Reforming Our Minds

²⁷ Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? By a law of works? No, but by the law of faith. ²⁸ For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.

Romans 3:27-28

Nearly 2,000 years ago, Paul argued sharply against a theology that was widely held and believed by many, including many Christians.  The influence of Judaism clearly infiltrated Christianity during the time of Paul.  This theology continues to live on since the Fall.  This is what I would call as the work-based salvation theology.  The logic of this theology is simple: Salvation is to be earned by the offender.  The implication is massive.  In order for someone to gain salvation, one must work very hard to achieve it and to secure it.  It also suggests, thus, that sinful humans can please God enough so that the balancing scale of Divine justice may be tipped to our favor.  The imagination, therefore, is that sinful humans can reach heaven from below.

Based on such theology, even Christians in Rome then diligently worked on their religious rituals and requirements.  The purpose of such diligence was to gain heaven.  Salvation was understood as whether someone does more good than evil.  If someone does more evil than good, then he/she won’t be saved.  On the other hand, if someone does more good than evil, then he/she will be saved.  Many religions in the world are basically teaching this sort of theology.  But Christianity is not teaching this theology at all.  When the Holy Spirit moved Paul to write this Epistle to the Romans, the work-based salvation theology was already accepted by Christians in Rome.  Paul had to bring them back to the truth.  He had to argue from the very basic in order to reform their minds.

1,500 years after Paul, the Roman Catholic Church spread a similar kind of theology and thus led many Christians astray.  The core problem with work-based salvation theology lies on our sinful nature.  Humans fall into this theology from time to time.  This theology never gets old.  It always comes back with a different twist.  Human sinful nature deceives the mind into thinking that we can save ourselves, that we have the power to write our own destiny, that we can overcome even the obstacle of sin and death.  This brokenness fits the work-based salvation theology perfectly.  Thus when people hear such theology, they quickly match it with their sinful tendency, which then prompts them to believe that work-based salvation theology is true.  It feels good to their broken soul.  No wonder, even after 1,500 years, people kept coming back to the old theology that Paul had already refuted in the first century AD.

The infamous “indulgences letter” that the Roman Catholic Church sold became the trigger for the reformation movement widely accepted to be started by Martin Luther.  Without going too much into the complicated historical details, I shall paint a simple picture here regarding the “indulgences.”  The “indulgences” were meant to be a certificate of salvation for the deceased.  The Roman Catholic Church at that time taught that if anyone would wish that their deceased loved one(s) to be saved, then all they needed to do was to purchase an indulgence letter.  As soon as they purchase the letter, then the soul of the deceased would jump straight away to heaven.  Salvation thus could be obtained by way of “work” and in this case by someone purchasing an indulgence letter for those who had passed away.

When Martin Luther contemplated on this issue, he realized that the church had gone too far.  Luther also knew that the church actually abused the sale of the indulgences in order to build Basilica St. Peter.  As God’s people being led astray and God’s truth being twisted, the Holy Spirit moved Luther to protest to the church.  In 1517 Luther nailed his world famous 95 these on the gate of the Wittenberg church in Germany.  Luther called for the church to be reformed.  One of his most basic biblical foundations of his theology was our passage for today, particularly verse 28: “²⁸ For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.”

Luther held on to that verse very strongly.  That verse convicted him that salvation can’t be obtained by works, no matter how many good works he could do or even how good the good works were.  He himself personally struggled with sin and his guilt.  Luther would punish himself severely even if he just thought of a small sinful thought.  As taught in the Roman Catholic Church, Luther first believed that he could appease God by punishing himself so hard for his sin in the hope of balancing the scale of the Divine justice.  But the more he contemplated Romans 1-3 the more he realized that whatever good deeds he did or was doing could not earn him salvation.  Finally he opposed the church for misleading the congregation.  He opposed the church for exploiting the human need for the assurance of salvation.

Reformation was a wake-up call for the Roman Catholic Church.  The church at the time had not been representing Christianity.  They had expressed a different Christianity, which was not Christianity at all.  They might use Christian symbols and all, but the meaning of those symbols had been reinterpreted according to something that was foreign to the Scripture.  The main problem was on what meaning that was assigned to the word or symbol.  Today we are still struggling with the same thing.  We battle our sinful tendency within that continues to tempt us to believe that we can save ourselves through our good deeds.  And we are also surrounded by many other teachings, including some of them within Christianity itself that teach work-based salvation theology, such as the Arminianism.

The Scripture teaches us very clearly that salvation cannot be attained by our works.  Inspired by the Holy Spirit, Paul wrote the truth that we can only be justified by faith.  Salvation is only through faith in Christ Jesus.  Thus one of the maxims of the Reformation is “Sola Fide” which means Faith Alone.  Jesus said in John 6:44: “⁴⁴ No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day.”  Ephesians 1:3-14 spells out the strongest biblical passage that salvation is a gift from God.  We should read this passage so that at least we know what it says plainly.

Many Christians, even today, have wrongly and secretly believed that our good deeds determine our salvation.  But there is one scene of the cross that defies such belief.  If you are a Christian, then you must remember the scene of the criminal who was crucified on the side of Jesus.  The criminal repented right there and then.  And Jesus told him that he would be with Jesus in paradise that very day.  Now, we know that the criminal had no way of piling up good deeds in order to balance the scale of the divine justice.  If salvation is about doing more good deeds, then the criminal certainly wouldn’t be in paradise as he died on that cross.  Does it mean that Jesus was lying?  But how could that be?  If Jesus were lying, then our faith has come to nothing.  Christianity crumbles completely and won’t ever be restored.  We know that Jesus can never lie.  And so the work-based salvation theology can never be true.  None of our good deeds can ever save us.  Only by believing that Jesus dies on our place on the cross we are saved.  This is “justified by faith” as mentioned in Romans 3:28.

And this is actually a good news.  A great news, even!  Why is that so?  Let me explain a little bit.  This is deep theology, but I shall not hide it from you.  I will reveal the mystery to you.  Some of you might find it difficult to understand, but you will have time to dig deeper.  Let me first ask you this question: If God is just, then our punishment must be in proportion with our sin, isn’t true?  Now, then, answer me: Why does God punish us for eternity in hell when we sin temporarily on earth?  Isn’t it quite excessive to punish a temporal sin with an eternal hell?  Shouldn’t temporal sin be punished by temporal punishment?  Is then God just by doing so?  Anybody would want to answer?

Now, let me explain to you why it is just for God to punish our temporal sin with eternal hell.  It is just because our temporal sin is actually of eternal quality.  This is simply because we sin against God whose quality is eternal.  Let me illustrate to you.  Supposedly you suddenly feel the urge to slap a goat in the face.  Would the goat demand justice that you too be slapped in the face?  Now, that won’t happen, would it?  Simply because the goat is way lower in status than us humans.  Now, supposedly you feel the urge to do a small prank to your friend, i.e. hiding his sandals.  Your friend is then mad at you.  In order to restore the relationship between you and your friend, something must be done.  And for sure you don’t have to go to jail for the small prank you just pulled.  You might need to be “punished” temporarily.  Or simply you can ask for his forgiveness.  Small prank, small punishment.  Now, supposedly you suddenly feel the urge to throw your shoe at the newly elected governor.  What do you think your punishment would be?  Do you get where I’m getting at?  The higher the status of the person we hurt, the more severe the retribution would be.  Now, let us apply this to our sin against God.

God is our Creator.  He deserves a trillion more (and more even unto eternity) of our honor than what we even give to our parents who gave birth to us.  But yet we sin against Him.  Just imagine throwing our dirty and smelly shoe at Him.  What do you think the punishment should be?  Since His quality is eternal, your sin is also counted as of eternal quality.  So God must punish you with an eternal punishment, comparable to His eternal quality.  The eternal punishment is what we know as hell.

Now, how can we escape that eternal punishment?  For sure we can’t!  Imagine that we are on the waiting list.  Waiting for what?  Waiting to be punished in hell.  We are what many would call as the “dead man walking.”  Meaning we might look like we are alive, but in fact we are already dead in our status waiting in line in the death row.  What good deeds we could possibly do to cancel out our eternal punishment while we are waiting in our death row?  We are already dead as far as heaven is concerned.  No one in the eternal death row can do good deeds that should be considered to cancel the punishment.  It is absurd to think that we try to do all the good things while waiting our turn to be punished with the hope that the Judge will notice our good deeds and calculate the good deeds to nullify our offence to the most honorable and glorious Being in the universe.  Good deeds mean nothing at all here.

Now, the Judge desires to save some of those in the death row.  He then chooses out of His free will some He wants to rescue.  But the offence can’t just be wiped out as if nothing happened.  The justice of God must be satisfied.  The eternal punishment must be executed before true salvation can be bestowed upon the offender.  How?  An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, blood for blood.  This is the law of substitution.  If one person is to be saved from the death row, then an innocent person must replace him/her, that is a person who is not in the death row.  Because if the replacement is also in the death row, the law of substitution can’t be applied.  It would be a complete foolishness to replace a rotten egg with yet another rotten egg.  Even in our ordinary life we can’t do that.  Romans 3 has made it clear than not even one human being is innocent.  And so this route is blocked completely.  What about replacing one person with one lamb?  But this won’t work either, would it?  Why?  Simply because the quality is vastly different.  A lamb is infinitely of lower quality than human.  The law of substitution demands that the one replacing that which is to be saved must be of equal intrinsic value.  Not even an infinite amount of lambs can replace one person.  Jesus indicates that a human soul is much more valuable than even the value of the entire world combined.  Mark 8:36-37:

³⁶ For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? ³⁷ For what can a man give in return for his soul?

Nothing on earth can replace a human soul except a human soul.  And in order to replace a human soul in the death row, an innocent human soul must be available.  We are stuck.

            So we ask: Can’t an angel replace a human?  For sure angels are not stained by sin.  This might be a good solution.  But again the answer is no.  The law of substitution prohibits it since a human being is not of equal intrinsic value as an angel.  This also then eliminates the possibility of God Himself replacing human.

            But God has a way.  God the Son incarnated into the world.  He became a human being.  And He was totally and completely sinless.  Jesus was the only human soul that can satisfy the law of substitution in this case.  But wait a minute.  Isn’t Jesus only one person?  How can He replace so many?  One sinless soul can only replace one sinful soul.  It would be unfair for one to replace many.  If we buy 7 apples from the store, and it turns out that all 7 apples are rotten, I suppose we won’t accept the store to replace only with 1 apple, would we?  So how could 1 Jesus save many, millions, even billions people?  Anybody wish to answer this question?

            Let me tell you the secret of heaven and earth.  This is how 1 Jesus saves even billions or trillions or infinite numbers of humans.  The doctrine of Christ reveals that Jesus is not only 100% human being, He is also 100% God.  The quality of being God can handle as many humans as possible, while his human quality allows Him to substitute humans.  If the offender is human, then the substitute must also be human, cannot be a lamb, or an angel, or even God.  But since the God quality is infinitely more valuable than the human quality, thus infinite numbers of human can be saved by even 1 Jesus.

            Now, this is also why there is only one way of salvation, that is through Jesus Christ.  Because Jesus is the one and only person who has 100% quality of man and 100% quality of God at the same time.  This is the genius of God.  Therefore, when Jesus was punished on our place on the cross, He represented us as human, and at the same time overcame the requirement of quality for the infinite numbers of human to be saved.  No other way may open the gate of heaven.  Only when God’s punishment was poured out on Jesus, thus His justice was satisfied, then the redeemed may be completely free from the punishment of eternal death.  This is also one big reason why good deeds can’t gain us salvation, because the divine justice must be satisfied through the execution of the punishment.  No ordinary human being can withstand God’s eternal punishment and live.  Only Jesus could, because of His God quality.

            This is what the Reformation movement fought for 501 years ago.  Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Knox fought for this truth at the core, and worked to reform the church to obey the word of God.  This is also what we are supposed to be doing now.  We continue to return to the Scripture.  We fight for the truth.  We seek to establish the truth.  So that God’s people may not be misled.

            Another thing I have to speak to you, but I can’t go into the detail about it because of time.  I need you to understand that we continue to do good deeds.  But it is not to attain salvation.  It is an expression of who we actually are in Christ Jesus.  Meaning, we do good deeds because we are already saved in Christ.  We are restored to Christ’s image.  And it is only natural for us to do good deeds because that’s a natural expression of Christ Himself.  No wonder we are called Christians, don’t you think?  And “Christian” means “little Christ.”  May the Lord bless you all.  Amen!