Monday, March 5, 2018
590 - Me or Thee?
Spirituality Column #590
March 6, 2018
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary
Me or Thee?
By Bob Walters
Here is a poser: Is salvation about me or is it about God?
Both
parties are required, obviously. Without
“me” – i.e., you, us, we, humanity, you know, people – there is nothing to save.
Without God, well, there is no “us” or anything else because without God
nothing is created. We aren’t having
this conversation and neither are the Darwinists, atheists, or anybody else.
There is no
conversation.
But we are having this conversation because a
God whose glory is paramount to all things in the universe created a being in
His own image – us –for Him to both love and to share in His divine glory. How does it happen? As God knows us and the very hairs on our
heads (Matthew 10:30), He gives us the faculty to know Him back. He provides us the capacity to think, which enables
us to love, to choose, to believe, to work, to learn, and to abide with him. God throws in freedom to allow us to make righteously
good or sinfully bad decisions. Why? Because
love, the thing that God truly is, glorifies nothing without free relationship. Love, real
love, cannot be coerced.
The fact is
we don’t have to love God; it’s the smart play but it’s not forced. God plants a hunger in us to seek that from
whence we came – Him – and a
curiosity about our origins, purpose, and destiny. It is the most complex of our intellectual
yearnings.
Christianity
has helped me simplify all that. Our
origin? We are from God because He
wanted us here. For what purpose? His love and glory. Our destiny? Freedom to fully share in God’s
love and glory and live with him and the saints in His kingdom forever … or
not. The Bible says faith in Jesus makes
the eternal difference.
I bring
this up because Christian believers are always posing this question – “Don’t
you want to be saved? – to non-believers or quasi-believers or seekers or
whomever out in the world,” It’s a
simple question if you know Jesus; but an utterly opaque proposition if one
doesn’t. I had no idea what salvation
was or why I’d want it before I became a Christian and knew it in my heart, in baptism, and in communion.
Salvation means life with God forever,
but we cadge the deep meaning of this gift by conflating this life’s joys and
challenges with eternal life’s endless glory of God. Sure, our life’s mission should be to accept
and anticipate our eternal life with Christ, but we routinely and selfishly insist
on relief from the travails of daily life and pray for comforts in the here and
now. “What have you done for me lately?”
we lamely bargain.
We are bequeathed
this free option of salvation, which by the way has already been accomplished for
each of us on the cross of Jesus Christ.
Yet so often it is inappropriately “sold” in the Christian community as
a gradated reward for behavior, not rightly positioned as the singularly most
important, game-changing, cosmic gift of human life: becoming one with God’s
fullness, love, and glory in His eternal Kingdom.
Hence I
ponder: “Do I want salvation for my glory, or for God’s?”
I believe
salvation is a Godly team effort of truth and grace: that we do for Him in love
as He does for us; and that it is for our sake that God offers the gift.
I believe our salvation is won by
accepting it … for God’s sake.
Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) grasps salvation as truth, not merely hope.
Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) grasps salvation as truth, not merely hope.
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