Faith to save but not to change?

Hank is 18, a senior in college, and hoping to move east and enter the Maine Maritime Academy. Years of reading about the sea make him want to follow in the footsteps of his merchant-marine grandfather, but there's one problem: Hank needs to pass the lifesaving test. He knows how to swim, but Hank's always focused more on the elements of sailing which are above the water level and doesn't have the experience he needs.

So you can imagine how excited Hank is when he hears about Mr. Wilkins, who advertises that in six weeks he could guarantee Hank (or anyone else) would pass the test. Hank meets with him, and expresses his reservations:

"Are you sure after six weeks I'll pass the test?" asks Hank.

"Just show up each day for half an hour, and I guarantee you'll be a first-class life guard and swimmer. Put some effort in, and you'll feel at home even in rough waters," says Mr. Wilkins.

At Hank's dubious look, Mr. Wilkins adds, "The goal isn't just passing the test--you'll go way beyond that if you just show up each day for instruction. Most of my students become outstanding swimmers, and many are now in the Coast Guard."

"But you're sure I'll pass the test?" asks a worried Hank.

"Of course--just show up and do what I say," comes the exasperated reply.

*

Most of us have dark moments when we fear death. No matter what we believe, there are times when we lie awake and wonder if it's all true. How will it end? And once we breath our last, will we meet God, or will our thoughts and feelings come to an end forever?

Similarly, no matter how much we believe in grace, most of us get a chill when we read the Sheep and the Goats in Matthew 25:31-46. This is the passage where Jesus says to the goats, "I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, a stranger and you did not invite me in", etc. Barbara Brown Taylor's experience is common to many of us:

So when I hear a story like this one I review my list. First I read it over very carefully and note that I need at least one hungry person, one thirsty one, one stranger, one naked person, one sick person, and one prisoner so that I can supply—in that order—food, drink, a warm welcome, some clothes, a hospital visit, and a prison visit. Then, presumably, I will have satisfied all the requirements for ending up with the sheep instead of the goats. Now isn't that absurd?

As Keith Green helpfully pointed out, "the only difference between the sheep and the goats, according to this scripture, is what they did, and didn't do." This passage could not be more blunt. It teaches many things, but at its core, it tells us that Jesus will judge on the basis of actions.

At this point it would be easy to go down the path of faith v. works, but we've been down this road before. Paul and James agree:

"The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love" (Gal 5:6b)

and

"In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead" (James 2:17).

Generally at this point we nod and acknowledge that any true faith will by necessity entail good works of the sort Jesus mentions. As Paul also says,

"Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. The one who sows to please his sinful nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life." (Gal 6:7)

Well, then, this is the consistent message of the NT: when we stand before the throne of judgment, the test of true faith will be seen in whether we truly chose to follow Jesus. We need not draw a line to determine how many righteous works will save us; they won't. But true saving faith will produce those actions as sure as day follows from night.

It's no wonder we don't always sleep well. Many of us have frown creases on our foreheads due specifically to holding "there is therefore no condemnation" (Rom 8:1) in our minds along with the Sheep and the Goats.

There is a tonic for this.

A casual look at the grand sweep of Old Testament history shows us that God demanded righteousness from his people, and they managed it about as well as the peacetime Ulysses Grant stayed away from the bottle. From this standpoint Israel's story looks much like the Garden: given God's abundance and told to do what was right, time and again they chose evil. Finally God sends his Son, as if he's tried every other method and in frustration is forced to do what he didn't want to in the first place.

What OT history also tells us is that God always intended to create for himself a people bearing his righteousness. It may not have been the method we would have chosen, but it's God's goal, and he will accomplish it in his time. As Isaiah says (45:23-25),

By myself I have sworn,
my mouth has uttered in all integrity
a word that will not be revoked:
Before me every knee will bow;
by me every tongue will swear.

They will say of me, `In the LORD alone
are righteousness and strength.' "
All who have raged against him
will come to him and be put to shame.

But in the LORD all the descendants of Israel
will be found righteous and will exult.

Or even more strongly in 60:20-21,

Your sun will never set again,
and your moon will wane no more;
the LORD will be your everlasting light,
and your days of sorrow will end.

Then will all your people be righteous
and they will possess the land forever.
They are the shoot I have planted,
the work of my hands,
for the display of my splendor.

Is this just for the next life? In Ezekiel (11:19-20), when talking about return from exile, God says

I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh. Then they will follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.

He speaks here of his new covenant, when God says,

I will put my law in their minds
and write it on their hearts.
I will be their God,
and they will be my people. (Jer 31:33)

This is the covenant we celebrate every time we share the Lord's Supper.

Now look to the New Testament. John writes in 1:12-13,

Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God--children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God.

Unlike in modern Western culture, in ancient times the son most often did what the father did, and the daughter the mother. So the son of a cobbler made shoes; and the child of God does what God does--and bears his righteousness. We don't often read this as a statement of sanctification, but that's just what it is. So Paul writes in 1 Thess 4:2a, "It is God's will that you should be sanctified"--and later adds

May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful and he will do it. (1 Thess 5:23-24)

Despite this--despite Paul's assertions that we are "being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory" (2 Cor 3:18), we often forget that we are part of God's plan from the beginning to make a righteous people for himself, a plan he intends to succeed. Ever wonder why Jesus, the man best acquainted with God's amazing grace, can speak so easily of the angels separating "the wicked from the righteous" (Mt 13:49--in many ways parallel to the Sheep and the Goats)? Not because in the end it all comes down to God sparing those who somehow manage to have a good enough Sunday-school attendance record and give enough to the poor. But because if we sow to the Spirit, God will bring about his righteousness in us.

As a community of faith, we can be a lot like Hank. We concentrate on passing the test, and fail to notice the wonderful things God will teach us and do in us. Like a husband who forever obsesses about the glorious moment when his wife agreed to marry him, we don't enjoy what the Spirit is working in us even now. Our righteousness is not merely some imputed thing which appears in God's ledger and saves us from eternal suffering as if by mere legal action. As much as we are willing to bathe ourselves in God's Word and little by little give him our time and priorities, we will find him creating in us a righteousness which transforms our very character.

That's the tonic for Sheep-and-Goats heartburn. God is even now making a righteous people for himself, and to the degree that we are willing to show up and let him, he will happily include us. Don't be surprised that the sheep do good works in Jesus' parable: That was God's plan for each of us from the very start.

*

[Artwork: The central panel of Hans Memling's Last Judgment Triptych. Taylor: "Knowing Glances" from The Preaching Life.]