Living Near to God 

      “If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead you will be saved.”
      I don’t know about you…but when I hear these words from Paul my mind focuses on the words if you confess and if you belief…as if God’s salvation is dependent on my actions. I am not sure the cause of my struggle. I am the oldest sibling. I do live by a strong Protestant work ethic that feeds my type A personality all too often. There is that huge J on my Myers Brig profile. If I am really honest with myself…I call it what it is SIN. Something deep inside of me, when I think about the gift of God’s salvation struggles between realizing that is has nothing to do with me and everything to do with God. My struggle flies in the face of a reformed doctrine of justification through faith. But I wonder, amid understanding that there is nothing we can ever do to “earn” our salvation, sometimes the torment of an introspective conscience might seek to ask…what must I do to be saved? Sometimes on a really bad day our thoughts might turn to others…what must he do to be saved?
      It is this flood of self-reflection and comparing ourselves to others where our humanity oozes through our pours and our sin becomes ever present, that our desires to play by the rules, to live by the law to acquire God’s grace or our tendency to judge others can became idolatrous. We view ourselves equal to God, looking for salvation in our own efforts or desiring a relationship with God that is understood by meeting the necessary requirements. Went to church (check) Got confirmed ( check ) etc.
      Paul has something to say about salvation and our desire to live by the law. In his letter to the Church in Rome, a letter Paul wrote from Corinth he writes about the promises of God’s grace to all. Perhaps hinting at tension between Gentile Christians and Jewish Christians, Paul defends the importance of Israel in God’s purpose and proclaims there is one gospel for all humanity. From the theme of the letter found in 1:16 “ For I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek” to 5:18 “ Therefore just as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all” to the chapter 8” Neither death, nor life, nor things present, nor things to come can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans is about how we are free to live, believe and hope when we are confident of God’s promise of salvation.
      In the tenth chapter of Romans Paul’s addresses the issue of the law in conjunction the promises of God found in Jesus Christ. In striving to live by the law, Israel looked for salvation in their own efforts. But now God has revealed the incarnation of the goal of the law- Jesus Christ. This was a new way of looking at the law both for Gentile Christians and especially for Israel. The problem with the law is that if we depend on fulfilling the law as the basis for our relationship with God, then the basis for the relationship is still on human action, our action and not God’s trustworthinessi. Paul speaks of a new relationship, not one built on the law but on faith.
     Pushing his point Paul uses the words of Moses found in Deuteronomy 30: 12-14, where Moses assures the Israelites that God’s law is truly accessible to them and God will have compassion on them. The passage in Deuteronomy is a powerful one that dares to assert new possibilities not only of God’s mercy and forgiveness but of the blessing of obedience because the word is so near, on your lips and in your heart.
     Paul continues to use the words of Hebrew prophets, “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” Believe in your heart and be justified and confess with your mouth and be saved. It seems so simple, but not easy. To believe and to confess… we have to let go our own desire to seek security and trust on the promises of God.
     Often we read these verses from Romans through the lens of an introspective conscience often plagued by guilt and the focus is on the action of our confession. In Evangelical lingo these verses are part of the “Romans Road”…the road to salvation that includes our confession. This is a traditional way to read Paul, but I think there might be another way that is not as self focused and more God focused.
     Krister Stendahl, former Dean of Harvard Divinity school proposes a new way to interpret Paul’s letter to the Romans. Beginning with an address in 1961 to a group of American psychologists, Stendahl proposes that Paul had become the hero of the “introspective conscience,” almost a kind of first century Hamlet character wrestling with shame, guilt and sin, pitting his inner freedom against the law. Stendahl argues that this reading of Paul might be clouded by other theologians who have interpreted Paul’s work; theologians such as Augustine and Martin Luther and the piety of the Middle Ages…thus Paul’s theology and idea of justification through faith get strained through Luther’s angst. The question, “How can I find a gracious God?” is not Paul’s question argues Stendahl. ii Paul knew about God’s grace. Stendahl writes, “ It is pointed out that for the Jew the Law did not require a static or pedantic perfectionalism but supposed a covenant relationship in which there was room for forgiveness and where God applied the Measure of Grace. iii”
     Using Stendahl’s work, we can begin to see a fresh way to understand Paul’s address in Romans. Paul is speaking of God’s generosity that is large enough to include all creation and it not dependent on our confession but seeks our trust. He sees a vision of God that transcends human distinctions and human sin.
     To understand that salvation is possible because of God’s righteousness, is to begin to understand that salvation has more to do with life than death. God conquered death through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ…thus we are free to live in the promises of God. Faith, our response to God’s sheer act of love and grace, begins with an affirmation of who God is and who we are not.
     Barbara Brown Taylor in her book, Leaving Church, shares a question that she was first asked at a local church gathering, “Tell us what is saving your life now.” She said that is was such a great question that she makes a practice of asking others even as she continues to ask it for herself. Taylor notes that we often think about “what is killing us”. “For some it is the deadly rush of our lives, for others it is the inability to move. For some it is the prison of our possessions, for others the crushing poverty that dooms our children too much of the same. Few of us can choose our circumstances, but we can choose how we respond to them. To be saved is not only to recognize an alternative to the weight pressing down upon us but to able to act upon it. Salvation opens a door where we only saw a wall. iv ”
     What is saving your life right now? As we begin this Lenten journey, I think this is the question we must ask ourselves. First confident in God’s grace through Jesus Christ which grants us salvation, and second thinking about what saves us in the here and now which supports our faith.
     Is it observing the Sabbath, it is encountering God through other people, is it committing yourself to be truly human aware of your faults but not running from them. If we only focus on what is killing us our Lenten road might be too hard to bear. I am not saying that self- reflection is not important, but if our eyes are only focused inward and not God, then our offering of repentance has become tainted. We do not have to go to Jerusalem and Golgotha to die with Jesus; Jesus has already died for us. Lent just might be about learning to live with and for Jesus and understanding that our act of repentance and even our confession are lived only in response to a gracious and generous God.
     Salvation is living near to God made possible through Jesus Christ. Discipleship, the focus for our journey together this Lent is also about living near to God, not out of requirement but out of response. What a better way to experience this blessing, than to come to the table, to taste and feel God’s presence once again and to remember what saves us.
     Come people of God, you who struggle with the gift of grace and you who rest assured.
     Come people of God, you who torture yourself for not being good enough and you who judge others for not measuring up.
     Come people of God, you who worry about the future and you who go through life never thinking about tomorrow.
     Come, people of God and experience salvation!




iPaul J. Actiemier, Interpretation Biblical Commentary: Romans ( Louisville: John Knox Press) p. 168
iiInterpretation Journal, Preaching Romans Today, Thomas G. Long July 2004 p. 267
iiiKrister Stendahl, “ The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West” Harvard Theological Review, 56 ( 1963)
ivBarbara Brown Taylor, Leaving Church



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