Hello,
Have you ever been asked if you are saved?
What does that mean? What
does it mean “to be saved?”
Most often, I believe that the focus
of “being saved” has to do with
what happens to you after you die.
So, when someone asks you, “are you saved?”, they could just as well
ask, “Are you going to heaven after you die?”
I don’t know when it happened, but somewhere in the annuls of time
Christianity came to be touted as the way to get to heaven. I know that in the time of Martin
Luther (1500’s) that was how Christianity was portrayed. People were told that one’s life was
like a college entrance exam. Pass
it, and you would go to heaven.
Fail, and you would go to hell.
Acting troops made their way among the people with frightening
depictions of hell, and then they passed around a bucket in which people could
purchase an indulgence to clear the way to heaven for themselves and others.
But that message was not left in the 1500’s. I have been told on more than one occasion that people
were disappointed with me because I did not preach a “salvation” sermon at
funerals that I have led. Coming
out of the perspective that Christianity is the way to get to heaven after you
die, people have told me that I have wasted a perfectly great opportunity for
people to see the importance of the Christian faith as death stares at them
square in the face at the funeral.
“Turn or burn!”
As you might guess, I do not believe that Christianity was ever meant to
become simply a way to get to heaven.
If that were the case, why would God send his Son, Jesus into the world
and into the life that we live before we die? Also, over and over again, the Bible tells us that “the
moment of salvation is now”, and when Zaccheaus (the Wee Little Man)
experienced the grace of Jesus in his life, Jesus said of Zacchaeus, “Salvation
has come.”
So, as I see it, salvation, in
Christian thinking, has a far greater scope than just getting a person to
heaven.
Let me offer a different picture of salvation. Imagine that you are that kid on the playground that gets
picked on by everyone. Not a day
goes by that you aren’t whipped by cruel words, tackled by thugs, and scraped
up by scallywags. And then one
day, a new kid comes to school…a kid whose stature makes the most gorilla-like
bully seem like a tiny chimpanzee, and on the first day that that new kid is in
school and sees you getting picked on comes up to you as you are lying there
beaten, bruised and bloodied and says to you, “You won’t have to worry about
those bullies anymore. I will be
your friend, and they will have to come through me to get to you!”
That is the moment of salvation, and that, I believe is the salvation of
which Jesus speaks. To all that
bullies us in life (the taunting of our sins, the judgment of others, the
pressures of the world, and even the haunting howl of death) Jesus cried from
the cross, “You won’t have to worry about those bullies anymore. I will be your friend, and they will
have to come through me to get to you!”
In the waters of Baptism, the Bible says, Jesus personally spoke those
words to me….and I was saved!
Saved, not just to get to heaven, but saved to live each day of my life
with the friendship of Jesus abiding with me. There’s much in life that looms large over me, but I know
that nothing will ever be able to crush me, not even death…Jesus won’t let it. I am saved!
Have a great week.
God’s grace and peace,
Pastor Jerry Nuernberger
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