Nothing Said
November 11, 2021
The faith “formula” many of us have heard goes something like this:
Everyone is a sinner. We all fall short and we need salvation.
The consequence of sin is death and so since we are sinners we all deserve to die.
The death of Jesus Christ paid the price of the world’s sin…
And so, anyone who confesses Jesus Christ and places their trust in him is saved from eternal death because Jesus died in your place.
It is a tidy formula and there is little here that Christians would call into question. Some quibble about what the death of Jesus really accomplishes, and still others argue about the different atonement theories. Some progressives insert a step before step one above by saying something like, ‘before there was original sin, there was original blessing.”
In the end, most Christians that I encounter (of all sorts of leanings) share the Christian story as moving from sin to salvation, from sinner to justified. You are a sinner but you are saved. The problem is that this story undercuts the power of the Gospel because of the “but."
Ask any human you know about what it is like to hear a “but” in a conversation and you will hear a common refrain, “nothing someone says before the word 'but' really counts.” It is why managers and parents are taught to avoid the “compliment sandwich” - giving someone a complement then provide a point of critique. People do not hear the complement and only hear the critique. It does not matter what was said before the ‘but’ because it does not matter in the mind.
And so, back to the common salvation formula: You are a sinner but you are saved. We don’t hear that we are sinners and only hear that we are saved. While this may be good news to our egos, it is not the Good News of Jesus Christ. The Good News of Jesus Christ is more akin to what Luther suggested, “Simul Justus et peccator” - Justified and Sinner.
In this just as simple formula, the but is removed and the two positions are made equal. You and I are justified AND sinners. Secondly, notice that in the common telling, the humans are the first actors - humanity sinned. Being justified and sinner proclaims that it is God who is the first actor. Even before you were aware of it, before you acted, God acts. In the Methodist tradition we say this is prevenient grace - grace that goes before you are aware of it.
But the most potent aspect of being justified and sinner is that it is not good news to the ego but it is Good News in Jesus Christ. This way of seeing God’s grace means that you are justified, you are forgiven, you are made right by God AND still you are a sinner. Name any other relationship in the world like that. Betcha can’t. Humans build our relationships on the premise that we expect each other to become less and less of a sinner, problem, immature jerk. And that the future of the relationship is at stake if you do not “get better”.
The Good News, the Gospel News of Jesus Christ, says that God’s work justifies, redeems and forgives – no matter what! And when we come to see there is nothing that can separate us from the love of God (not even sin), then we interact with the world and with God differently. We no longer look to please out of fear, rather we are pleased to look through fear.
You are a sinner but you are saved is a very human formulation. Any parent will say this to their child. It pleases the ego to hear this.
You are justified and a sinner is revolutionary and only the imagination of the divine could consider this as a way to the death of the ego and the resurrection of a new creation.