Covenant Presbyterian Church

The Christian faith makes the most remarkable claim ever heard. Through faith in Jesus Christ, a man, any man, the most evil man in the world, can be immediately, fully, and eternally forgiven of his sins. He need add nothing to the finished work of Jesus Christ - no good deeds, mystical encounter with God, rite, or ritual. He need only confess himself to be a justly condemned and helpless sinner before the holy God, that his only hope is in the mercy of God freely offered and given through Jesus Christ, and that Jesus Christ is Lord, his only hope in life and death. Whatever his past life, connections, or crimes, he may be made as white as snow: forgiven of his sins, cleansed from their guilt and penalty, justified by Christ’s imputed righteousness, and adopted by the Holy Spirit into the family of God.

This claim is remarkable, for no one else is making it. Roman Catholicism does not make it, for its entire system of justification is based upon uncertainty - even if I do everything prescribed by the church, its whole litany of penance, confession, and ritual, I will likely do a stint in purgatory before being admitted to heaven, and this only if I do not commit a mortal sin. The world religions do not make this claim - each is a pyramid, a shell game, with initiates confusedly scattered up and down the chain of being, the path of transcendental enlightenment, or the ladder of good works. The Christian spin-offs or cults do not make this claim - their various redemptive systems are a jumbled combination of good works, Christ and personal merit, and allegiance to the venerated, infallible founder. Each of these depends upon creating, not removing, the sense of guilt and alienation from God, for followers will be the more wedded to programs, acts of penitence, and human leaders to the degree that redemption remains in doubt. This also explains the reason no Christian cult believes in the perseverance and preservation of the saints; salvation can be lost. This keeps the devotees in line. Their systems are designed to make man feel farther from God, not closer, more uncertain of final salvation, not more confident. They make slaves, not liberated, courageous, and loving men gratefully devoted to the glory of God.

Christianity’s claim is remarkable because everyone is seeking the very thing that the Christian gospel offers: reconciliation with God and the restoration of man. Our political systems are based upon the idea that man has core deficiencies - politically, socially, and economically defined sins - that can be checked and corrected only by an all-wise, all-provident, and all-sufficient state. Our educational systems are similarly redemptive, as are our social programs, foreign policies, and planned economy: salvation by money, humanitarianism, militaristic intervention, and central planning. Our ecological efforts are redemptive; man feels that he can only save himself by saving his environment. What else is globalism but the same fear that prompted the erection of the original global tower at Babel - the attempt to hide from the face of God and to escape from the uneasy sense of divine scrutiny and judgment? Man feels better able to do this if everyone is part of a global system: equally vulnerable, equally watched, and equally mediocre. Even the professed atheist, who vociferously denies any concern with God and redemption, cannot even curse without taking the name of God upon his lips. By profaning the name of the denied-God, he would assume power over that God, the power to escape, deny, and eradicate God’s claims upon his life. Everywhere one looks, then, man is haunted by his sense of alienation from God, of his need for self-justification and self-preservation, to assuage the insatiable gnawing of a perturbed conscience, to save himself.

Man’s religiousness is not a new observation; it is as old as man himself. It is only the barbarian who would deny this, and our descent into barbarism is the reason for our ubiquitous litigation, broken families, rudeness, and economic cannibalism, by which we spend and consume everything now without a thought for the future. The denial of God always leads to theft, barbaric isolation, self-indulgent lovelessness, and dog-eat-dog chaos in every human relation. These tragedies are inescapable for man’s creation in God’s image is inescapable. God will be worshipped and served. The breakdown of modern society is thus a strikingly clear proof not only of God’s existence but also that his wrath that is being revealed from heaven against every form of ungodliness, against those who worship and serve the creature rather than the Creator. Because God is God and has revealed himself in the world and in the heart of all, none of our man-centered schemes to improve education, save the environment, preserve ourselves from economic decline, establish democracy in other quarters of the world, and strengthen our families will succeed. They are not succeeding because we live in a world created and governed by God, whose word alone is life and whose holy purposes are accomplished on earth as they are in heaven. In him we move, live, breathe, and have our very existence. When man denies God as his ultimate environment, when he denies God as his life, misery, confusion, and self-destructive programs ensue.

And thus, our sense of alienation, our craving for redemption, is explained. We have revolted from the law of our creation, which is to love, know, and glorify God. We have lain with strange gods, which neither we nor our fathers have known. We have sown to the wind and are reaping the whirlwind. We have rejected the fountain of living waters and formed broken cisterns that cannot hold water. Rebellion against God does not mean man ceases to be concerned with redemption. Longing for reconciliation with God and a silenced conscience is desperately intensified because it cannot be satisfied. God has made us for himself, and our hearts are miserably restless until they rest securely in him.

And rest we can. Unlike every other world religion, cult, or secular program, Christianity’s remarkable claim is that man cannot mount up to God but that God condescends to man. He reaches down to us, spiritually dead, rebellion, and undeserving though we are. He did this through his Son. Through Jesus Christ’s expiatory death, sinless life, and victorious resurrection, we are washed from our sins and reconciled to God. The righteousness God legitimately demands from his creatures is bestowed freely as a gift. By faith in Jesus, we are cleansed, reconciled, redeemed, and restored. We are washed as white as snow. Nothing can or need be added to the finished work of Christ. It need only be received through faith in the promise of God that is proclaimed in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

This gospel is the harbinger of hope for man. It puts an end to tyranny and messianic states because man is no longer consumed with fear of death, of man, and of nature. He does not cast a grim look to the heavens and think God is his enemy, the foreboding presence from which he cannot escape. God is reconciled; I am washed. Let man do what he will; God is my reconciled Rock and impregnable Fortress, not the schemes and promises of the dead. It puts an end to personal frustration and despair. I cannot do enough; I know I cannot pull myself up to heaven. I am a sinner; my fundamental problem is not without but within. So much for the world religions, who either try to mount up to heaven on the wings of mysticism or by treading the dark valley of good behavior. So much for pseudo-Christianity’s paralyzing allegiance to systems of penance, purgatory, and blind allegiance to very fallible leaders. I will worship God not as a slave of fear and of my pursuit of self-justification but as an adopted son of the Lord of glory. I will sing a new song to the Lord, wear his shining robe of righteousness, and come to him with confidence through Jesus Christ. It also puts an end to the destructive pursuit of perfectionism while at the same time empowering true obedience. I am not made more right with God by a godly life; I can be no more right with him than I am through Jesus Christ, his sacrifice and righteousness. I cannot be whiter than snow. Yes, I want to please my heavenly Father, obey his Word, and be a faithful disciple of Jesus Christ. Yet, this is prompted by gratitude not by guilt, by love not dread. And when I fall, which I most certainly will, I humble myself again in the snowy righteousness of Jesus Christ. One drop of his blood falls upon my blackness, one glance of the Father’s love for me through his Son, and all is white again. As white as snow.