The Gospel – but not as we know it.
Following on from last Sunday’s News about Luke 16, the rich man and his wily steward, there is much more in this parable to upend our modern Christian doctrines – as if the commendation of a creative accountant by the Lord himself was not enough. For this is a parable of salvation. This is the gospel – but not as we know it.
Returning to the advice of the ’AI assistant’ on my computer, and according to Billy Graham so it reports, the steps to salvation are:
– Admit you are a sinner
– Ask for forgiveness
– Believe that Jesus Christ died for your sins
– Receive Jesus Christ into your heart and life.
And this is followed by an ‘explanation’:
‘Graham believed that repentance and faith go together. Repentance means changing your way of thinking and living. You must be willing to change your life. You must also believe in Jesus Christ and receive him into your heart.’
I feel that inadvertently (and I suppose everything an AI assistant does is inadvertent – unless we count the intentions of its maker) the AI assistant has stumbled upon and regurgitated a prevalent contradiction of modern Christian faith.
I ‘must be willing to change my life’?
Yet I don’t see that in the four steps the ‘explanation’ is supposed to explain?
On the one hand I am told I cannot change my life because my every thought and deed is flawed, I can only fall in contrition and worship at the feet of Christ (my regurgitation – the AI assistant didn’t get that far into it – but amen!). Then in the very next sentence I am told to change my life? Wasn’t my inability to do that the very reason I laid my life before Christ to hope for salvation in him alone?
The above contradiction or paradox if you prefer a more benign take is beyond the scope of this article, or more particularly it is not a primary subject of Jesus’ parable of the rich man and his steward as I understand it. But as we shall see, the parable does have implications for our understanding of salvation which are so outside the ‘four step framework’ – and any modern take on faith in Christ that I have heard preached – as to be, for myself anyway, mind boggling.
For a start, every statement of the gospel that I have heard is essentially individualistic. Salvation is between myself and God only. Step 1, ‘Admit you are a sinner’. Admit to whom? To God. Step 2, ‘Ask for forgiveness’. Ask who? Ask God to forgive you.
I cannot help but recall the words of King David, ‘Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight:’ (Psalm 51:4). Helpfully, the title of this psalm includes an explanation or description of the content – I suppose from the original text. My phone Bible doesn’t have notes or explanations from other sources. And the description is this: ‘To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet came unto him, after he had gone in to Bath-sheba.’
David had committed adultery and when the woman became pregnant, he arranged the death of her husband so as to avoid a ‘right royal scandal’. Yet he says to God, ‘Against thee, thee only have I sinned’?
One would imagine if ever there was a case for recognising other victims of a crime, this would have been it. Many, I imagine, would not even consider God to be the one primarily wronged. He was not even the victim in the first instance? The victim was Bath-sheba’s husband, so it would appear. And whomever else mourned his death.
But there is something profound about David’s statement. It is an outburst of revelation. Somehow he knew this was between himself and God. Even though the victim in the more obvious sense was another man. Perhaps because only God is completely innocent? And he is the giver of all we have, our lives, and has not caused nor required us to sin. Whereas, the best of the rest of us can only bow in worship and gratitude for the life God has given us. Whatever we may suffer, we live, and that is infinitely more than we deserve.
In any case, salvation through Christ, the gospel as it is commonly preached today is between each one of us and God only, a one-to-one reconciliation.
But Jesus turns that on its head.
In the parable of Luke 16, salvation for the unjust steward, the redemption of his ‘life to come’ is engineered through his connection to others. The steward is unable to reconcile himself to his lord – so he leverages the relationships that others have with his lord, and his own relationships with those same people.
As discussed in last Sunday’s News, the steward has much in common with all mortal men. A reckoning is coming, and he finds himself condemned beyond repair. The lord himself has declared his sentence – his fate seems irretrievable. Yet he cleverly positions himself for his life to come by arranging for others to be indebted to him, and he does so at his lord’s expense.
Is this possible? That salvation can be not only a one-to-one transaction between myself and God – but could also proceed from my connections to others?
Surely, if any person today were to preach that should your faith in God fail, nonetheless you might establish a place for yourself in heaven by giving money to those whose faith had not failed – such a preacher would be declared a heretic in any Christian denomination on earth today, I would expect. Yet Jesus says that exact thing in Luke 16?
I can tell you, I am not about to preach such things myself (other than to marvel and repeat that Jesus, apparently, did preach them). Because I probably say enough to be branded a heretic without racking up more offences.
But how have we come to this? That Jesus said something plainly, and it remains in the scriptures, yet it flies in the face of any doctrine we would own?
This thing – salvation by relationship, once removed – is a wild notion. But it is by no means a solitary one in the scriptures. Jesus said, ‘For whosoever shall give you a cup of water to drink in my name, because ye belong to Christ, verily I say unto you, he shall not lose his reward.’ (Mark 9:41)
I have seen a few ‘altar calls’ – but I have never seen one where glasses of water were handed around. And yet, if such a person ‘shall not lose his reward’ – how can he not be saved? Eternally, even.
Because if he were not saved forever, and if he did not live forever, he would at some point ‘lose his reward’? Yet on the surface of it, no transaction between the giver and Christ has occurred – except Christ is acknowledged as the reason why the giver gave the water, and to whom he gave it.
‘Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.’ (Matthew 25:40)
Again, this is ‘relationship salvation’, and the relationship in the first instance is between men, not between one man and Christ only. For nothing else in this instance is implied or required. To ‘come to Christ’ for this man was to give another man a glass of water. Nothing else.
Though I expect in the life of such a person there would be much else – many acts and confessions of faith – yet if by chance there was such a man, whose sole act of faith in Christ was the one glass of water – according to Jesus, that would suffice.
(I ask the reader to excuse my use of the terms ‘men’ and ‘man’, these are not meant to exclude women, for whom all things of importance are true in such a manner as they are true for women – but in this case the statement as Jesus made it – or as others translated it – refers to men, and I do not know how to make it gender-neutral without, well, neutering it.)
Jesus said, ‘He that receives a prophet in the name of a prophet shall receive a prophet’s reward; and he that receives a righteous man in the name of a righteous man shall receive a righteous man’s reward.’ (Matthew 10:41)
Shall a man receive a prophet’s reward and not be ‘saved’? Or can the reward of a righteous man (who can only be righteous in Christ) not mean eternal life? Yet again, in this statement is no mention of other requirements. To receive the man is to receive the Lord. And to receive the Lord, is to be saved.
‘He that receives you receives me, and he that receives me receives him that sent me’, Jesus said to his disciples. (Matthew 2:8)
Or for those partial to an Old Testament analogy, was Rahab saved by any prayer of her own to God? Well I suppose only the Lord knows that, but what we know is that she received the spies who were of his people, and saved them in jeopardy of her own life. And she in turn was saved – she and all her family. (For those who wisely might review the Bible account of this, it is in Joshua chapters 2-6, in particular chapters 2 & 6.)
It is emphasized in contemporary churches today – various that I have attended, anyhow -that salvation is by a relationship with Jesus. And so we find it in the Bible – except not with Jesus only, but a relationship with his people also. Or as John said, ‘If a man say, I love God, and hates his brother, he is a liar: for he that loves not his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen?’ (1 John 4:20)
What an extraordinary statement John makes. Given the range of people who might answer to the description of ‘my brother whom I have seen’.
Consider, there is no person who confesses Christ whom you have ever laid eyes upon who in truth was more difficult to love than Christ himself. I can say for myself, this does suggest my love for Christ is not so great as I would like to think – if it is less than the least love I have felt for any brother in Christ. And yet I think I am lenient here in my interpretation of John. He could be describing all men I have seen – not Christians only.
So we see a network of faith – a living body, and we in our connection to Christ through his body, are saved.
Not a connection of church membership or attendance. A connection that lives in our behaviour towards our brothers and sisters. The life of God flowing as love in action from one to another.
‘Every one that loves is born of God, and knows God.’ (1 John 4:7)
And, ‘Let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth.’ (1 John 3:18)
But where in any of this are the four steps? And yet I do not doubt those steps, or rather the scriptures from which they are drawn.
‘That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God has raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.’ (Romans 10:9)
‘If we confess out sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.’ (1 John 1:9)
But truly, we have cherry-picked the gospel. We have packaged it into a one-portion cut lunch. A portion that can be delivered at an evangelical meeting, consumed by each in one sitting, mass produced for individuals, digestible with no bones, guaranteed to deliver the essential nutrient of salvation to all who consume it. Not the banquet of truth that never goes stale, that sustains for time and eternity, that beckons always into the infinite person of Christ. Not our faith confessed in acts of love from day to day, manifesting every aspect of the person of Christ in flesh and blood, from member to member through his body.
Now having traversed the sublime, to end with the ridiculous – a small plaque on the counter of a fish and chip shop I used to frequent said, ‘My idea of a stressful job is one that involves other people!’ Well, with similar reservations I must relay the news – and remember it is good news – the gospel for you and I involves other people.
wilderness99 