Right-thinking righteousness.

 

 Does thinking the right things save you?

 

Save you from what? Ignorance, maybe. But that's the extent of it.

 

One of the biggest challenges the first generation of the Christian church faced was Gnosticism. There were Greeks who took their gnostic philosophy and combined it with Christian narrative. The result were what are sometimes known as the "Gnostic Gospels."

 

Every now and again there's some fringe scholar, or a documentary, or a novel, that hypes these "gnostic" texts. People start asking silly questions about why the early Christians suppressed these texts. They build a conspiracy out of nothing.

 

Because if you read any of those gnostic texts you'd realize from the start that they're espousing a totally different worldview and faith than what's in the accepted/apostolic Gospels that are in the New Testament.

 

I'd go into details about it, but I don't want to get side-tracked. Suffice it to say, that Gnosticism was considered a totally foreign spirituality that was really trying to ride on the coat-tails of the rapid growth of Christianity by co-opting Christian stories into their texts.

 

This is a gross oversimplification, of course, because Gnosticism is incredibly complex and difficult to understand. But this is the primary feature that characterizes just about every "gnostic" belief system.

 

They believed that "salvation" comes through receiving secret knowledge. Get that knowledge right, and (in the gnostic view) it elevates you from this material existence (for them, the physical world/material world/embodied life was inherently evil) to higher less-material spirituality. 

 

This is contrary to Christianity at its very core. It's probably the worldview that John is confronting most explicitly when he begins his Gospel by saying that the Word was made FLESH.

 

It's why the Greek world had such difficulty with the notion of the resurrection. Why would you have hope in being resurrected when the material realm is the problem we're trying to escape?

 

Now you might thing that this is an ancient problem.

 

But a lot of Christians today (especially in American churches) are functionally gnostic. 

 

Because they believe that by accepting certain knowledge (believing the right things) gets you to a disembodied heaven where you'll spend eternity. (they ignore the resurrection of the body, which the Bible says is our ultimate hope... a new heaven, a new earth, in a perfected body).

 

The emphasis on "getting to heaven" as the major goal of the Christian life is more gnostic than Biblical. But just as problematic is the notion that "being saved" means accepting that certain knowledge is true. As if our cognitive mastery of a "special truth" is what constitutes our salvation.

 

In both instances, disparaging the physical world / material existence itself, is at the heart of the problem.  

 

With respect to our eternal hope there's very little in the Bible anywhere about going to heaven. We know that to be apart from the body is to be with the Lord (2 Cor. 5:8), but this "disembodied" state is considered an "intermediate" state rather than our ultimate, eternal hope. Instead, Paul argues that if Christ himself was raised from the dead, then our own resurrection is certain (1 Corinthians 15:12-20). He describes the resurrected body as being transformed, imperishable, and powerful (1 Corinthians 15:42-44).

 

This wasn't just Paul's doctrine. Jesus taught the same thing. (see John 5:28; Matthew 22:29-32; Luke 20:34-38).

 

The problem extends beyond misunderstanding what our hope ultimately is. Because if we have faith, we'll be resurrected whether that's what we believe or not. We don't define our eternity.

 

It can have implications on how we treat our environment, how we respect the earth that God called us to care for from the beginning.

 

From the very beginning God used creation itself... he used matter... physical things to do his greatest works of salvation.

 

It begins when God forms man from the ground itself and breathes his Spirit into the first man's nostrils. God consistently manifests for his people using natural phenomena like a burning bush, a pillar of smoke/fire, and even tells his people that he'll dwell with them between the cherubim on the Ark of the Covenant.

 

The examples are too numerous to count. But consistently, from the beginning, God used physical means to deliver spiritual gifts. 

 

It's all over the Bible. Once you recognize this fact, you can't un-see it. It comes up over, and over, again. God habitually meets us in a way that resonates with the human senses. 

 

Why is that? God didn't tell Israel to simply accept certain things as true. He didn't tell them to believe a proposition and say a prayer and they'd be saved. He brought them through water at the Red Sea, and again at the Jordon, saving them both from earthly threats but also delivering spiritual salvation at the same time through those means of His grace.

 

In yesterday's e-mail I dropped what might have sounded like a little bit of a theological "buzz word," or at the very least, was unclear.

 

I used the phrase the means of Grace. 

 

A lot of evangelical theology today has tried to strip anything that has a material component of any spiritual benefit. They can't imagine that physical, earthy, things can communicate spiritual gifts.

 

Because they think we are primarily "spirits" and our bodies don't matter. In other worlds, they're more "gnostic" than they realize.

 

But God didn't make us as spirits/souls in the beginning. We are physical beings, and God declared us "good" when he'd made us in the flesh, forming the first man from the dust of the earth itself. If you think about it, if we believe that salvation is about getting "out" of the body, we leave the serpent in the garden with a victory. Because it was his temptation that brought death into the world, the separation of body from soul and spirit.

 

But Jesus brings all that together. He brings us to death with him so that we can be raised with him. This death and resurrection happens to us spiritually and physically. Spiritually, the death and resurrection begins here and now, when we receive the gift He purchased for us on the cross. It is ours physically too, though, in the last day when our physical death also gives way to his resurrection victory.

 

In other words, God doesn't merely save souls. Saving "souls" is common parlance in modern evangelicalism. But the Bible is about saving people. TOTAL/WHOLE people... who are bodies and souls.  

 

Which is why STILL in the New Testament era, God uses physical elements... and he attaches his Word to those elements... so that we can experience in our flesh his salvation in a way that's more intimate to us as creatures of God than merely accepting "knowledge" in our hearts. Because God knows our faith needs something to hold on to.  

 

That's why Jesus used grammatical formulation called a "participle of means" in Matthew 28:18-20 when he said disciples are made by means of baptizing them and teaching them. Knowledge is a part of discipleship. But baptism is meant to be a real means of grace. Because God communicates his gifts to us in a multiplicity of ways... so that we can take hold of the benefits of the death and resurrection with signs that are accompanied by his Word and Promise. 

 

You can't reduce something like Baptism to a mere ordinance that we perform out of obedience. Paul never speaks of Baptism as a public profession of an internal faith. He speaks about it like it actually does something. Which is what Jesus said when he instituted Baptism (Matt. 28:18-20).

 

Romans 6:3-4 (ESV): Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. 

 

See also...

 

1 Peter 3:21: (ESV) "Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a clear conscience through the resurrection of Jesus Christ." 

 

This doesn't make it magic. It's not like if you go through the motions you're automatically saved. I used the phrase the "means of Grace" before. It's a physical/earthy way of delivering the Word of God to us, the promise of God, in a way that we can actually point to, we can feel, we can sense.

 

It's the same way God always delivered his hope, gift, and promise to the people of God throughout all of Scripture. He engages all of our senses. The hearing of the Word. The touch of water. The taste of the bread/wine and body/blood in the Lord's Supper.

 

God does this for a reason. He knows (unlike what the gnostics thing) that we aren't merely spirits. We were created with bodies.

 

We can't leave it all to our thoughts.

 

Because our minds, what we think, can't be trusted. Our "thoughts" or "acceptance" of certain truths don't amount to a solid foundation. Our minds are often overwhelmed with doubt. We need something tangible to hold on to as a lifeline when our thought-life wanders or we have questions.

 

The point is that it's the Word of God that makes a difference. It's his Word that applies the benefits of Christ's death and resurrection to us. Baptism isn't magic. But it is a means of Grace, because God's Word is communicated there as His promise joins with the elements so we have something that meets us where we're at in this physical world that we can hold on to.  

 

A lot of people reduce things like Baptism to mere symbol mostly because they're hung up on a gnostic worldview that sees "secret knowledge" as the answer, and disparages the use of anything material/physical. But throughout the Scriptures God is constantly communicating His promises to His people, inviting them to participate in those promises, through physical means.

 

You've probably heard people say that if we think Baptism has any power to save us that we're relying on a work or human performance, as if that's contrary to faith. But right-thinking is just as much a work as anything we might do with our hands. 

 

The issue isn't whether something is done when Baptism happens. The question is who is doing the saving part of the work?  

 

In Baptism, because God has attached his Word and Promise to the physical element, our faith can take hold of that promise in and with the water. We feel water. Faith takes hold of the promise though Baptism in much the same way that faith still has to take hold of the verbal Word when someone speaks the Gospel to us.  

 

Faith isn't about whether we totally understand everything. It's not about knowledge. Because faith is primarily a matter of trust rather than intellectual mastery. And trust is a very simple thing. Even a baby trusts his parents, cries for them when in need, and finds security in their embrace. Just because we don't understand how the thought process works at that simple level of faith doesn't mean the faith isn't real.

 

This is all about good news. It's all about realizing that if we desire to live forever... if we want to receive the gift that Christ purchased for the entire world... all we have to do is receive it. All we do is trust it. And if we have any doubt of that, he's attached his Word to physical elements... so we have something we who are simple of mind can hold on to when our minds aren't right.

 

Does that mean that people who still have faith, but die before they're baptized, are condemned? I'm not saying that. It's not supposed to be a limiting factor. It's meant to be a gift, something we can cling to in addition to what we believe in our hearts/minds, to put our faith on a secure foundation.

 

Think about how important this is for people who don't know how to read. The vast majority of Christians through history didn't have Bibles and even if they had access to some they didn't know how to read them.

 

In His Mercy, God gave us means we could use that applied in a visible way the benefits of Christ's death and resurrection. The burial/resurrection in Baptism communicates the death and resurrection in a way that is essential - especially for people who can't read about it in a Bible for reassurance.

 

Something similar is going on with the Lord's Supper, too. But that's another issue I'm not going to get into today. Suffice it to say, we shouldn't be quick to reduce something to the level of a "mere symbol" or an "ordinance" we perform by obedience.

 

Now, I know, this sounds kind of doctrinal here. And you might think this runs counter to what I usually do with this newsletter. Like I said before, though, sometimes "teaching" can't be avoided.

 

I have no real problem with those who don't believe any of this. I don't doubt their salvation. Faith takes hold of the Word of God, whether that be the Word we hear, or the Word that God has joined to physical elements as he does with Baptism. So no hard feelings if we disagree here. The point is that if you're cutting this reality of God's word out of your life in exchange for a "gnostic" approach to faith you're missing out on a profound gift. 

 

There is a depth and a profundity to the way that God wants us to realize His gifts... and real intimate thing that can help us experience the truth of the Gospel... and the means of Grace are a powerful lifeline in a world where our thoughts/ideas/knowledge waver with the wind. 

 

The point here is that if you've been taught the faith in a way that's a little too "gnostic" you might find something here to give you confidence. Something solid you can hold on to when your doubts creep in. My hope is that this can supplement your saving faith and enrich your experience of God's grace.

 

Blessings,

Judah