The Problem With Salvation and Forgiving Grace

2009 June 22

by Tyler

As I continued to think about my post from last Thursday (A Culture of Confession) I started to think about how it all relates to our view of salvation.

In our culture salvation has become another one of our quick fix schemes.

We view salvation as a stamp of approval, a one-time ticket for our safe passage through this life and onto the glorious riches of heaven.

When we view salvation and grace in this way, I wonder what we do with passages in the Bible that speak to us “working out our salvation through fear and trembling.”

Salvation is clearly an event, and yet it is also a process. Think of the implications of this…if salvation is an ongoing aspect of the Christian’s life, then grace is also.

Now let’s tie this all together.

I think we see confession as unneeded in our lives because we don’t see forgiveness and grace being offered to us even now. “That was only when we accepted Christ into our lives,” we would say. Because of this we live our lives by rigid and legalistic rules to live up to God’s holy standard of living. Something that, dare I say, we simply cannot do.

Richard Foster puts this perfectly:

“People have told us to take our forgiveness by faith and not to call God a liar. Not wanting to call God a liar, we do our best to take it by faith. But because misery and bitterness remain in our lives, we again despair. Eventually we begin to believe either that forgiveness is only a ticket to heaven and not meant to affect our lives now, or that we are not worthy of the forgiving grace of God” (Foster, Celebration of Disciplines, 147).

What if confession was the catalytic discipline we needed in our corporate church settings and also in our private personal times with God?

What if we totally missed the boat by twisting salvation and forgiveness to be something different than it really is?

I’d love to hear your feedback on this. Thanks.

Filed under: church Tags: Christianity

Michael D

Tyler,

I love this thought and am whole-heartily on board with it.

I think that we look at confession as something that is done for the forgiveness of sins. And while I believe that confession is an important part of forgiveness, sin was completely dealt with at the cross.

Though I have not done even an iota of scriptural study on this, I suspect that there is more post-cross text about confessing your sins to one another than there is of confessing your sins to God. I could be wrong.

But I do know that there is plenty of text that says we are to confess our sins to one another. Why?

- It’s humbling.
- It’s genuine and transparent.
- It prevents the sin (leaven through the dough) for spreading.
- It allows me to loving assist someone in dealing with their sin (Mt 7)
- It brings me healing. (James 5:16)

I’m sure that there is more. I just know that it is good to confess to one another, that it costs me when I do it, and that we don’t see enough of it in the Church.

I hope that you continue to blog about this topic. It’s a vital one.
http://theycallmepastorbryan.com Bryan Dormaier

I like this Tyler, I’m too tired righ tnow to give you a full thought out reply, but I would like to hit on two things.

I believe that the new testament speaks of salvation in 3 senses: we have been saved, we are being saved, and we will be saved. So I think that what you are saying fits.

I am a big fan of helping people see the value in confession. It was one of the few practices we were exploring with the anchor, and I think that it keeps us realistic in that we are on a path where we are in need of God constantly. Confession is a great way of keeping us humble and reminding us we can’t live the Christian life on our own.
http://manofdepravity.com Tyler

Great way of putting salvation. I totally agree.
http://manofdepravity.com/2009/06/23/reaching-those-detached-from-church/ Reaching Those Detached from Church « Man of Depravity

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