Spirituality Column #337
April 30, 2013
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers – Zionsville

By Bob Walters

For 2,000 years the proposition “You should be a Christian” has been countered with the question: “What do I get?”

Sermonizers, evangelists and ministers endlessly answer seekers and new believers suggesting a transaction: “Johnny, tell ‘em what they’ve won!”  Believers get a new life in Christ; forgiveness of sin, the wisdom of God, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, plus eternal life, grace, freedom, mercy, peace, patience, kindness …

Not enough?  Well, how about health, wealth, and happiness?

Still not enough?  OK, you’ll be rich, smart, good looking and all your prayers will be answered in the Godly affirmative: Yes!  Just, c’mon, be a Christian!

Religion “buyers” (us) and “sellers” (preachers) too often leap reflexively and opportunistically from encountering the sober and divine gift of Jesus Christ into the hysterical earthly realm of fallen humans trying to satisfy worldly appetites.

It’s an equation mostly unchanged in two millennia of Christian thought.  Twenty-first century mankind is no less mercenary than our ancestors.  Freer, perhaps – plus with iPhones, game shows, etc. – but still asking Jesus “What’s in it for me?”  We’ll listen to a surprising idea, consider obedience and faith, suppose the existence of “right” and “wrong”, entertain the notion of Jesus Christ as the son of God and savior of humanity, and maybe even tolerate the inconvenience of church.  But eventually we ask, “”What do I get?”  I’m here to say, that’s the wrong question.

For fun and re-edification, I am re-reading Oxford theologian Alister McGrath’s “Christian Theology,” an 800-page college text.  My son used this introductory survey while taking a Religious Studies minor at Purdue.  My copy is one I picked up years ago from friend and pastor Russ Blowers who had a spare in his home library.  Certainly, the “benefits” of Christianity, i.e., “What do I get?” is noted and discussed.

Since Jesus appeared, defining the earthly value of Christian belief has been nearly as extensive an enterprise as defining the nature and person of Jesus Christ.  Origen, Tertullian, Chrysostom, Athanasius, Augustine, the Cappadocian Fathers, Maximus (the Confessor), Anselm, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin and countless scholars have  dissected, parsed, imputed, translated, investigated, and expounded on every word of scripture and every imaginable detail of Christ’s place in the Godhead and Jesus’ influence on the world.  Yet we sit in church, or somewhere, and ask, “What do I get?”

When contemplating Christ and all He gave, it seems a self-centered misstep to negotiate one’s Christian walk in terms of “What I can get.”

No, being about Christ is being about “What I can give.”

That expresses divine love - the Gospel - and that’s as good as it gets.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) poses this “give and get” - Christ forgiving us; us forgetting ourselves.

Spirituality Column #336
April 23, 2013
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers – Zionsville

By Bob Walters

The weekly church sign read: “Who will be in heaven because of you?”

Great question.

My inner reaction, embarrassingly, was a spontaneous jumble of off-point, defensive, legalistic, self-centered, arrogant, judgmental questions.  I wondered … am I doing enough?  Is my walk straight enough?  Is my witness true enough?  Is my writing about Christ affecting anyone in a positive way?  And, hey wait a minute, is that church full of people who think they can pave their own or someone else’s way into Heaven?

Notice: All questions, mostly about me, no answers.  Not a great response.

So let’s try again.  “Who will be in heaven because of you?”

The correct and final answer is: “Nobody.”

There it is.  We can’t save anyone.  Heaven is only there because of God, we can get there only because of Jesus Christ, and we only know about it because of the Holy Spirit.  There is only one way to stand in the presence of God and share the eternal, divine, loving fellowship of salvation in heaven – and that is to be justified; to have one’s earthly fallenness and sin restored to heavenly righteousness.

That work is above any earthly pay grade.

But how are we justified?  When do we “get saved”?  When are our sins forgiven and our fallenness restored?  While its secular shimmer makes it easy to miss, that’s why we celebrate Easter.  We are justified, forgiven, made righteous in faith, and restored to communion with God thanks purely to Christ’s work on the cross and not in any part due to our work in the world.

Romans 2, 3 and 4 provide the key biblical tutorial for how God’s righteousness, judgment and faithfulness “fix” mankind’s fallenness and how we gain righteousness in Christ.  Understand, our necessary righteousness has already been won by Christ on the cross, but only the combination of our faith and Christ’s love puts us in heaven.

But wait, isn’t “having faith,” in essence, “doing something”?  No.  Faith isn’t something we “do,” it’s something we have … or not.  Christians often confuse systematic obedience with loving faith. Christian faith is not a system to follow; it’s love in a relationship with Christ.  Obedience is merely evidence of a system, while faith is evidence of love.  That’s the difference in the Old and New Covenants – the old was about obeying laws; the new is about having faith and loving Jesus.

My efforts will never get anyone into heaven, including me.  But as indeed Jesus came for “all mankind” (John 3:16), our battle has already been won.

We’ll be in heaven because of Him.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) loves that church sign; he drives by it every day on the way to work.

Spirituality Column #335
April 16, 2013
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers – Zionsville

By Bob Walters

Exactly how any one of us might come to faith in Christ is, to me, one of the great mysteries in life.

All of us as believers have family, friends, associates – shoot, everybody we encounter – with whom we want to share this great gift.  And that’s what the Bible tells us to do – make “disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:18-22) even to “the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8).  “How” we should do it boils down to replicating, as best we can, the unselfish and sacrificial love of Jesus.  Jesus gives us “why” in John 16:33, “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace.  In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”

Doesn’t everyone want and need peace?  Sure, but … actions are misinterpreted, words are not understood, and motives are suspect.  We blame ourselves for not “converting” someone.  But remember: Jesus had the exact same problem with the Pharisees and Pontius Pilate.  History shows us that even the holiest words can fall on deaf, hostile ears.

In our personal lives, it is especially hard to see loved ones firmly entrenched in their steadfast knowledge of the world and rebuff the message of Jesus.  We have to be honest with ourselves and ask whether our love is selfish or unselfish because truly, only selfish love can be rebuffed.  Yet we can do what Jesus wants us to do as long as we draw breath if our love is truly unselfish.  We can also take heart that God isn’t keeping score of anything but our love and our faith.  “Souls saved” is squarely the job of the Holy Spirit.

But how does that happen?  There doesn’t appear to be a formula.

In my own case, I can look back, track the steps, see what happened, and it all makes perfect sense … now.  But I didn’t see it coming, would have run from it if I had, wasn’t really looking, and executed no repeatable “system.”

I think that’s what makes evangelism in general – sharing the Good News of Christ – so difficult.  I mean, yes it’s easy to tell a story about how I got here, but impossible to draw a map for someone else’s journey.  Only God can do that, and God starts by giving each of us the freedom to accept or deny Christ’s love.

Maybe that’s why one’s journey to Christ is so special, because God makes the path unique and personal.  I’m convinced it’s a mystery we can’t embrace until we realize that Christ is first embracing us.

Walters’ (rlwcom@aol.com) conversion story appears in his book Common Christianity, Uncommon Commentary in columns 55-59 and 252-253.

Spirituality Column #334
April 9, 2013
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers – Zionsville

By Bob Walters

On the radio just before Easter I heard, consecutively, two unrelated sermons by two different preachers making the following point about the empty tomb of Jesus:

The stone was “rolled away” not so Jesus could get out, but so that the witnesses could get in.  Dumb me; I’d never thought of it before.

Could it be any more obvious?  How else could Mary, Mary Magdalene, and Salome, then Peter and John, the other disciples, the 500, and over time the entire world, learn about God’s love and the miracle of the resurrection?  Duh.  Of course Jesus didn’t need divine aid to move a rock; he had just beaten death, forgiven sin and restored a fallen world to fellowship with the Creator God Almighty.  It was mankind that needed divine aid to remove the stone of its sadness, emptiness, guilt, and disbelief.

All four Gospels mention the stone: Matthew 28:2, Mark 16:4, Luke 24:2, and John 20:1. It seems Pilate’s tomb guards were “guarding” the evil done by a dark world, e.g., killing Jesus, and angels who “gleamed like lightning” frightened off the guards and revealed the glorious truth of the risen Lord.

And it struck me … do any of us come to faith in Christ without, somewhere along the journey, God rolling a rock out of our way?  Or without angels removing a barrier to our faith in the eternal unseen?  Have we ever approached Jesus thinking he was dead and been thoroughly surprised at the life we found?

I sure have.  Like when I came to faith well into my adult years.  It didn’t happen all at once, just like Christianity didn’t emerge fully formed upon the witness of the miraculously empty tomb.  That rolled-away stone revealed the most enormous, total truth the world will ever know.  It instantly triggered faith, fear and joy, followed by confusion and curiosity.  “Jesus is risen!  Our Lord is alive!” the witnesses rejoiced.

But … what happens next?

That’s what I wondered the first time I walked out of church: what would happen next?  I had gone in with no intent or expectations of actually “finding Jesus.”  But I came out having encountered “the empty tomb” – with spiritual proof positive in my heart that Christ was real and Jesus was alive and somehow everything I’d heard about Jesus Christ was true.  I had found the truth of Jesus and wanted to actually find Him.  But honestly, I had no idea how to go about it.

Thus the journey began.  With the Spirit’s help, the journey continues.

But I’ll never forget the day the stone was rolled away.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) wonders if you remember when your stone was rolled away.

Spirituality Column #333
April 2, 2013
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers – Zionsville

By Bob Walters
Author of the book Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary