Y.U.M. - The Methodist Way of Salvation - The First Step

e are in the second week of our series Y.U.M. – as we discover what is unique and special about United Methodism.

For a denomination that came about partially through the methodical nature of John and Charles Wesley, United Methodist doctrine is a slippery subject. Slippery because, if you ask 100 United Methodists, clergy and lay, we will probably have 200 descriptions of what constitutes our doctrine. And the differences between those descriptions are as different as the Methodists who make up our connection.

One of the reasons this has happened is because United Methodist doctrine is primarily practical. Unlike other denominations with their well-designed creeds and affirmations and philosophical underpinnings, the United Methodist movement began as a practical movement within an existing denomination, the Church of England. John Wesley, in his methodical practices and through intense study of scriptures, simply figured out what works.

“What works” is a loaded phrase, because to know “what works” you have to know what your goal is. If my goal is preparing for a marathon, running a whole lot of mileage is “what works.” If my goal is losing weight, eating healthy and getting exercise (and making sure I don’t have other medical issues) is “what works.” If I want to be on good financial standing, I’ll check with Dave Ramsey; that’s “what works.” So to understand “what works” in Methodist doctrine, we have to know what the goal is. John Wesley recognized that the chief end of the Christian religion is holiness.

We serve a holy God who calls us to holiness. As we read in 1 Peter 1:15-16: But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do, for it is written, “Be holy, because I am holy.”

Our holiness is more problematic than it might seem, because of one factor. The kind of holiness God expects from us is perfect holiness. In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus summed up all of the rules this way: “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matthew 5:48)

It started that way in the Garden of Eden. Then God said, “Let us make man in our own image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. (Genesis 1:26-27). God created us in his image, but we know what happened next; sin entered the world through Adam and Eve. They were not only banished from the Garden of Eden, but original sin also so corrupted the image of God within humanity that rendered us completely unable to save ourselves. Our nature has been corrupted and is inclined toward evil. This is why nobody has to teach a child to be selfish (whoever has to teach their two year old to say, “Mine!”); it comes naturally.

Why is that? Because God is the God of life, and when Adam and Eve sinned, they died that day. When God told them they would surely die if they ate from the tree in the Garden, he wasn’t slow in keeping that promise. No, they died immediately.

“They died to God, the most dreadful of all deaths… The body dies when it is separated from the soul, the soul when it is separated from God.”  (John Wesley Sermon 45, “The New Birth”).

“The natural consequence is of this is that everyone descended from [Adam] comes into the world spiritually dead, dead to God, wholly ‘dead in sin’; entirely void of the life of God, void of the image of God, of all that ‘righteousness and holiness’ wherein Adam was created. Instead of this everyone born into the world now bears the image of the devil, in pride and self-will; the image of the beast, in sensual appetites and desires. This then is the foundation of the new birth – the entire corruption of our nature.” (John Wesley Sermon 45, “The New Birth”)

Because of our sin nature, it’s only natural that we commit sins. So when Bible tells us that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. (Romans 3:23), it’s no surprise. We’re dead in sin, and so we commit sins and continue to sin. The problem here is that God is a holy God, and being so, he cannot permit sin in his presence.

The fair payment for our sin is death (Romans 6:23a), and since we are already dead in sin, we are incapable of breathing life into ourselves. This is one reason why our good deeds can never outweigh our bad; because the image of God is so corrupted within us that we are incapable of even responding to God on our own.

Furthermore, the kind of holiness that is the chief goal of religion requires perfection. Not perfection from here on out, but absolute perfection. So it’s no wonder that the heart of United Methodist doctrine is soteriology – the study of salvation.

When we study salvation, we have to start with our need for salvation and our absolute inability to do it on our own. A moment ago I mentioned that sin has so corrupted the image of God within us that we are utterly unable to approach God on our own. But by God’s grace, the Holy Spirit intercedes on our behalf, seeking us, wooing us, inviting us. This grace is called “Prevenient Grace” – meaning the grace that goes before us. Make no mistake about it; we are not the cause of God’s Prevenient Grace. It’s not because of who we are or what we’ve done that God bestows this grace on us; it is all because of God’s character.

God revealed his character to Moses on Mt. Sinai. In Exodus 34, after Moses had chiseled out two stone tablets (again, after he had broken the first ones after seeing the golden calf) and went up to the mountain to meet God.

Then the Lord came down in the cloud and stood there with him and proclaimed his name, the Lord. And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. (Exodus 34:5-7a)

This is God’s character, full of compassion and grace, slow to anger and full of love and faithfulness. Because of who God is, God sends his grace, which is what draws us toward him and prompts our first wish to please God. It is by God’s Prevenient Grace that we even begin to understand that we’ve sinned against God, for, in our sin-dead state, we don’t even know that we’re sinning.

While we recognize that we do bear the image of God, so we are fundamentally different from the animal kingdom, but with that image corrupted by sin, much of our behavior isn’t all that different. In his third sermon, called “Awake, Thou That Sleepest,” John Wesley describes our natural state as being asleep. Apart from being awakened by the Holy Spirit, we do not even recognize our own sinfulness, and thus our lives are characterized by natural human behaviors that are also sinful. There are all kinds of things that come naturally that are not right.

You don’t have to teach your children to be selfish. Nobody has to teach a two-year-old how to say, “MINE!” Lust is natural. Greed is natural. As is envy. And in our natural state, we don’t even know it’s wrong!

So what’s next?

By God’s grace, the Holy Spirit convinces us that we are sinners. The word we have traditionally used for this is “conviction.” God sometimes uses prophets to help convict his people of their sin. This was frequently the case in the Old Testament, and this was certainly John the Baptist’s role. Sometimes as humans we end up calling out someone’s sins simply to make ourselves feel better (as in, “at least I don’t…”). Sometimes we do it to make them feel shame or guilt. This isn’t God’s end goal whatsoever. God does it to help us realize how far we are from him. It’s truly the first step of coming to him.

Just as the alcoholic must first admit that he is an alcoholic, so too must the sinner first admit that he is a sinner.

Our Reformed brothers and sisters understand God’s grace to be “irresistible,” meaning when the Holy Spirit approaches someone, because of God’s sovereign power, we have no choice but to follow. There are problems with this view, however. If God gives us no choice, then can we really love God? Without the choice to not love, do we really have the choice to love? Do we love God if God strong-arms us into it? My seminary philosophy professor used to ask the question, “If you had a surefire love potion, would you slip it to someone who didn’t already love you?” The idea that you could make someone love you against their will is not a positive proposition whatsoever. And that they would love you based on force means that there is not necessarily anything lovely about you, nothing that would cause someone to love you. But unlike the love potion scenario, God doesn’t force our love. By the Holy Spirit, God extends grace and asks us to respond.

If God’s grace is truly irresistible, if we cannot choose to accept God’s grace or not, then we have to change our view of God and how we understand God’s view of humanity. We believe in an all-loving, all powerful God. An all-powerful God could compel everyone to love him. But as we discussed earlier, that wouldn’t necessarily be love.

We need to consider God’s love for humanity. Jesus tells us in John 3:16: For God so loved the world that he sent his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. So we have to determine what this love looks like.

If God truly loves the world, and if God’s all-powerful grace is irresistible, then is there a situation where God wouldn’t save everyone? The only acceptable conclusion is universalism; that God would send everyone to heaven.

Otherwise, God is choosing to create some people just to condemn them to hell. This doctrine is called “double predestination.” If God predestines certain people for salvation, philosophically, this requires that God also predestines everyone else for destruction. But this stirs up some questions, because predestination is definitely a biblical concept. There is no question about that.

One of my favorite verses in scripture is Romans 8:28: And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love, who have been called according to his purpose. Immediately following that verse comes this: For those who God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified. (Romans 8:29-30).

So predestination is biblical, but it might not mean what you think it means. There are many who think that predestination and foreknowledge means that God orchestrates everything, like a puppet master. But these are actually two separate subjects. Foreknowledge simply means that God knows what you’re going to do before you do it. That doesn’t mean God causes you to do what you’re going to do. It just means he knows. Before his accident, I knew that every morning Bruce Kuntz would go to McDonalds. Does that mean I made him go? Think about it this way: God is not bound by time like we are. We see time as linear. We even have the concept of a timeline. Time starts, we live each day, one day at a time, and then, when our “time comes,” we die. God is not bound by time like this. There is no “timeline” in eternity. God can see it all in one glance.

As for predestination, this simply means that God has determined the destination in advance and the means to get there. In Athens you can get on a GoBus. While the bus is going to Cincinnati, you have the option to get off the bus in Albany, Jackson, Piketon, Peebles, Seaman, or Batavia. But even if you get off the bus, that bus is still going to Cincinnati. Likewise, God has preset the destination to heaven and Jesus as the means to get there. God’s desire is for everyone to be saved, but God will not force us to accept the gift Jesus gave us on the cross. God will not force us to love him. Bill and I like to talk about God’s “Holy 2x4” that he sometimes uses to get our attention, but even when he uses that method, God doesn’t force us to make the right decision.

When Peter writes to the church about the end times, he writes this: But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slownesss. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. (2 Peter 3:8-9) If God doesn’t want anyone to perish, God could save everyone, but if that’s not true, if God doesn’t save everyone, then there must be a reason. Is the reason that God arbitrarily chooses to create just to condemn? Or is it because we have free will to accept the grace that God lavishes on us?

When it comes to predestination, this is what it really means. God decreed to send his Son who would destroy sin by his death. God decreed that those who repent and believe would be reconciled to God, and God appointed the means and power by which he would achieve his purpose. The emphasis is not on individuals but on Christ.

Next week we will more fully explore what happens when we admit that we are sinners and trust that God can save us, but suffice it to say God will give himself to everyone who asks. When we come to him, admitting that we cannot save ourselves, then we find that God not only can, but will.