| (Copyright 2023) by Dave Rothwell (St. Joseph, Missouri) |
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| What exactly is required for salvation? There can be no more important question. It is, after all, quite literally a matter of life and death. I imagine that most of you reading this think that you know the correct answer to this vital question. But do you? How certain are you? You may be shocked to find that Scripture does not support what was commonly believed in the WCG, nor what is commonly believed in any of the various COGs that sprang from it. The COGs are quite certain that they have rejected the false teachings of mainstream Christianity and that they are the repositories and purveyors of “The Truth.” But with regard to this most important of questions, they have unwittingly accepted the false teaching of Protestantism. So, what is the Protestant teaching on the subject of salvation? Although there are many different flavors of Protestantism, the various Protestant beliefs about the requirements for salvation are all really just variations on the same theme. Put quite simply, the Protestant belief is that salvation comes by forgiveness alone. One cannot earn salvation, they say. But is that really any different than what the COGs teach? More importantly, is that what the Bible teaches? What Does Scripture Teach? A fundamental passage on the subject of salvation is found in 1 Corinthians 6:9. “Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived…” Be not deceived! Is it possible that the COGs have been deceived? Do they not teach that the unrighteous will in fact inherit the kingdom of God? Ask any lay member or any minister of any COG group if a true Christian will still be sinning at the return of Christ (or at the end of their physical life, whichever comes first) and almost invariably the answer will be a confident, “Yes.” The belief that we cannot overcome all sin in our life is bedrock for the COGs. But isn’t sinning the very definition of being “unrighteous”? If one probes a little further and asks the same COG member how they expect to be given eternal life if they are still sinning at Christ’s return, the answer is always, “Because God will forgive me.” Is this any different than the belief that salvation comes by forgiveness alone? “But wait just a minute,” I can hear you say. “We must overcome some sin. We won’t be able to overcome all sin, but we must try hard enough and overcome enough that God deems us worthy.” Okay, that’s fair. Of course, no one knows how much we have to overcome to be accounted worthy of eternal life, but it is true that the COG teaching about salvation is nuanced by the addition of the need to try very hard to overcome. But it’s also true that at the end of the day it still comes down to forgiveness. Jesus was asked this very same question about what is required for salvation. We’re all familiar with the account of the rich, young nobleman who asked what he must do to gain eternal life, so we all know that Jesus did not tell the man to “try” to keep the Commandments. He didn’t say, “You won’t be able to keep the Commandments, but that’s okay, if you try hard enough God will forgive you.” Now you may say, “It’s humanly impossible to keep the Commandments perfectly.” And I would agree with you. The disciples also understood that what Jesus was requiring is humanly impossible. They were in fact “exceedingly amazed, saying, Who then can be saved?” Jesus answered, “With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible.” And this is the key to understanding what God is doing and understanding what is required for salvation. This is not a work of men. This is the work of God. True, our cooperation and effort is required. We are co-workers with God, but at the end of the day it is the work of God in us. Sadly, most people, even those in the COGs, do not believe that God is capable of creating His perfect, righteous character in us. I am reminded of two passages inspired to be written by the prophets. “I will work a work in your days, which ye will not believe, though it be told you” (Habakkuk 1.5), and “Who hath believed our report?” (Isaiah 53.1). Almost no one, it would seem. This subject is enormous, and I will not attempt to fully cover it in one article. I will instead confine this article to examining two foundational ideas contained in Scripture that shed light on what God is doing. But first let me briefly describe my observations on the condition of the COGs today. Where did we come from? And how did we end up here? The Current State of The COGs To give you some context of my perspective on the COGs, I grew up in the Worldwide Church of God. Actually, it was still the Radio Church of God when my parents were baptized and began attending. I was five years old at the time, so I have a perspective that spans more than sixty years. I went to Imperial School in Pasadena from first grade and then attended Ambassador College. I worked for the WCG for eight years, much of it on the fourth floor of the Hall of Administration. So, I’ve seen some things. And one of the things that I have seen is people largely giving up on the idea of overcoming. When I was a young person in the WCG, the subject of overcoming sin was a common theme of the sermons preached and uppermost in the minds of the membership. But as the 60s became the 70s and then the 80s, and we came up against the hard reality of our own nature, we were forced to admit to the fact that we were not overcoming sin. Instead, we found that we were held captive by our own human nature; ingrained ways of thinking and habitual patterns of behavior which seemed impossible to dislodge. The idea that we were to just continue to try really hard felt exhausting. And what was the end result of decades of trying really hard to overcome? We were overcome with fatigue. Most of us gave up and negotiated an internal compromise which included coexisting with a certain amount of sin in our life. We assuaged our guilt by telling ourselves that we had at least overcome some sin. We said things such as, “God knows my heart.” Unfortunately, that statement is all too true. God does know our heart. The truth is that we had overcome as much as we humanly could. In other words, we had done what we could on our own. We may have thought that we were using the power of the Holy Spirit to overcome, but were we really? What I saw in the WCG was the Holy Spirit being described as a sort of turbo-charger that gives us an extra boost to resist the power of sin and the pulls of the flesh. We thought of overcoming in terms of sitting on and squelching the “old man.” But the harder we tried to sit on our own nature the more it squirted out in all directions and informed every part of our thoughts, words, and actions. The Holy Spirit was touted as the means to bottle up our evil, carnal nature. But we found that we could not contain our own nature. And what we should have realized is this: that is not how the Holy Spirit works. The Holy Spirit is not an afterburner. It’s not some superpower that enables us to bottle up our sinful nature. It is the presence of God within us. And God dwelling within is an agent of purification and of change. The conversion process is a process of change. It is a process of transformation. It is the process of our heart and mind being transformed into something new. It is the process of God’s Law being written in our heart. The Christian walk is not one of trying to bottle up our unrighteous nature, it is a process whereby our unrighteous nature is little by little removed and replaced with God’s righteous nature until we have fully taken on HIS righteousness. As you know, Jesus said, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness” (Matthew 6.33). God has chosen the elect to be partakers of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4). It is only when we understand this truth that we can begin to make real progress on the path of Life. So, it is with this reality in mind, and for the purpose of trying to wake up the COGs to this reality, that I am writing. As I said before, the subject is enormous, so I will limit this article to a brief examination of just two ideas in Scripture that illuminate this process, this work that God is performing in the hearts and minds of true Christians. Free From What? The first idea I want to examine is the concept of freedom from sin. Jesus famously said, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:32). Jesus said this to a group of Jews who believed on Him, and they responded by claiming that they were already free men. And Jesus then said something truly significant. “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin” (verse 34). Consider what Jesus is saying here! Being forgiven of sin does not make you free from sin. If you are forgiven of all past sins, but then continue to sin, you are not free! You are still a slave to sin. The only way to be truly free from sin is to stop sinning. But isn’t it impossible to stop sinning? That’s what we’ve been told. But Jesus says otherwise. Jesus says that we can be set free. Not just free from the penalty of past sins, but free from sinning! But how is this accomplished? The key to understanding how we are to be set free from sin — from sinning — is the phrase, “You shall know the truth…” Jesus was not talking about intellectual knowledge here. Knowing the truth in an intellectual sense is valuable, but knowledge by itself will not save you. The kind of “knowing” that Jesus is talking about is the knowing that comes from an intimate personal relationship. Jesus was talking about knowing Him. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). Jesus is the Truth. And it is through an intimate relationship with Him –knowing Him — that we are to be set free from sin. It is no accident that the Bible uses the word “know” to convey the idea of the intimate nature of the physical union between a man and his wife. “And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived.” The husband and wife relationship is a picture of the heavenly. Adam “knew” his wife, and they became “one flesh.” Even so we as Christians can become one with God. Notice Jesus’ words in John 14:23: “If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.” And now John 17:21: “That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us.” It is through this oneness with God, this intimate relationship of God dwelling in us that we are able to become free from sinning. That is, in fact, how Jesus was able to live a sinless life. Jesus plainly tells us this. “Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? the words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works.” Jesus said that it was the Father dwelling in Him who did the works. And it is clear from the context that “works” here is not just the miracles. The “works” were His words, His actions, how He lived. And that is how we can live, too. Again, Jesus plainly tells us this. “He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him. As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father: so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me” (John 6:56-7). We must not underestimate the importance of Jesus’ plain statement! We can live the same way that Jesus lived! As Jesus lived by the Father dwelling in Him, even so we are to live by Jesus dwelling in us! This is essentially the same message conveyed through Paul in Romans chapter 8. The carnal mind is not, and cannot be, subject to the Law of God; so as long as we are “in the flesh” we cannot please God, we cannot obey God’s Law (v7-8). But we are not “in the flesh” if we are led by the Spirit of God dwelling in us (v9). When we walk where the Spirit leads, the righteousness of the law is then fulfilled in us” (v4). Understand that we do not become free from sin immediately. It takes time and experience to learn to walk as the Spirit leads. But over many years of this intimate relationship with God dwelling in us through the Spirit we are little by little transformed to become like God. Have you ever noticed that if you spend a lot of time around another person you begin to take on some of their mannerisms, pick up some of their words and ways of saying things? In a way that is an analogy of what happens to us when we spend time in relationship with God. We begin to take on more and more of the characteristics and nature of God, until one day, when God has completed His work in us, we now think like God thinks, our words and actions now reflect the nature of God. In other words, God will have reproduced His nature and character within us. The Symbolism Of Healing This brings us to the second concept I want to examine. And that is the symbolism behind the miracles of physical healing that Jesus performed. I think that this symbolism is not widely understood. Notice Matthew, chapter 13, beginning in verse 10. The disciples asked Jesus why He spoke to the people in parables, and Jesus said it was because it was not given to them to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God. He cited the prophet Isaiah’s description of a people who would hear but not understand and see but not perceive (verse 14). And then Jesus made this remarkable statement. “For this people’s heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them.” But had He not healed them? If we go back just a few verses to chapter 12, verse 15, we find that “great multitudes” followed Jesus, and that He “healed them all.” I’m not aware of even a single instance in the gospels where Jesus did not heal the sick who came to Him. But here He says that He had not healed them. So, what kind of healing is He talking about? We read of Jesus making the deaf to hear, the blind to see and the lame to walk. He cleansed the lepers. He even raised the dead. But the one thing that all these miracles have in common is they are restoring the physical body to health. None of these miracles address the spiritual condition of the human heart. But they all symbolize the process of healing the human heart. All of man’s problems could be summed up as a heart problem. “O that there were such an heart in them, that they would fear me, and keep all my commandments always, that it might be well with them, and with their children for ever!” (Deut 5:29). Jesus said it is not that which goes into a man that defiles him, but that which comes out of his heart. True healing, also known as “conversion,” requires a transformation of the heart. We might call it spiritual healing. Spiritual healing begins with God opening our eyes to see and our ears to hear. Before God does this, we cannot see or hear with understanding. We were spiritually blind and spiritually deaf. And just as the lepers were cleansed, God is cleansing our heart. “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). And just as Jesus healed the lame man so he could walk, God sets us upright on our feet and enables us to walk in the path of righteousness. “He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake” (Psalm 23:3). He has raised us up from being spiritually dead that we should “walk in newness of life” (Ephesians 2:1-10, Romans 6:4). At the Feast of Tabernacles, we typically read the passage found in Isaiah 35:5-6. “Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing: for in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert.” Although it is wonderful to think of a future world in which there will be no sickness, this passage is not primarily speaking of physical healing. It’s primarily talking about the spiritual healing of the human heart, which will occur because God will pour out His Spirit upon all flesh and write His Law in their heart. It’s talking about the same kind of spiritual healing that God is offering to the elect, those who are the forerunners and the firstfruits of the New Covenant. I wonder if you have noticed the connection in the gospels between belief and healing. Notice Matthew 9:27-30. Two blind men came to Jesus wanting to be healed, and Jesus said, “Believe ye that I am able to do this?” Why did Jesus ask the two blind men this question? Is it because God is unable to physically heal a person unless they believe He can? No, God is not limited in the physical realm from doing anything He chooses to do. Our unbelief does not make Him powerless. For example, when God chose to destroy the world in a great flood, He did not require that the people believe He could do it. He simply commanded and it was done. When Jesus healed the high priest’s servant, whose ear had been cut off, He did not ask if he believed. He simply touched the man, and his ear was restored. So why did Jesus ask this question? The answer is that Jesus wanted us to see the connection between belief and spiritual healing. Unlike physical healing, spiritual healing does require our belief. Unlike physical healing, which is a unilateral action by God, spiritual healing is a joint effort between God and the individual who is to be healed. It requires our cooperation, and thus our belief. We are co-workers with God. God does the heavy lifting, but we are required to do our part. If we do not believe that God can accomplish the miracle of healing our heart, we will not be willing to make the necessary sacrifices, we will not stay the course. We will quit when the going gets tough. Witness the example of the ancient Israelites. The Israelites were gathered at the entrance to the Promised Land, but the people heard the report of giants in the land, and they were afraid to go in. As a result, God was sorely displeased with them, and even though they later changed their mind, God prevented them from entering the Promised Land. Now all these things were recorded for our learning. This is a lesson for us. We, too, are poised to enter the Promised Land. And we, too, know that there are giants that must be slain. The giants of course represent the sin that stands between us and our Promised Land. Do we believe that God can conquer all the sin in our life? Or do we believe that the giants are too big, too strong? Will we trust God and move forward with Him to slay the giants and take the land, or will we turn back from lack of faith and lose out on our Promised Land? “Wherefore (as the Holy Ghost saith, To day if ye will hear his voice, Harden not your hearts, as in the provocation, in the day of temptation in the wilderness: When your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my works forty years. Wherefore I was grieved with that generation, and said, They do alway err in their heart; and they have not known my ways. So I sware in my wrath, They shall not enter into my rest.) Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God” (Hebrews 3:7-12). The subject of salvation is far too large to fit into one article, but I hope that what I’ve presented has at least given you food for thought. In a future article, God willing, I will address some of the most widely misunderstood passages on the subject. Romans 6:23 and Ephesians 2:8-9 especially come to mind. Until then, I will leave you with these words of Jesus: “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.” |
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