Why did God do it?

For us and for our salvation 
he came down from heaven: 
by the power of the Holy Spirit 
he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, 
and was made man. 
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; 
he suffered death and was buried.

This confession of the church caused unbelievers to ask critical questions. Anselm of Canterbury attempted to answer one question that he said unbelievers were asking: Why did God have to become man and die for our salvation? Why could God not have accomplished this in some other means or by some other person?

Anselm assumes the incarnation and crucifixion were necessary. Anselm assumes this because he believes that God would not require the suffering and death of an innocent man if it were not necessary. And he affirms the Nicene Creed, which says that these things were done for us and for our salvation.

So, if we were in Anselm’s position, how would we answer the question posed to him: “Why did God have to become human and die for our sake?”

UM doctrine and atonement

Does the United Methodist Church endorse a theory of atonement?

I’ve often been told that the UMC has never canonized a single theory of atonement. We view all theories as contributing part of the overall understanding of what Christ accomplished on the cross.

But is that really true? Are all ways of talking about the atonement in keeping with United Methodist doctrine? Here are words from our Book of Discipline’s section on doctrinal standards that interpret the meaning of the the cross.¹

From Article II of the United Methodist Articles of Religion:

“The Son … who truly suffered, was crucified, dead, and buried, to reconcile his Father to us, and to be a sacrifice, not only for original guilt, but also for actual sins of men.”

From Article VII of the United Methodist Confession of Faith:

“We believe that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself. The offering Christ freely made on the cross is the perfect and sufficient sacrifice for the sins of the whole world, redeeming man from all sin, so that no other satisfaction is required.”

I’m not sure that either or both of these fit with one of the well known theories of atonement, but they do appear to set out some basic building blocks.

Jesus Christ was a sacrifice, according to both of these, a sacrifice for sin. His sacrifice redeemed humanity. The synonyms for “redeem” include ransom, rescue, save, and deliver. By this sacrifice the Father was reconciled to us. The Father was put back in friendship or harmony with us, to use the dictionary definition of reconcile.² This sacrifice served as satisfaction for the sins of the whole world.

I’m still learning about atonement theories, but it appears that any United Methodist discussion of atonement must be one that can accommodate notions of sacrifice, redemption, reconciliation, and satisfaction.

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¹ Of course, moral influence theory (among others?) does not focus solely on the cross, but generally the death of Christ is considered important to understanding atonement.

² Morgan Guyton points out that this is an interpretation from the language in the Articles of Religion in which the Father is reconciled to us. The language in the Confession of Faith differs. It says God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself. How that differs from the Articles creates a field of meanings within which the UM conversation should take place. At least it seems to me.

Reading 2 Corinthians 5:20b – 6:10

A reading for Ash Wednesday: 2 Corinthian 5:20b – 6:10

The verse that I find myself mulling over is 6:1.

“As we work together with him, we urge you also not to accept the grace of God in vain.”

Greek exegetes can get into the nitty-gritty about word choice and translations, but using the NRSV, I find myself asking, “What does it mean to accept the grace of God in vain?”

My favorite online etymology site, tells me that the phrase “in vain” comes from the Latin and means, more or less, “to no effect.” In other words, to accept the grace of God in vain is to be given grace but to have nothing come of it. It is to remain the same, unchanged. It is to do nothing but simply to go along the way you have been.

I think of a plant in our house. It does not like the spot it is in. The cold is hard for it. The light is not right. But we keep trying to nurse it along. When its leaves fall and it gets droopy, we water it, and it springs back to life. But, at last, we did it in. Water no longer worked. We can pour out water on the poor dead thing, but it is — to quote the Scripture — in vain.

Paul is writing urging the Corinthians, for whom Jesus Christ became sin and died (v. 5:21), to not only bask in the grace of what Christ has done, but to actually be transformed by it. His scripture quotation in 6:2 calls to mind the great Wesleyan preaching line Isaiah 55:6.

Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near;

Ash Wednesday starts us on a journey toward Good Friday and Easter beyond. It calls us to prepare our hearts to receive that grace shed upon the world. It calls us to not receive that grace to no effect, but to life.

Four kinds of faith

The first standard sermon of John Wesley, “Salvation by Faith,” discusses several kinds of faith. I wonder where we would would fall on this list.

Faith of a Heathen – Belief that God exists, that God rewards and punishes, and that God requires of us moral virtue, justice, mercy, and truth.

Faith of a Devil – Belief, in addition to the above, that God was made manifest in the flesh, that Jesus Christ will destroy all enemies of God, and that Scripture is given to us by the inspiration of God.

Faith of an Apostle (while Christ still lived among them) – Belief that led them to leave all and follow Jesus Christ, that he did work healings and miracles, and that they were given power to cast out demons and preach the kingdom of God.

Faith that Saves – Faith in God through Christ, faith that stirs the heart and not only the head, and faith that by his death and resurrection our sins are blotted out and death has lost its power over us. In Wesley’s words, it is “a full reliance on the blood of Christ” for our life. It is faith in Christ as given for us and living in us.

[Note of clarification after a comment: For Wesley, this was a building thing. The faith at each point includes and adds to what came before. So, the Faith of a Devil assumes and includes the Faith of a Heathen.]

Nagging questions from Luke 4

Jesus went to Nazareth, where he had been raised. On the Sabbath he went to the synagogue as he normally did and stood up to read. The synagogue assistant gave him the scroll from the prophet Isaiah. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me. He has sent me to preach good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, to liberate the oppressed, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

He rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the synagogue assistant, and sat down. Every eye in the synagogue was fixed on him. (Lk 4:16-20, CEB)

A growing question lurks in the back of my mind. I think it lurks there because I am not ready yet to accept the implications of dealing with it in a forthright way.

Several years ago I got into an exchange with a staff pastor at a United Methodist mega-church. He had written something about how God loves the upwardly mobile and those who are successful by the world’s standards. I asked him if saying such things to the comfortable and admired people of our generation did not in some way undermine the gospel.

He responded that God loves everyone.

This I happily affirmed, but I still am troubled by the exchange. When I think of God’s love of the rich, I think of the rich young man who Jesus looked upon and loved before telling him that to follow Jesus he would have to sell all he had and give it to the poor. I think of that sermon in Luke 4 that was addressed specifically to the down-and-out of Nazareth. I think of the good people of that Nazareth synagogue trying to haul Jesus to the edge of a cliff in their Sabbath best.

We United Methodists don’t have a lot of room to wriggle off the hook on this issue, although we have lots of history doing so. John Wesley preached as strongly as anyone could that Christians are endangered by riches. He found no room for the love of money among the people of God. He ministered to prisoners, even prisoners of war, and the poor throughout his life. He thundered against what we would call good middle class values in sermons and letters.

Hear ye this, all ye that dwell in the world, and love the world wherein ye dwell. Ye may be “highly esteemed of men;” but ye are “an abomination in the sight of God.” How long shall your souls cleave to the dust? How long will ye load yourselves with thick clay? When will ye awake and see that the open, speculative Heathens are nearer the kingdom of heaven than you? When will ye be persuaded to choose the better part; that which cannot be taken away from you? When will ye seek only to “lay up treasures in heaven,” renouncing, dreading, abhorring all other? If you aim at “laying up treasures on earth,” you are not barely losing your time and spending your strength for that which is not bread: for what is the fruit if you succeed? — You have murdered your own soul! You have extinguished the last spark of spiritual life therein! Now indeed, in the midst of life you are in death! You are a living man, but a dead Christian. “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” Your heart is sunk into the dust, your soul cleaveth to the ground. Your affections are set, not on things above, but on things of the earth; on poor husks that may poison, but cannot satisfy an everlasting spirit made for God. Your love your joy, your desire are all placed on the things which perish in the using. You have thrown away the treasure in heaven: God and Christ are lost! You have gained riches, and hell-fire!

Of course, Wesley’s frequent preaching on the subject did not have the impact he desired. He spent most of his ministry fretting over the way Methodists ignored his preaching about worldly wealth.

And so, the question comes back: Are we spending enough of our time and energy as the church of Jesus Christ proclaiming the message that Jesus proclaimed in Luke 4?

Like I say, I hesitate to ask this question because I know the answer in my life and ministry. I fear the consequences of taking that question seriously. It would disrupt quite a bit of my life and not just mine. It is more comfortable not to listen or engage the question. I don’t have to throw Jesus off the cliff to ignore him. I can just preach other verses. But the question still lurks.

Death bed faith

I was reading an account in John Wesley’s journals of a death-bed conversion. Wesley had come to the side of man in his last days. The time being short, he got to the point. He asked the man if he had a “solid hope of salvation.”

Through the course of their talking, the man confessed that he had constructed for himself a philosophical Deism that had no use of Jesus Christ. But now as the hour drew near, he was troubled deeply.

Wesley urged him to pray for faith. He records in his journal the prayer the man prayed in that moment:

O Almighty God, I am a poor cursed sinner, worthy of damnation; but Lord Jesus, eternal Son of God, thou diest for my sins also. It is through thee alone I can be saved. O give me faith, and strengthen that faith!

As I read these words, I notice how different they are from the formulaic prayers that I hear of so often in salvation stories. The man did not “invite Jesus” into his life or accept him as Lord. He prayed for faith. He prayed as if faith was something he could only receive as a gift. He prayed as if faith was something he could not control or muster up on his own with a little exertion of his will.

This little death bed story has me thinking carefully about what it is I say it means to be justified.

Don’t play cute with sin

Here is an ancient way of summarizing the gospel: Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ. In his name are forgiveness of sins and eternal life.

Now, this statement contains words that require further discussion. The meaning of “the Christ,” the nature of sin, and the definition of eternal life are not self-evident. Indeed, to understand them you need to read the entire Bible. Without the Bible, this proclamation of the gospel is incoherent.

For instance, the forgiveness of sins is such an important matter only if you understand the holiness of God in Old Testament terms. Sin is a problem in the Old Testament because God is holy and God’s people are called to be holy. Sin is a violation of this holiness, a rebellion against it. So much blood was spilled in the tabernacle and temple because removing sin was a central religious concern.

Jesus Christ as the final atonement for sin is gospel because sin is the worst possible news.

When we treat sin like a quaint topic, we gut the gospel of its power. If sin is no big deal, then Christ is of little consequence. If we seek to preach apostolic Christianity, we cannot fall into this trap.

My response to Hamilton’s question

My last post quoted Adam Hamilton’s answer to the question “Why do people need Christ?”

Taylor Burton-Edwards unfairly intruded on my turf as blog owner and asked me how I would answer the question. Since most of you probably do not read all the comments, I thought it might continue the conversation if I were to answer here. So, read on if you dare:

I have not unpacked my answer from all the church language — which is a big part of what I see Hamilton doing with his answer. Mine goes something like this.

We need Jesus Christ because we are sinners. We are lost. We are wretches. We are prodigals. We are wandering in the dark. We need Jesus because without him, we are doomed to death and under the power of death.

Hamilton’s answer strikes me as optimistic about human beings who are without God. It seems to have a default position that says we are all in the blessed kingdom of God unless we do something really bad. And even then we want to haggle about whether it would be loving of God to throw us out.

Maybe I’m just too much of an Eeyore as my daughter says, but I start from a different place. We are in rebellion from God. We are the Israelites with the golden calf. The longings of our heart are not to be trusted so long as we resist the preventing and convicting grace of God. The problems we feel and experience are not to be solved by changing our point-of-view or attitude about Jesus, but by the work of grace that convicts and converts.

And maybe it is just because I am reading the gospel lection this week about self-denial and cross bearing, but I do not see the way of Jesus as about solving our problems, per se. It gives us new problems, bigger problems. It calls us to die so that we might live.

I know this way of answering the question puts me out of touch with the times, but my problem with Hamilton’s answer — for me — is that there are lots of way to fill your empty spaces and find hope in your life. The world has figured out many, many ways to respond to our neediness. We might argue that what we in the church are selling is better, but the price we ask for it is higher than the entertainment industry and the self-help industry and the peddlers of vice. We end up in a cost-benefit discussion with people. It feels like selling laundry detergent.

I suspect that Hamilton would not say any of that is true of his preaching and ministry. But this is how I experience it. It may say as much about me as anything.