happens when people become educated and sensitive to each other, learn to develop mutual understanding, and set about to restore damaged relationships. Of course, the process doesn’t work fully if all parties are not willing participants. Forgiveness works best within a religious community with a healthy level of spirituality, where people are considerate of others and are seeking to do the will of God.
As a pastor, I have observed that there is a link between what people believe about God, and how they treat each other. Problems follow when God is thought to be vindictive. That belief does damage to our ethics, stifles our spirituality, and leaves people emotionally wounded and theologically confused. Even when God is said to be a just but punishing judge, distortion occurs, since that idea generates fear. The next time someone tries to convince you of the payment-in-blood theology, take notice of how much fear and pressure that person is using to try to convince you. There is an ugly psychology that underlies atonement, and it is often communicated in a mean-spirited and bullying way.
The Neglected Teaching
The most neglected of all of Jesus’ teachings is this one: “For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice” (John 18:37). He came to earth to teach truth, to reveal God, to live out goodness, and to demonstrate spiritual beauty by implanting and nurturing love.
His revelation of truth goes beyond just his teachings. It is very much revealed in his way of living, since that is where he really shows the intimate trust he had in God, whom he called “Father.” Whenever he says “my Father,” we can sense a background of years of prayer, trusting, and communing with God. And when he speaks of “my Father and your Father” (John 20:17), he is letting us know that we can have that intimate experience, too. That is his greatest revelation: his life of trusting, and the faith and good will that he always practiced. By speaking of “my Father and your Father” he is showing that the Father is not out of reach. God’s infinity is out of reach, God’s divine power is out of reach, but a childlike relationship to our spiritual Father is not out of our reach.
The spiritual life that Jesus encourages will lead us to become spiritually liberated because we will actually know truth: “You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free . . . Everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin . . . [but] if the Son makes you free, you will be indeed” (John 8:32, 34, 36). Truth is not only spiritually liberating, but it can be mentally and socially liberating, as well. Many people have been freed from bad ideologies, oppressive groups, and false teaching when they have discovered the gospel of Jesus.
He came to live the life of truth, and then to bestow the “Spirit of Truth” after he left (John 14:17; 15:26), the Spirit that “will guide you into all the truth” (16:13). He came to bring beauty, goodness, and living truth to the earth. He prayed “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt 6:10)—to make earth less estranged from heaven!
It should be clear, then, that Jesus came to show forth God, not to pay off God. He did not come to suffer violence or to inflict it. “I do not judge anyone,” he said, “for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world” (John 12:47).
Then how did he bring salvation? If his death is all that mattered, that would make all his teachings, his encounters, and his healings—in fact most of the gospel narrative—unimportant. But all these encounters and teachings did matter. Many people’s lives were forever changed by their encounters with the living Jesus. We need to notice what Jesus says in these encounters. He finds saving significance in people’s faith—either in God, or in him, or both. I have already mentioned the seven times in the Gospels where he tells people “your faith has saved you.” And he never adds “dependent upon your believing in my coming death as a sacrifice.” Rather, Jesus links salvation to people’s spiritual choices and loyalties. He uses a woman’s gratitude and love to proclaim that gratitude and love are connected with saving faith: “‘her sins, which were many, have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love’ . . . Then he said to her, ‘Your sins are forgiven . . . Your faith has saved you’” (Luke 7:47–50). In this woman’s encounter with Jesus, her gratitude leads to faith, and faith leads to salvation.
It is about such people as this faithful woman that he is speaking when he says “blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God” (Matt 5:8). He affirms that the believer can “make the tree good,” and that “the good person brings good things out of a good treasure” (Matt 12:33, 35).
Of course, we are not saving ourselves. It is God who saves. God first reached out to us, before we could ever reach out for divine truth and goodness. But we have to respond to this divine outreach, and Jesus, in these sayings, shows how important people’s own faith experiences are. He values their reaching out in faith and hope.
1. Forsyth, The Person and Place of Jesus Christ, 348.
2. Graham, Where I Am, 18, 22.
3. Placher, Jesus the Savior, 137.
4. Thompson, The Promise of the Father, 108.
5. Ibid., 110.
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