Baptism/Amazing Grace: A Conversation Over Lunch, Part 14

So I’m starting to get it, but it’s not entirely sinking in. Are you saying that salvation has to be by faith because only faith in Jesus can produce the relationship that God craves?

I didn’t say that, actually, but I wish I had. That’s how I see it. And it makes sense — if we rethink and redefine our religion in relational terms.

Now, it’s more than that, but it’s that — and the relationship element is absolutely key.

Anyone familiar with the Bible knows that God speaks about the church over and over in relational language. The church is the “family” of God, his “household,” his “bride.” We Christians are “sons of God.” We are his children. We are adopted.

These are not legal terms. They are relational. And God wants relationship.

The relationship he wants is obedience, but not just obedience; love, but not just love. We tend to talk about “love” in a romanticized sense. Kind of a pop song sense. It’s as though we need to feel mushy and gooey inside about God. Or maybe we just need to talk to him a lot, the way a teenage girl wants her boyfriend to call her.

But God wants a mature love, the love of a wife for her husband or the love of a child for her father. This is not an “I have a crush on you” kind of love but an “I would do anything for you” kind of love. It’s how a mother feels about her child. Parents would give up everything — even their lives — for their children.

God feels that way about us, and he expects us to feel the same way about our brothers and sisters. In fact, just as is true in every family, your parents will be very unhappy with you if you don’t love your brothers and sisters from the heart. That’s how families are supposed to be!

This what God craves. It’s not merely some command given to us for our own good, like eating Brussels sprouts. It’s a description of what we’ve been saved to become — a people who love each other intensely — as God does.

This, of course, takes us back to the image of God as found in Jesus. This love is modeled (imaged, really) by Jesus for us.

But what about people who love their neighbors but who’ve never even heard of God? Christians aren’t the only people who love — and often aren’t even the best at it. Why would God accept their love and not the love of others?

Who said anything about accepting our love? It’s not as though we buy our way into God’s family by choosing to love. That’s backward. We love because God first loved us. He brought us into his family, and therefore we love.

Be careful, or you’ll slip into a works salvation. I’ve been there. Don’t want to go back.

If Christian love isn’t all that special, then why faith in Jesus?

I didn’t say that Christian love isn’t special. It’s just not what brings us into God’s family. We don’t love our way in. We are adopted in, and so we love.

And that love comes from God’s Holy Spirit —

(Rom 5:3-5 ESV)  3 Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance,  4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope,  5 and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

(Rom 8:15 ESV)  15 For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!”

(Gal 4:6 ESV)  6 And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!”

And Paul can be quite extreme on the subject —

(1Co 12:3 ESV)  3 Therefore I want you to understand that no one speaking in the Spirit of God ever says “Jesus is accursed!” and no one can say “Jesus is Lord” except in the Holy Spirit.

He connects our salvation and our relationship with God with our receipt of the Spirit in no uncertain terms.

And so, I have to figure that part of the reason faith in Jesus is essential is that faith brings the Spirit. We’ve not said much about the Spirit. But the Spirit is associated with everything we’ve talked about so far.

It’s the Spirit that cries “Jesus is Lord” and “Abba! Father!” within our hearts. God pours his love into our hearts by the Spirit. Indeed, only those with the Spirit are saved —

(Rom 8:9-11 ESV)  9 You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.  10 But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness.  11 If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.

It’s by the indwelling Spirit that we’ll be resurrected to live in the New Jerusalem! It’s by the Spirit that we’ll receive immortality.

Now, if only those with the Spirit are saved, and if only those with faith in Jesus are saved, they must be connected in some way. Calvin would tell us that faith comes by the Spirit, and the Spirit comes by God’s election. Arminius would tell us that faith comes by hearing, and that the Spirit comes from faith.

Call me a traditionalist, if you must, but I think Acts 2:38 and the baptism of Jesus give the normative pattern. We have faith, we are baptized, and we receive the Spirit. Therefore, the Spirit follows faith.

Of course, the Spirit can be active in someone’s life to point them toward God before they are saved, but only the saved have the indwelling Spirit — and the personal relationship that creates.

Now, at this point, we have to speculate a little …

A little! All you’ve been doing is speculating!

No, I’ve actually been solidly within the Scriptures. You might disagree with my conclusions, but they are, I think, what the Scriptures explicitly teach.

But here we’re moving a bit beyond the reach of the text. For example, when the Tabernacle was dedicated, it had to be cleansed with blood before God could enter. Following a purification ritual, God descended to dwell in the Holy of Holies.

Thus, Christians must first be purified by faith and baptism before the Spirit enters them a temples of God and dwells there.

That makes sense, but it’s not entirely clear if that’s just metaphor or reality. It makes a little more sense if we think of the Spirit as only able to affect and transform a heart that wants and is willing to be transformed by God. And someone without faith cannot want God to enter his heart to transform it. In essence, because we have free will, we have to give permission.

I don’t recall inviting the Spirit into my heart …

If we invite Jesus into our hearts, we do the same. The Spirit is how Jesus enters. If we submit to baptism, we expect the “gift of the Holy Spirit.” We tacitly consent to whatever that means. We open ourselves to God.

And this is why those who acknowledge the active, indwelling work of the Spirit seem to be more influenced by the Spirit. They’ve allowed the Spirit in.

Consider —

(Tit 3:4-7 ESV)  4 But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared,  5 he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit,  6 whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior,  7 so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.

How does God save us? Paul says, by the “renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us through Jesus Christ.” Notice that it’s “through Jesus” that the Spirit is poured out. Somehow, the work of Jesus and our faith in him brings the Spirit — who renews and regenerates us.

Maybe it’s because faith opens our hearts to the work of God in us. Maybe it’s because faith makes us just barely enough like Jesus that the Spirit can live within us. But that’s how it works.

Faith brings the Spirit.