I am lying here wide awake in the middle of the night. Often when this happens I pray until I fall back asleep – no disrespect intended Lord! Tonight I am on a different path. I started thinking about the different possible ways people, or religions, believe that they attain “salvation”, “heaven” or “peace with God”.
The first option I considered is that there is no spirit, soul or afterlife. This seems to be a reasonable bookend at one end of the discussion and for many can be very comforting as there is no eternal consequence for how we live our life. If this is our ultimate condition then life really has no meaning other than what we assign to it. Self-sacrifice, mercy, inflicting suffering and evil are really just behaviors based on “Nature” or “Nurture” that lead to desired outcomes for ourselves. There is no real moral difference between these behaviors, other than what we or our culture assign to them, nor is there eternal consequence. If my behavior gets me what I want then it is acceptable. I get to choose whether I care if someone else suffers as a result of my behaviors or not. I would propose, however, that even under this condition, choosing to live a life of self-sacrifice and mercy towards others is still not a bad way to live, and these behaviors do lead to their own reward even in a world based on selfish behaviors.
Second is the option of predestination. It really doesn’t matter what we do, or don’t do, in this life, God chooses whether we are “saved” or “suffer” or “perish”. Here again, under this option life doesn’t seem to have much meaning other than our daily gratifications. God is the potter and we are the clay. He will have mercy on whom he has mercy and punish those He will punish. Some of us are predestined to be used for serving fine food or drink, others are destined to be chamber pots. God exists but really can only claim to be creator and all powerful. We can’t argue with Him because he is God, and there may be some moral reason behind His choices that are not obvious to us in this dimension, but there doesn’t seem to be much room or reason for free will or choice of action. Under this option neither will affect the outcome for us.
Third is the option of pleasing God enough by our actions so that He rewards us with “access” to Him. This is a quite popular option expressed throughout many “religions”. There seems to be a common instinctive recognition of a “creative” God (perhaps because we were created in His image and have a soul that knows eternity exists) and a desire to please Him (or Her if you wish). Pleasing God can take various forms: self-sacrifice and mercy, conquest in the name of your God, finding inner peace through self-introspection, rituals, good works and sexual practices are some of the ones I am aware of. This option depends upon our performance of whatever pleasing behavior we adhere to. If it is clear what specific behaviors our religion tells us are truly pleasing to God, and if we are endowed with super self-control and self-discipline, then maybe we stand a chance. Well, maybe you, I am too easily distracted to maintain focus for long enough to accumulate enough “pleasing God” behavior points to counter balance the “displeasing God” behavior points that come so naturally to me. There is also the risk of failing to choose the “right” religion with its requisite performance measures and automatically being rejected.
Fourth is conditional Grace. God offers and grants us access to Him and “salvation” because He loves us and/or is merciful, but if we don’t take actions that please Him, he can change His mind and withdraw access to Him. This option sounds like a job performance review: if you have a good performance review you get rewarded and a poor performance review leads to discipline. It does have some things to recommend it. It provides for personal accountability. We have to first, seek His grace, and then we have to demonstrate our worthiness or gratitude by our behaviors once we have received His grace. This option however leads to uncertainty: Has today been a good day or a bad day? If I die right now, am in “in grace” or “out of grace.” There is accountability, which seems desirable, but I return again to my lack of self-control and inconsistency in behavior… my final outcome could be just a matter of chance at the moment I die.
Fifth is unconditional grace: that once we seek God and call out to Him for his mercy He grants us access to Him, not because we can justify ourselves to Him but only because He loves us and is merciful. Under this option there is still personal accountability – we must seek God and call out to Him for His mercy. But once mercy is granted it isn’t be withdrawn. The tripping point here for me is how do we explain those who claim to be saved by His grace but their behavior doesn’t really seem to reflect His attributes. This is one I struggle with a lot. I know people who “Love the Lord” and are much more aggressive witnesses for Him than I am, but they leave a trail of destruction behind them. This leads me to believe that we often over simplify “Salvation” to the point where we discredit it. Clearly salvation is not by works that no man can boast, but it is also recorded in several places that Jesus said that you judge a tree by its fruit and that trees that produce bad fruit will be torn up and burned in fire. Paul talks about the difference between the fruit of the flesh and the fruit of the spirit. It seems clear that there is a link between salvation and our following behavior, but we need to be careful we don’t fall back into the fourth option of conditional salvation.
Here, based upon my current understanding, is my explanation: we are physical AND spiritual beings, with a soul that instinctively knows we were created in the image of the immortal creator God. Our physical and spiritual being is corrupted. When we seek God and call out to Him for his mercy, by acknowledging and accepting the suffering and death of His perfectly obedient human son Jesus the Christ in place of punishing us personally for our condition of corruption, our spiritual condition is washed clean by the blood of God’s sacrificial lamb. We are a new spiritual being, but in the same physical body. This leads to tension. The old physical body is conditioned to act in certain ways in response to certain stimulus. The new spiritual being is in a sense, trapped in the old physical body. But God has an answer for this struggle… He gives us His Holy Spirit. If we submit to the Holy Spirit and allow the Holy Spirit to have control of His temple (our body), the Holy Spirit will give us the power and strength to overcome the prior conditioning of our physical body. The “fruit” people produce after accepting God’s mercy is evidence of a changed life. We, their “family in Christ” are called to admonish them if the “fruit” they are producing is not consistent with their new spiritual condition, but we can’t really know their true spiritual condition, that will be judged by God Himself in the end. However, if their behavior is damaging then it is appropriate to avoid them so we don’t get damaged or corrupted by them. The admonition to not be unequally yoked goes far beyond entering into a martial relationship. It takes a very strong person not adopt the behaviors of the people they surround ourselves with.
Sixth and seventh, the other bookends, are universal salvation – through one means or another all humans, good and evil, achieve salvation at the end of their life, or chain of lives if you ascribe to that approach. There are two versions of universal salvation. Version number six: it doesn’t matter what we do in this life, at the end we enter into salvation because God is “good.” Version number seven: what we do in this life does matter, but the outcome is that we either enter into salvation at the end of this life, or we get to try it again until we get it right.
What do you think? Where are you on this spectrum of salvation? What is your belief based upon, and where is your documentation? You should ponder these things because claiming ignorance, or saying “I just wasn’t sure” won’t provide any protection if/when you stand before God.
I choose to believe in unconditional grace. However, I struggle to live a life that is consistently pleasing to God because of the past conditioning of my physical being and my own spiritual laziness or weakness. My template for living a life pleasing to God is contained in the 66 books of what we call the “Scripture” or “Holy Bible.”
KJ 12-22to27-2020