Why Salvation?

This last Sunday of the year and next Sunday, we will be hearing some hard things: hard to hear, perhaps hard to accept.  The starting point is this: why is salvation necessary?  Why does everyone without exception stand in need of a Savior?  How is it that everyone is in a situation that requires the salvation of God?  How did humanity arrive at such a situation?  Paul isn’t reluctant to raise the topic of the wrath of God, even though that’s a topic for which we have little appetite.  Jesus spoke of it, also.  Speaking of God’s wrath wins no one to Christ.  No one will be threatened to Christ.  Terror conversions—if even possible—aren’t lasting or even sincere.

God’s wrath means nothing to those who make no place for God in their lives.  God’s wrath, for such people, is just another reason to reject Christianity, the Bible, and Christians—bunch of hypocritical, unenlightened haters, anyway, with their mean, vindictive God.

Wrath, holiness, justice, and love are inseparable.  The wrath of God is meaningful only to believers; so, too, the holiness, justice, and love of God.  Believers are given new eyes to see.  Even better to put it this way: in Christ through the Spirit, the sight of believers has been restored, like Paul receiving new sight there in Damascus, or Balaam, suddenly able to see the angel of the Lord, sword drawn and ready to strike.  Believers, being Spirit-washed, Spirit-taught, and Spirit-fed, are no longer under God’s wrath.  We are under God’s salvation.  What we do and refrain from doing matters, immensely, but final judgment will not be based upon that.  We can bemoan how, in this world, it really is who you know—and who knows you!—but life, for us, is indeed in who we know.

We see the cause of God’s wrath, out there . . . and in here.  Whenever anyone follows a sinful path to its logical, necessary, inevitable conclusion, we see the cause of God’s wrath.  God’s wrath manifests itself when people who could avail themselves of the hope available in the Gospel do not avail themselves of it, do not avail themselves of the comfort, strength, and guidance God offers.  God’s wrath manifests itself when people choose and pursue what is not God.  If you and I feel frustrated by this stubbornness and rejection, God feels what we might call holy outrage.

Paul tells us, “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness” (1:18).  God’s wrath is a revelation: something only God can help us to see and understand.  The faithful see; we can perceive the wrath of God, outworking.  Those who may yet come to faith begin to see.  Those who could care less about God and never shall receive God do not see; for them, there is no revelation.  Though they experience the effects and consequences of God’s wrath, they explain it away as their rotten luck, so-and-so’s fault, or the rigged system, or cosmic injustice: just can’t catch a break!

God’s wrath is His righteous judgment upon “the godlessness and wickedness of people” (1:18).  Paul doesn’t restrict that, by the way: he lumps everyone into that group.  Godless and wicked—yes, there is that in me, too.  What is godlessness?  Well, it isn’t atheism, exactly, though atheism is certainly a symptom of godlessness.  Godlessness is life without reference to or concern for any requirement, expectation, or word of God.  A godless person may value honesty and kindness, but not because God commends and commands these, not because honesty and kindness reflect the character of God, let alone glorify Him.  So, honesty and kindness, for the godless, are situational and not absolute.  That is, the godless are kind—as they interpret the term—when and as it suits and serves them, and honest in the same way.  And also dishonest and unkind.  For those drawn into life by God’s grace under God’s holiness, honesty and kindness are absolute requirements.  By grace through the Spirit, believers are coming more and more to reflect and live the love of truth and the love of kindness, because God is love and God is Truth.

Where there is no love for God’s truth, there is no genuine love.  And truth—what gets passed off and accepted as truth these days, is no truth where there is no love for God.  What’s truly true is not what is true for me, today, or true for you or true for that guy over there.  What is truly true is what is true according to God.  God teaches and shows what is truly true.  In God’s time, those who come to faith will also come to accept this.  Those who will not come to faith He allows to remain in the darkness; these prefer the darkness—the moral, intellectual, spiritual darkness in which they wander, lost.  That darkness is most convenient: it allows them to do what they want and indulge whatever impure demand impels them in the moment.  Moral, intellectual, spiritual darkness is the element in which wickedness lives, moves, and has its being.  Wickedness thrives in moral, intellectual, spiritual darkness—unenlightened by God’s light.  Such darkness disregards God, rejects God’s Word, and approves whatever the unrighteous wish to do.  God is offered no part in that conversation.

And what is the effect of all the wickedness being done around us in this society, promoted and praised by the powers that shape culture?  Oh, but is it as bad as that, pastor?  Just consider the sort of world being proposed by those who regard themselves as at the cutting edge of modern, enlightened compassion.  Do you and I, then, really need to name the wickedness, we who are touched by it all too closely?  Do we actually need, here and now, to name the wickedness, we whose children and grandchildren are exposed to it regularly, even as they are being taught that it is no wickedness but beautiful virtue, fullness of self-discovery, and the ultimate liberation from all that hinders them?  Taught all this where, the schools?  Taught through television programming, film, through music, taught through those tablets and phones to which we let them glue their eyes, minds, and hearts for hours every day.  The algorithms that keep them and us clicking serve the voracious little idol, More.  And what lies behind More?

Wickedness doesn’t come to us, or to anyone, as wickedness bare and stark; it doesn’t come to us bearing the name wickedness, ugly and deformed.  Oh, there are those who relish the idea of tasting what is forbidden because it’s fun to be a rebel and break rules and things.  But what wickedness is actually, categorically, forbidden by this culture?  Which of God’s expectations does this society and culture maintain?  It’s rather difficult to be a rebel, when everything is allowed, practiced, and more or less blessed.  The Christian is a curious creature, rebelling against rebellion; that is, rebelling against the sin always aiming to seize control and dictate from the throne.  Wickedness comes disguised.

It is the nature of wickedness, as Paul points out, to suppress the truth (1:18).  Whatever serves to suppress the truth is, ipso facto, wicked.  We may think of God’s wrath as a sort of rage, and we’ve seen people in a rage, and we aren’t really fans.  God’s wrath is not like human rage.  Human rage is not really an adequate image of God’s wrath.  God’s wrath is His sovereign decision to allow those who persist in ways contrary to God’s Word (contrary to the truth in other words), to experience in full the necessary consequences of their choices and preferences.  It’s as if God were saying: If you’re hellbent to know what it’s like to harm yourself and ruin your life, then find out.

Willfully suppressing the truth, denying the truth, choosing and fashioning an alternative truth that suits one better, is a sure way to invite God’s wrathful displeasure.  Paul tells us why: “what may be known about God is plain [. . .], because God has made it plain [. . . .] For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse” (1:19-20).  Creation tells us of the Creator; the Creator means for creation to do just that.  It’s fashionable to subscribe to the story that the universe has no Creator, and even if there were one—which there isn’t—that power of creation could have no moral expectations: there is no God who expects and requires everyone to live by a particular moral code glorifying Him.  And subscribing to that outlook of denial permits people to fashion whatever morality they like in a given situation, a morality and code of conduct that is no morality: fluid, flexible, serving those who make it as they go, accusing no one, holding no one to account.  We might sum it this way: it’s right if you want it; it’s true if you need it to be; it’s good if you like it.  You and I, now in Christ, still remember who says things like that.

Paul is arguing that the physical world is able to inform anyone who genuinely wants to know whether there is a Creator.  If there is a Creator, it is of the first importance to know more about Him, to know as much as one can, because all life relies upon its Creator, is subject to and answerable to its Creator.  Paul is reminding us that God is not in hiding, though He can feel hidden to us.  Through creation, God makes His existence plain.  If God makes His existence plain, it is because He wants people to see, because He wants people to seek and know Him; God invites people into relationship with Him.  Thus, people are without excuse, because God does not hide Himself; it is men and women who hide themselves from God, who hide God from their sight, as in the garden, the taste of the fruit still on Adam and Eve’s tongues.

“For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened” (1:21).  Wickedness is nothing new, beloved: it’s been this way a long time.  Let us be disturbed, certainly, but let’s not be shocked that people are running astray any which way.  Paul was writing nearly two thousand years ago, and he’s thinking about a long record of human fruitlessness that goes back thousands of years more.  Paul says that all these knew God; I take him to mean that people, ultimately, will agree that there is a Creator who wants to be known, glorified, and thanked, as we would do for anyone who is kind and generous towards us, and patient with us.

But many decline the offer—no time, better things to do, too expensive, too inconvenient, just so busy.  At one time, I told myself many men stay away from church because what we talk about and do here is just too remote from their world, their experience, their work, their focus.  Over the last several years, though, I’ve been concluding that many people—men typically but women, now, too—stay away, in part, because they don’t want to live subject to God’s Word.  They stay away, in part, because they don’t want anyone telling them.  They know there are religious people, and those who stay away don’t want that sort of life and have no use for it.  And the more one lives disregarding God, the further down that way one goes: the thinking becomes futile and the heart becomes all the more darkened, which is just what wickedness needs to flourish and just what the Tempter wants.  The Tempter can work very well with that sort of material under those circumstances.  And I daresay many of us have had periods in life when we’ve felt it, too.

Foolish hearts, darkened.  What makes a fool foolish?  What is foolishness?  A stubborn, willful resistance to knowing, the denial that there is anything that way worth knowing.  Foolishness has little to do with intelligence or IQ.  A fool is a person without good judgment or good sense: just navigating everyday life is nearly impossible for such a person, let alone receiving and treasuring the higher, better things: holiness, for example.  A fool is someone who has been tricked, deceived—fooled, in other words.  And who better to deceive the deceived than the Deceiver, who knows people very well and knows how to get each of us to stumble, God help us!  A fool does not exercise the ability to resist, barely considers resisting, seeing no reason to and no value in it.  Self-denial?  Nope!  A fool can be a weak-minded person but, deeper than that, a fool is a person with a weak will, weak resolve, and a heart all too ready for transgression.  The unredeemed, walking in darkness as if it were light, walk foolishly and have been fooled, willingly.  They’ve got no one to blame but themselves, not that that stops them.

The fool does not put God first.  When anyone fails conscientiously, consistently to put God first, that prime position will always be claimed, quickly, by something else—whatever feels uppermost in the moment: lust, greed, pride, fear, appetite, anger, politics, work, family, brand loyalty, and so on.  Turning from God does not mean one is through with any notion of a god.  Having no meaningful relationship with God is the way to do as one likes, making one’s desires the measure of truth and the standard of goodness.  But, apart from God, with no real, meaningful relationship with God, all our values, hopes, and dreams are saturated, necessarily, unavoidably, with wickedness.  It’s all around us and we can’t avoid it.  Worse still, it’s also already in us.

We don’t like to confess that, but as we rummage around in our hearts, the truth will emerge.  Wickedness is what is not of God, what is contrary to God’s Word, God’s will, God’s way.  Wickedness says one of two things.  Wickedness says that we don’t need any God because we can make our own way.  Wickedness also says our way is from God who blesses our way.  You people with your book say it’s wicked, but we know better.  That’s actually saying the God they’ve made does not get in their way: our God does what we do, says what we say, likes what we like and rejects what we reject.  And that, beloved, is the essence of idolatry.  Idolatry is the default religion of the darkened heart, the essence of futile thinking, getting people nowhere.

“Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles” (1:22-23).  For Paul, one strong, central piece of evidence of the woeful state of humanity is the nasty habit of making God in man’s image rather than the yearning to be remade in the image of the holy God.  In Christ, we are being remade, renewed, restored.  Apart from Christ, all that people have are idols.  Idols, by their very nature, cannot save, cannot help, cannot guide, and they do not love.  No one today is bowing down to a cat-headed goddess image, or a statue of some hawk-headed man.  But people do bow down and worship the works of their desires, their culture, their times.  For example, the idea that “salvation” is in science: that science itself necessarily will improve the moral condition of humanity.  The idea that some political scheme, be it Democratic Socialism or Capitalism, will make the world a moral place and bring salvation.  All such schemes in practice become a concentration of power in some usually self-selected, self-appointed elite who assume the “heavy burden and awful responsibility” of running things for the rest of us, running our lives, ruining our lives as they enrich themselves.

In his letter to the believers in Corinth, Paul reminds them that “the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom” (1 Cor 1:25).  We understand that Paul is not calling God foolish.  Those who don’t believe call the Gospel the “foolishness of God.”  People who want things their way call God’s way foolishness; mostly, though, they just don’t think about it and don’t actually care.