The Doctrine of Salvation

Scripture: John 6.35-44; 2 Corinthians 5.17-21; Ephesians 2.1-10


When last we met for Christianity 101 we were talking about human sin. This is what I like about preaching a series of sermons, it feels like we are having a conversation that is ongoing, that gets interrupted but is then resumed the next week. We left off this conversation recognizing that humanity has fallen and can’t get up of its own strength or wisdom. We need outside help. That’s what salvation is all about.

I had just graduated from college. To this point I had no long-term plans or prospects, a had a teaching degree, but no prospects. So what did I do? I bought a car. In my defense, I had never owned a car before, and I needed one. So, there it was, a used, but very nice-looking, white VW GTI. And it was all good because my brother-in-law helped me get a job with Albarano Construction in Williamsport. It paid what I thought was decent money for a young guy and I was able to make my car payments every month with money to spare. At the end of the summer another job opportunity came up that paid a lot better, so I quit my job at Albarano to go work at this other place. Only the job never materialized. I had to scrape together a couple of jobs that really didn’t pay well. I started to have trouble making the car payments. In the middle of this I was wondering what to do with my life and I sensed God calling me to seminary. So I went to Kentucky and started at Asbury Seminary. Now I had classes to take. What I didn’t have was any recognizable income and of course, I still had my car payment.

I went home to Williamsport on break for a few weeks and a family friend had a painting business and he hired me to come help with a job for a few days. His name was Skip and he had been friends with my dad. In fact, they had worked together years ago. Skip asked me how I was doing. He had heard I was having trouble paying for my car. He said, “What are you going to do while you’re a school?” I said I didn’t know. I remember him saying, “Well, you can’t just bury it somewhere.” Although that’s how I had begun to feel about it. It was this great big burden hanging around my neck. Doesn’t it stink to have bills to pay and not know how you are going to pay them?

Well, Skip paid me for the couple days work I gave him, and let me say he was generous with the wage. But he didn’t stop there. He asked me what I needed to make a couple months payment on my car, and then he handed that money to me. It was money that I hadn’t earned. The debt I had earned. Someone else paid my debt for me.

That’s salvation by grace. Theologians call it Substitionary Atonement. Jesus took our sin debt to the Cross and paid the debt for us. St. Paul tells the Corinthians that Jesus, who knew no sin, became our sin for us. “The wages of sin is death but the free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

To the Ephesians Paul wrote, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and tis is not your own doing; it is the gift of God – not the result of our own works, so that no one may boast.” God looked at you and me and said, “Here, this is what you need so the debt can be forgiven. I will provide it for you.” What did God provide? He provided himself, in the person of the Son.

One might ask why any debt had to be paid by anyone. Why is the wages of sin death? Why does someone have to die for sin? Because sin is the disruption of the image of God in the whole of Creation. Sin has messed up the harmony and perfection of God. It has broken the relationship between the Creation and the Creator. A God of holy love would have that harmony and perfect relationship with the whole of Creation restored. And He will have it restored. God will. You might as well ask, “Why is water wet?” as to ask why must sin be accounted for.

You see, in the midst of life we are in death. We are moving on to something. Our lives are not lived in a circle so much as they are on a trajectory to somewhere and something. Things are changing, always changing. Even in order for things to stay relatively the same, they must change.

Did you know that your body is sloughing off thousands of cells every minute? Thousands of cells are dying, in order for you to live (in the midst of life we are in death), in order for you to stay relatively the same. Have you seen all those dust bunnies under the bed? Dead cells. Dead you. Makes you wonder whether you are coming or going. Every five years you are a totally new person. Which means, if you married for twenty-five years or more your wife is living with her fifth husband.

We’ve been married for ten – my wife wonders why her second husband is more bald and wrinkled and no better looking.

What is God’s answer to all this changing and dying? Salvation. Grace. The mystery of the universe that is this – Christ is in you. Salvation is the life of God born in you. That moves the Apostle Paul to exclaim that “outwardly we are dying but inwardly we are being renewed daily.” Salvation, zoe life, cannot be destroyed by killing the body. Salvation by the grace of Jesus Christ immerses us in this hidden reservoir of life.

Salvation = Life. God changes your destiny from the inside out, not only paying your sin debt but giving you eternal life so that you will never be in debt to sin and death again. The price has been paid, the victory won. Listen to Jesus:

“I am the Bread of . . .Life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. . .This is indeed the will of my Father, that all who see the Son and believe in him may have eternal life; and I will raise them up on the last day.”

Can I get a witness? That out to shake up your dead cells a little bit. Don’t worry, we’ll vacuum the carpet later. Christ lives in you! You are a vessel of eternal life! So, again, as Paul says, “From now on we look at no one from a human point of view (a collection of dying cells) If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!”

Friends, we are not immoral people become moral, bad to good, we are dead people resurrected to life! Worship and thank the Lord of Life right now.