June 13, 2004
By Jack Price

            In the musical Godspell Jesus asks the musical question, “When Wilt Thou Save the People?”  This morning, we ask the question, “Why does God save the people?”  The apostle Paul helps us discover the answer, in a passage called Paul’s “gospel in miniature”.  (Galatians 2: 15-21).

Paul summarizes the meaning of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection with the message that only faith in Jesus saves people.  Law cannot and does not save people.  Paul was Jewish, like Jesus.  He says that Jewish religious Law is inadequate to save people.  No law and no religious system can save.   Only faith in Jesus saves. 

Faith is more than belief, more than mentally agreeing to doctrinal statements.  To Paul, faith means trusting, committing, and connecting with the living Christ through the Holy Spirit.  Paul goes so far as to say no religious system is adequate to save us. There is nothing we can do or believe to merit salvation.  It is God’s freely given gift by grace. 

Isn’t such freedom, without the restraint of rules or religious law, just an invitation to self-indulgent and sinful behavior?  Religious rules at least govern people’s behavior.  But Paul says rules do not give life or change people.  The key is not theological argument, but relationship and transformation.  Grace moves us into relationship with God and the relationship transforms us.  We become new creations, usually little by little, with new hearts and new motives.

Paul sees Jesus life and death as the decisive piece of our saving relationship with God.  Jesus’ revealed God’s nature in his life and the full extent of God’s love in his death.  By saying, “I am crucified with Christ,” he affirms the clear truth of dying to an old way of life as the first step to being born to a new life or a new stage of life. Choosing to embrace Jesus’ life gives us the gift of freedom and relationship with God’s Holy Spirit.

You don’t earn this.  It’s grace or law – one or the other takes precedence.  For Paul, it’s grace -- “I do not nullify the grace of God; for if justification comes through the law, then Christ died for nothing.”  The bottom line of Paul’s little Gospel is this:  God’s gracious gift of salvation frees us through Jesus. 

So, this salvation thing seems pretty important!  Salvation is God’s initiative to bring people back into the loving relationship with truth itself.  Salvation is God’s gift regardless of our theology or religious labels.  Salvation is the process of being transformed into the likeness of Jesus, the fully human one in whom God revealed all that can be revealed of God in a human life.  Jesus’ example shows us how to live and how to face death.  The Holy Spirit enables us, frees us, and empowers us to be God’s partners – to be co-creators of God’s new creation – that is, of heaven itself.

Salvation is our ticket to the journey of life:  the inward journey of engaging ourselves and being engaged by God, and the outward journey of mission, vocation, and ministry relating to our broader community. So, how can we live by faith without getting caught up in those theological differences that tend to divide us? 

We can affirm that salvation is not a reward for becoming a Christian or for believing the right doctrine.  Salvation gives us freedom to relate to others more honestly, through our own giftedness and calling.  It gives us freedom to work with others without insisting on our own ways of believing and acting.  Freedom enables us to see Jesus in others, even if they don’t call themselves Christian; to trust that the Spirit calls each of us and all of us as a part of a whole.

Why does God save people?  I don’t pretend to know God’s motives, but clearly  God saves us to be God’s partners in bringing God’s reign of justice, peace, and love into this world.  Salvation frees us to begin being God’s partners. 

God frees us from being burdened by the past. The Big Fish is the story of a young man who became estranged from his father because the father would always tell larger-than-life stories about himself.  The son felt overshadowed and often embarrassed by his father.  He also felt angry at never knowing who his father really was – only these outlandish stories.  Finally, as the father was dying, he and his son spoke for the first time in many years.  In their reconnection, the son’s burden of anger, grief, and guilt slowly dropped away and he was free to embrace his father extraordinary life.  The freedom you feel when the burdens of the past drop away is a taste of life lived in God’s salvation.

God frees us from being burdened by the future and its worries.  People worry.  Parents worry about their kids.  How will they do in school?  Will they be happy?  How will they do in college, in life?  Will they get a job?  Will they be happy?  Will they come back home to live?  The cycle of worry seems endless.  Many of us constantly live out ahead of ourselves and expect the worst so we’ll never be surprised.  The powerful sense of relief you feel, when things don’t turn out as badly as you imagined they would, is but a taste of life lived in God’s salvation.

God frees us from the idolatry of self-deprecation.  This is the present burden we carry of a diminished sense of self, characterized by feelings of worthlessness and aimlessness.  The burden of low self-esteem frees us from any responsibility to participate as full partners with God, using our giftedness and responding with passion to God’s call.  God’s salvation frees us to embrace who God has made us to be.  It is said:  “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.  Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.”  Salvation is God’s recognition that you and I, and all people, are powerful beyond measure – that we are co-creators with God.  We are empowered and freed to be who we are in God.  There is no need to justify ourselves because God has already justified us!

We are empowered and freed as God’s partners to embrace others in partnership.  Here at Crossroads Church, we are empowered and freed to embrace individuals and families on Wayne Avenue as partners in the creation of God’s reign here in midtown Kansas City.  God frees us.  God empowers us.  God calls us because God loves us.

            We are empowered to love freely by giving ourselves away to others, and by receiving their love given freely to us.  We are empowered and freed to move out of entrenched patterns and comfort zones.  We serve, not to seek reward from God, but because serving is love in action.  It is the means to happiness, joy, and abundant living.

Why does God save people?  Maybe the really simple answer is that’s just who God is and what God does.  That’s what makes God happy.  Perhaps poet Ann Lewin (“Revelation” from Candles and Kingfishers, 1993) describes it best:

God’s work of art.

That’s me?

Then Beauty must lie

in the eye of the Beholder.

I feel more like

One of those statues

Michelangelo left

Half emerging

From the marble block;

Full of potential,

On the verge of life,

But prisoned still

By circumstance and

Fear.

Yet part of me is free—

And you are still creating,

Bringing to life

The promise that is there.

Sometimes by

Hammer blows

Which jar  my being,

Sometimes by

Tender strokes half felt

Which waken me to

Life.

Go on, Lord.

Love me into wholeness.

Set me free

To share with you

In your creative joy;

To laugh with you

At your delight

In me,

Your work of art.

            Salvation is the carving of the shape of our lives in the marble, to be God’s partners for the redeeming of creation and the creation of the reign of God.  Let us take delight in each other and the ministry we share just as our Creator delights in all of us.