AT ODDS WITH GOD
Evangelicals always talk about “giving people the plan of salvation” so people can “get saved.” We never talked this way in the Catholic Church, so when I converted, I had no idea what evangelicals were talking about.
The plan of salvation seemed to boil down to a few salient points:
1: God condemns sinners to hell.
2: We are all born sinners.
3: Jesus died to forgive sinners.
4: Sinners are saved from hell if they trust in Jesus’ death for forgiveness.
This is not wrong insofar as it goes, but I think a tiny shift in emphasis will make the message much clearer.
Our primary problem isn’t hell. Our primary problem is God.
Being at odds with the good Creator is the problem to be solved.
Hell is simply the sentence for a guilty verdict at the final judgment.
What have we done to warrant that verdict? Of what are we guilty?
Think about Adam and Eve.
Their sin was not the mere act of eating a piece of fruit.
Their sin was the mindset that led them to eat the fruit.
They believed their hearts were better guides to the truth than God was.
Their minds took Him off of His throne and put themselves in His place.
It is that thought, that belief, that mindset that infuriates God: someone without the capacity to be God trying to be Him and refusing to recognize Him for who and what He is.
This simple internal thought is the original sin.
It violates the first commandment: You shall have no other God before me.
We must be saved from that thought.
We must also be saved from all of the acts that flow from that thought.
We must also be saved from the wrath of God at that thought and the acts that flow from it.
We must also be saved from the guilty verdict that flows from the wrath of God.
And finally we must be saved from the sentence of that guilty verdict: eternal hell away from the presence of the one true and truly good God.
My observation is that evangelical Christianity tends to preach only that last point (commonly and correctly reviled as ‘easy believism’) and then either minimizes, makes optional, or even ignores the rest.
We believe here that the message of Jesus and His apostles is that the plan of salvation is designed to save us from all these things. Faith in Christ is designed to change, not merely our eternal destiny, but us.
The plan of salvation seemed to boil down to a few salient points:
1: God condemns sinners to hell.
2: We are all born sinners.
3: Jesus died to forgive sinners.
4: Sinners are saved from hell if they trust in Jesus’ death for forgiveness.
This is not wrong insofar as it goes, but I think a tiny shift in emphasis will make the message much clearer.
Our primary problem isn’t hell. Our primary problem is God.
Being at odds with the good Creator is the problem to be solved.
Hell is simply the sentence for a guilty verdict at the final judgment.
What have we done to warrant that verdict? Of what are we guilty?
Think about Adam and Eve.
Their sin was not the mere act of eating a piece of fruit.
Their sin was the mindset that led them to eat the fruit.
They believed their hearts were better guides to the truth than God was.
Their minds took Him off of His throne and put themselves in His place.
It is that thought, that belief, that mindset that infuriates God: someone without the capacity to be God trying to be Him and refusing to recognize Him for who and what He is.
This simple internal thought is the original sin.
It violates the first commandment: You shall have no other God before me.
We must be saved from that thought.
We must also be saved from all of the acts that flow from that thought.
We must also be saved from the wrath of God at that thought and the acts that flow from it.
We must also be saved from the guilty verdict that flows from the wrath of God.
And finally we must be saved from the sentence of that guilty verdict: eternal hell away from the presence of the one true and truly good God.
My observation is that evangelical Christianity tends to preach only that last point (commonly and correctly reviled as ‘easy believism’) and then either minimizes, makes optional, or even ignores the rest.
We believe here that the message of Jesus and His apostles is that the plan of salvation is designed to save us from all these things. Faith in Christ is designed to change, not merely our eternal destiny, but us.