“You can’t save yourself with
good behavior. Only God can save you.”
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rowing up in my very small North Carolina town, we knew
everybody, where they lived, what kind of work they did, and by the time we
knew there were secrets, we knew the secrets of everyone in town. Sometimes,
with party line telephones, we would be the first to discover the big secrets.
By the time I finished high school and left the little town, I knew that
everybody had the same secrets, the same concerns and the same ambitions. The
people in my town had one other thing in common. All of them went to church.
But they went to different churches because they believed differently about baptism,
educated preachers and foreign missionaries. They believed they were right and
the others were wrong. But they all believed in salvation, and they all
believed in sin. Going to church was good for you, and sin was bad for you.
During the years I went to church with them, we listened to
the same sermon every Sunday. We never heard good sermons or bad sermons. We heard
the sermon that we knew as well as we knew the hymns we sang. I think no one
ever complained about a preacher unless he said something new. The true
doctrine was the traditional doctrine, and hearing it was good for you. “Believe
on Jesus Christ, the son of God, and be sinless to show that you believe.”
There was never any doubt that your behavior and your heart determine your
happiness in this life and your fate in the next one. It was the preacher’s job
to remind them of that truth every Sunday. As Ross Perot says, “It is just that
simple.” “We all want to be happy and we are all trying to get to the same
place.”
We Baptists were different from the Methodists because we
believed in immersion, and they baptized babies. The Pentecostal churches
washed feet, and baptized in the lake. The Primitive Baptists baptized in
running water, a creek or river. It was that simple. Anybody who suggested salvation
might be more than that simple did not believe in the Bible. When I revisit my
home town, I see those old churches, the same buildings, same stained glass,
same steeples, and I wonder if they are listening to the same sermons: “Believe
so you can go to heaven when you die.”
Wonder what they do with the lesson we look at today, where
Jesus says plainly that the first shall be last and the last first. Quite clearly,
Jesus is reminding the people that those who are first in holiness and purity
will be the last to get in. Those whom we think will be the last to be saved
will be the first to be saved. This is Jesus’ way of saying, “You can’t save
your self with good behavior. Only God can save you.” John’s Gospel is more
demanding than that. John says, “Only faith in Jesus Christ can save you.” That
was John’s warning to the Jews that if they did not accept Jesus as the
Messiah, they could not be saved. That was the sermon I grew up listening to. “Whosoever
believes in me shall not perish, but have ever lasting life.” Actually, we did
not know what else you could believe in because nobody ever mentioned the other
gods. They talked about the holy life and the sinful life. If you believed in
Jesus you would live in Holiness as Jesus did. Holiness meant being different from
the sinners. Yet Jesus says clearly that, “Those who are first in holiness will
be last to get through that narrow gate.”
And with that we ask like the disciples did when Jesus
talked about the first and the last. “Then who can be saved?” And Jesus
answered them, “With humans it is impossible, but with God all things are
possible.” Jesus believed that we are all sinners, all born sinners and all die
sinners. We confirm this at every funeral when we say in the commendation, “A
sinner of your own redeeming.” In life we feel separated from God by what we do
and what we have left undone. Nothing that we do or think about makes us feel
good about our salvation. And because we feel disconnected, we usually do two
things. We look for people more sinful than us, and we worry about security.
Of those two options, finding sin in other people is the
easy one. “Thank God, I’m not a sinner like that one over there. At least, I’m
not that bad.” That is the reason people listen to preachers talk about sin. They
are talking about people worse off than we are. But Jesus says, “No. The worst
sinners are those who think they are less sinful. They will be last. The first
will be those who confess their sin, their humility.” We don’t like to hear
Jesus say, “With men it is impossible,” because it is such bad news. We
want to do it. Oh yes, Jesus says, “You will feel better, if you strive for the
narrow gate.” But that is out of your love for God. A good man feels closer to
God than a bad man. But being comfortable about your salvation? “With man it is
impossible. With God all things are possible.”
Striving for the narrow gate, being a better person, has
nothing to do with sin. Being a better person means doing something. Feed the hungry.
Comfort the sick. Accept the outsider. Clothe the homeless; and live in the
spirit of God. ‘A good person’ is determined by what you do, not by who you
are, or what you don’t do, or the company you keep. Being saved means feeling
at one with God, doing what God would do if God could do it all.
There was a movie recently called “Bruce, Almighty.” Bruce
was given the powers of God for a few days. So Bruce answered everybody’s prayers
like he thought God should do. Two things happened when everybody got what they
wanted. They were still not happy, and they had nothing else to pray for. They
did not need God anymore.
We cannot know the joy of being saved because if we did, we
would not need God anymore. If we knew absolutely that we were saved, we would
not need God to save us. We would not need Jesus to give us hope of salvation.
By our efforts, we can do nothing about our human condition. We are going to remain
human. We cannot hope for salvation without depending on God and having faith
in his son, his incarnation, Jesus Christ.
There are optional gods. You can believe in gods like money,
which is a very good one in this world. You can believe in power if you have servants
and a passion for power. You can believe in pleasure, but you have to know pain
to have pleasure. Finally, you can believe in science and wisdom, but so far
science and wisdom have not answered the big questions. They don’t have any
cures for the human condition. Until one of the secular gods does work, you are
stuck here with us believing in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of Live,
who with the Father and the Son lives with us, and gives us faith in life and
death, and certain hope of life to come. Your faith gives me faith. Your
presence comforts the rest of us.
Amen.