The Foundation of Christianity

I must apologize, dear reader, for the lack of initiative on my part. At the point where I had to be posting around one o'clock in the morning, I decided I had best put the blog on hold until that was no longer the case. The time in now ten thirty in the evening, and this is much more reasonable. So without further adieu...

There has been much debate and discussion as to what really saves a person. Is it the moment they cross the line? Is it a lifetime guarantee? Can it be lost and regained? But where the disagreements abound, we can confidently say that the classical Christianese conservative case always stands firm on the following points.

1) Being saved is a forensic or legal condition rather than a vital reality or character. No one is in this "saved" condition until declared to be so by God.

2) We do not enter it by something that happens to us, or in virtue of a reality that moves into place in our life, even if that reality is God himself. It is about what must be true of us before God will declare us to be in the saved condition.

3) Getting into heaven after death is the sole target of divine and human efforts for salvation. It is what such efforts are aimed at, rather than a by-product or natural outcome of something else that is the target.

I've said this before, and I say it again here. This set of beliefs irks me. People say that Christians are only concerned with the afterlife. While I agree with C.S. Lewis in saying that those who put more value on the hereafter will more fully live in the herein, I disagree with those who ignore the present in order to put emphasis on the partially visible future.


And now for something completely different.

We get a totally different picture of salvation, faith, and forgiveness if we regard having life from the kingdom of the heavens now - the eternal kind of life - as the target. The words of Jesus naturally suggest that this is indeed salvation, with discipleship, forgiveness, and heaven to come as natural parts. The entire biblical tradition from beginning to end is one of the intimate involvement of God in human life.


Did you catch that? Did you pick up on the blog's namesake? It's highlighted in blue. Go back and read that again. Suddenly we have a new definition of what Christianity is all about. It's all about living the eternal kind of life now. It's all living the way Jesus lived. It's all about being "little Christs" as the name originally means. Wow. My "religion" just became a lot more real.

This is apparent not only in the life of Jesus, but also in the lives of the other biblical figures. Or did you think that Christianity only began with the birth of Christ? If what we believe is true about the universe, it should make sense all the way back to the beginning of the universe.

What did Abraham believe that led God to declare him righteous? He trusted God, of course, but it was for things involved in his current existence. He believed that God would interact with him now - just as those who later gathered around Jesus did. 

Reading this nearly caused my head to explode. I've always wondered how our faith could be the same as Abraham's if he didn't know Jesus. If faith was all about believing that Jesus died and rose again, and if faith was all about getting into heaven, then how could anyone from the old testament have or experience what we have? But Abraham did have the faith we can and should have.

In the face of such faith, God declared Abraham to be righteous. Does that mean he declared he would go to heaven when he died? Not precisely that, but certainly that Abraham's sins and failures would not cut him off from God in the present moment and in their ongoing relationship in life together.
 
So, would Abraham go to heaven when he died?

Of course! What else would God do with such a person? They were friends, as we are to be friends of Jesus by immersing ourselves in his work. No friend of God will be in hell. 

This is dangerous territory to anyone who has been raised to believe as heresy any statement that does not explicitly require expressed belief in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ as the waygate to an eternity spent in a far off place (i.e. heaven). Where is the forgiveness of sins? Where is the cross?

They are still there. They never left. But they may have moved from the driver's seat to the passenger's seat.

Certainly forgiveness and reconciliation are essential to any relationship where there has been offense, and also between us and God. Certainly it is Christ who made possible a transition into new life from above. We must be reconciled to God and he to us if we are going to have a life together. But such a reconciliation involves far more than the forgiveness of our sins or a clearing of the ledger. The issue, so far as the Gospels are concerned, is whether we are alive to God or dead to him. 

While one view gets us the necessities, the other provides us the sufficiencies. That is to say, the view of Christ's death as the end-all-be-all only provides the building blocks to an authentic Christian life, while leaving the life part out. But an authentic Christian life will have the building blocks already in place in order to function. This is what Abraham had, this is what I have begun to have, and this is what Jesus always promised we'd have when he promised us eternal life. See for yourselves.

"This is eternal life, that they [his disciples] may know you, the only real God, and Jesus the anointed, whom you have sent." (John 17:3) The biblical know always refers to an intimate, personal, interactive relationship.

So what do you have? What do your friends have? What does your church have? Have they only laid the foundation for a great, abundant life that they aren't yet living? Or is their house built on stone, ready to stand the test of time. Why not start building.