I have been ruminating for some time on the concepts of faith, trust, and dependence. The unfortunate and misguided emphasis in the church today of our faith being about an afterlife that is accessed by a one-time crossing of the line of faith (whatever that means)has given Christianity an extreme makeover that is not flattering at all. This makeover has robbed us of the power that faith should generate and moved us away the very God who calls us to Himself. Even a casual look at the spiritual landscape of our Western World will reveal a church that is badly damaged and if you bother to examine that landscape more closely, you will notice the presence of life support. We are gasping at a time when we should be getting ready to sprint. This is all the result of bad theology over the past century made worse by un-biblical application and practice.
All matters pertaining to faith and practice according to scripture are defined within a present tense paradigm. In other words, relationship with God is always a present tense affair. The idea that something I did at some point in the past is somehow carrying me today or guaranteeing me something tomorrow is not within the biblical framework. While it is important that I obeyed God yesterday, or last week, or last year, it is more important that I obey God today. Paul tells us this in 1 Corinthians 10 with the example of Israel. They all left the bondage of Egypt through the blood of the Passover (salvation) and passed through the Red Sea (baptism) and experienced Christ in the water from the Rock, but they were overthrown in the wilderness and failed to enter the Promised Land (kingdom). The kingdom made possible by the blood and baptism of years prior was rendered void by the disobedience and unbelief of today. The application and warning is clear, "Let anyone who thinks he stands, take he lest he fall." (vs. 12)
Salvation is always present tense as far as application goes. Trust is present tense. Obedience is present tense. Forgiveness is present tense. Commitment is present tense. Today I live for God. Today I choose to worship, pray, read, obey, trust, surrender, give, love, hope. Today I work out my salvation with fear and trembling, knowing that He is at work within me. Today I examine myself, to see if I am in the faith. As the scripture so plainly states, "Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion..."
I sense some of you already labeling me but my point is not about whether you can lose your precious salvation and end up burning in some eternal fire somewhere; that is where this always goes because that is the only point that we have left to discuss in an otherwise rich faith that has gone bankrupt. (It is the only point to this whole thing now that Evangelicalism has gone to seed and produced tares.) To read these words and immediately think, "You mean I might not go to heaven?" means you don't get it. You might as well add two plus two and ask why it didn't total green.
What I am arguing is that salvation and baptism in this sense are not the goal. They are the means to being restored to our God so that we can walk with Him like in the very beginning. They open the door to the all important concepts of obedience and faith that were inaccessible prior to being awakened by God. They are the enabling means to becoming the stewards of creation that God ordained at the outset. Jesus is not the goal; He came to restore us to the Father. He came to restore us to abundant or God-centered (gr. zoe) life. He came to set us free from the bondage of sin in order to powerfully and completely serve the Living God. He came to insert a new master to which we are to be enslaved (Romans 6). You say, "I've got Jesus!" Good. Now what will you do with Him? Or, as James puts it, "you say you have faith, good show me your works."
This whole concept is beautifully portrayed in the traditional Hebrew concept of shepherds and sheep. Psalm 23 comes to mind with its familiar, "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters." We in our western culture immediately turn these words into images of glacial pools amidst lush knee deep grass and clover. We imagine that salvation is being set free to roam wherever we desire to go in abundant provision of food and water, while doing as we please under the good shepherd's loving approving eyes. But this is not the picture that anyone writing or reading this text would have imagined. What they would have imagined coincides perfectly with what I have stated above.
They would have imagined the grim reality of what to our eyes would look like desert or wasteland. This desert would seem to be devoid of life to the casual eye. But this desert would experience a daily natural phenomena in which the cool night winds from the sea would meet the hot dry soil and sprout blades of grass with the early morning dew. These are the green pastures of the Psalmist. The shepherd would know where the winds would blow and where the grass would sprout and the sheep or goats would follow to graze the offerings before the heat of the sun would burn it off. The quiet water would be pools left behind by flash floods that were momentarily safe because of the shepherd's knowledge of the next arrival of raging waters that would otherwise destroy the flock. They would have imagined a picture of the daily dependence and devotion of a flock that had to trust and obey its shepherd at all times for sustenance and survival. They would have pictured the essence of biblical salvation.
The difference is striking. Autonomous sheep frolicking in abundance and blessing under the loving and approving eyes of Jesus on the one hand and dependent sheep relying upon the ongoing loving provision and protective care of Jesus on the other. The first group says thank you very much for what you did in giving us this blessing we'll take it from here; the other in absolute dependence and daily obedience says I will follow where you lead me to experience protection and provision for today, and through faith the same tomorrow. I'll take the latter thank you.
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