I remember growing up as a child seeing signs outside of small churches in Kansas and Missouri with just two words- JESUS SAVES! Until I was a about six or seven I always thought it was my grandmother who saved as she led me to church, holding my hand, several times a week. I see those two words very infrequently now. The last time was on a sign outside the Star Of Hope Mission. JESUS SAVES!
As we move towards Easter, now might be a good time to ask ourselves a very important question. That question would be, Jesus saves us from WHAT? And the reason I am opening up this question is because that question has changed for me. I still embrace the concept that JESUS SAVES; however, it for very different things now than it was when I was a child, or even a young adult.
I used to think that Jesus was 100% human and 100% divine. I couldn’t explain it. It didn’t make sense. But, I was told to just BELIEVE, so I did, even though I struggled with this concept of God wearing a human costume of sorts in this body of a Jew named Jesus. Or, as the charismatics would say it- JAY-ZUS!
Traditional church orthodoxy has Jesus SAVING us from our SINS.
While I consider Jesus my “savior” it’s not for the reasons I once thought.
1-Jesus saved me from my misconceptions of God (that the church had taught me).
2-Jesus saved me from my fear that God would reject me (the church had many reasons).
3-Jesus saved me from meritocracy (the fuel of church life).
4-Jesus saved me from thinking I was separate from God (I was reminded every Sunday).
5-Jesus saved me from thinking God’s justice trumped His love (a major church principle).
And in all of that I’ve come to see Jesus more as my LORD than my SAVIOR without denying the latter. I am discovering more of the richness, depth, and mystery of God. Isn’t it GOD that primarily saves anyway? What else could Jesus have meant when He said, “When a man believes in me, he does not beleive in ME ONLY, but in the ONE who sent me” (John 12:44).
In Jesus I saw and see God or as Huston Smith put it, “Jesus went about doing good causing the people of his time to find themselves thinking that IF divine goodness were to manifest itself in human form, this is how it would behave.” God is most DEFINED in Jesus, but God is not CONFINED in Jesus. Saying and believing that, as I have and do, says there must be someone else but Jesus that saves- in the other religions of the world. That someone else is the only one who can save anyone, and the one who eventually saves everyone.
God! God who is LOVE!
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