The Main Hinge Upon Which Religion Turns: Understanding Sin, Grace, Salvation
SEVENTH IN A SERMON SERIES, “CONFIRMATION FOR ADULTS,” JEREMIAH 31:31-34; ROMANS 3:21-26
THE REV. JOHN HEMBRUCH, D.MIN. + MARCH 15, 2020
We continue the sermon series “Confirmation for Adults,” with part 7 of 11. The first six sermons all may be found on my blog. We’ve focused quite a bit upon Jesus, the center of our Christian Faith. Today, we think together about the impact of his life upon ours.
To understand the impact of Jesus from a theological perspective, there is a trio of terms so fundamental for understanding that it’s wise to review their basic definitions. Let’s define three.
First, there’s the word SIN. One of the most basic ways to define it is with the phrase, missing the mark, as when an archer shoots an arrow: anything other than hitting a perfect bull’s-eye is “sin.” If time permitted, I could tell you about the rich history of Hebrew and Greek words, but I don’t think it would help any more than this simple image. To say we have sinned doesn’t necessarily mean that we set out to be an evil person. Rather, to acknowledge sin means we recognize that despite our best intentions and sincere efforts, we are mortal, frail, and fallible beings. Even when we try our best, we cannot hit the mark of moral perfection every time. Our thoughts are not always pure, our words are not always perfect, and our actions are not always praiseworthy.
Second, there’s the word GRACE. In a theological context, the word means most simply, unmerited favor. It means that God, our heavenly parent, sees our sin, the way we miss the mark, and loves us anyway. God knows about our impure thoughts, our imperfect words, our un-praiseworthy actions, and has decided to give us something to remedy the situation. God offers grace freely, without any precondition or prompting on our part. Grace is also something that God’s children are encouraged and challenged to offer to others. It should characterize the life of a church. Grace should be at the heart of its ministries toward others.
Third, there’s the word SALVATION. There’s the straightforward dictionary definition: “preservation or deliverance from harm, ruin, or loss.” In a theological context, more specifically, salvation is deliverance from sin and its consequences. For most of us, it’s not so difficult to see sin in the world, the moral imperfections that lead to alienation and evil in many varieties, some so awful that they are difficult for us to discuss. In the Church, we believe that salvation is brought about by faith in Jesus Christ.
Now, with these three terms reviewed, we can look more deeply at the process whereby God in Jesus Christ offers “salvation” to humans. It was given the label “justification” by the apostle Paul. He developed this concept in his Letter to the Romans, a critical portion of which I read to you. John Calvin, the father of our Reformed theological tradition, highlighted the importance of this text. Calvin called the process by which God saves us “the main hinge upon which religion turns.[i]
Calling Jesus "Savior" may sound strange to modern ears. Compared to past generations, many of today’s Christians don’t worry much about being “saved.” It is difficult to have an appreciation of Jesus as justifier or sacrificial lamb until we begin to understand what we need to be saved from. For us, “salvation” may be release from our greatest personal challenge or obstacle, whatever sin or set of sins alienates from God, from others, from the best version of ourselves that God intended us to be. In Calvin’s terms, “main hinge upon which religion turns” (“justification” along with its theological complement “sanctification”) is the process whereby God moves us from evil toward good, from a life of imperfection toward a state of maturity and completion. It's a spiritual journey that never completely reaches its goal in this life.
If you take the New Testament and our Reformed Protestant tradition as your guides, then both are clear that salvation requires no great feat of the intellect, nor any great endeavor of the will. The thing to do is to have faith - not faith as willpower, but faith as a relationship to God based on simple trust. From the Presbyterian-Christian perspective, faith is more like the trust you have when you cross a bridge you’ve never seen before. You get some sense of its sturdiness, and then you move forward in trust that it will hold you up. Christian faith trusts that God has the answer to our most profound questions, and the solution to our gravest dilemmas, like when we affirm our faith that “in life and death, we belong to God.”
Perhaps you’ve longed for a deeper understanding about how faith in Christ brings about salvation. I have, and at one stage of my journey, spent a lot of time looking for answers. I learned the Church never has granted authoritative status to any one view about the mechanics of how God in Christ delivers us from sin and its consequences. I learned there were various answers offered in what are called “theories of atonement.”
A particularly interesting one was offered by Peter Abelard, a twelfth-century French theologian. Abelard’s influence is not as great as it could have been, probably because he offended so many during his lifetime. He was a great scholar, who took up theology in mid-career, and disrespected the older masters. These older professors, seeking to put Abelard in his place, challenged him to take on a particularly difficult biblical lecture. Abelard promptly replied he would take up the challenge the next day. When offered more time to prepare, he replied, "Gentlemen, I propose to deliver great lectures, not by means of diligence and persevering study, but by means of inspired genius." Like the composer Mozart, Abelard's lifestyle was even more colorful than his work.
Yet, I find in Abelard a soul mate for contemporary Christians struggling with questions of Jesus' role as our savior. Abelard said, in essence, the reason that God became human in Jesus was to do something that could not be done in any other way: to make divine love real, tangible and understandable to humans. In Christ's crucifixion, he said, God chose to create out of that horrible circumstance a transforming moment, a moment that would inspire a spark springing to life in the human heart, the spark of sacrificial compassion. It is sacrificial compassion that allows us to turn from blind commitment to that which is base and cruel, and toward that which is virtuous and kind. The crucified Christ becomes our Savior, said Abelard, in that he is God's chosen agent to awaken compassion within us. And when compassion is awakened, Jesus’ story, his person and his work shape our story, identity and actions. As sacrificial compassion grows, we are saved from sin and evil, moving toward the good, and acting in the spirit of Jesus.
It is good and important to understand sin, grace, and salvation. If we don’t, then the Christian story will make no sense to us. If we don’t believe Jesus has spiritual power, then worship is only a quaint custom, empty of power to make a difference in real life, a “nice” thing to do, but easily sacrificed when something else seeks our attention, when one of a hundred other opportunities calls out “CHOOSE ME!” I think John Calvin was right to highlight these matters as the crux of the Christian Faith. Faced with the spiritual choice of who or what to trust, we can see Jesus merely as a great teacher, or social prophet. Or, with deeper understanding, we can trust Him as our Savior, "the main hinge upon which religion turns."
ENDNOTES
[i] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 3.11.1.
