If we put this confrontation first, then we are not showing the love Christ prioritized in Luke 10 and Matthew 22. We are excluding people who God loves, and we are shunning our neighbors, condemning them under the law of sin. And we know from Galatians 3 that in doing so, we condemn ourselves under the same law.

Next time you see someone at church who doesn’t look like they fit in, try making it a point to ask what brought them there. You may help them, but even more than that, I find it’s often the new person who helps the one who’s been around longer. I believe a community of Christians will be have more beautiful, deep, and powerful relationships if it its members are more radically different yet accepting of one another’s stories.