In the marvelous movie, The Princess Bride, Vizinni keeps using the word “inconceivable,” and Inigo Montoya finally replies, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

Sometimes we Christians use the same words but speak completely different languages.

Sin.



Hell.

Grace.

Salvation.

Heaven.

These are common words in the Christian world, but what they mean when you say them and I hear them may be worlds apart. And, it kind of astonishes me how much the definitions of our words are the result of the thought systems (the theology systems) in which we operate. What I’m trying to say is, we have our religious ABC’s lined out, where A causes B, then C happens, and so on. And we understand the words we use in the context of our system.





The Coffee Shop and the Flu

I’m trying to think of an example to help show what I mean, and it isn’t easy. Here’s one that might help. Have you ever had the flu? The word flu is just an abbreviation for influenza. But, what an interesting word it is! You see, in the ancient and medieval era people thought the stars in their alignments affected all kinds of things on the earth (think astrology here). They thought that sicknesses were often the result of being “under a bad star.” Or “under the influence [influenza in Italian] of the stars.” Their entire system of how the universe worked, and for that matter how disease and health worked, was completely different from how we understand it. We have two different systems (ancient cosmology and modern cosmology; ancient medicine and modern medicine), but we use some of the same words.

So, some lady from 15th century Florence walks into the coffee shop where you are enjoying a Cappuccino and tells you, “I’m glad I just got over the influenza and could meet you today,” and while she may be using perfectly good words in a perfectly good sentence, and even referring to the exact same sickness, she means something totally different than what you hear. Our Italian friend means, “Good heavens [See what I did there?], I’m so glad the alignment of the stars has changed, because, buddy, last week I was under the bad influence of Saturn, and now I’m feeling much better.” But what you hear is, “Oh, gracious! Last week I picked up this microscopic bug that made me feel so miserable, but my antibodies finally whipped it and now I’m feeling great again.”

SO…

Some Christian walks into the coffee shop where I am enjoying an Americano and says, “I have been saved by the sacrifice of Jesus, and I am no longer bound for hell, but I’m headed to heaven now.”

What does he mean? What do I hear? We may use similar words, but do we have the same definitions? Are we referencing the same system?

If that coffee shop is in Texas, there’s a good chance he is referencing a completely different way of thinking than I am. Let’s break it down:





“I have been saved by the sacrifice of Jesus…”

What he means is, “I was a sinner on the bad side of God. My just punishment was eternal torment because I was guilty of breaking God’s rules and he demands justice. But Jesus paid my debt to the Father. He took my punishment so I wouldn’t have to. And now, when God looks at my record sheet he doesn’t see me as guilty, but as not-guilty. Because Jesus paid the price for my sins, the Father has moved me from the guilty column to the not-guilty column. That is grace at work!”

In the arena of law this is known as “a legal fiction.” While it is factually not true (I am still guilty of the charges; I did the crimes; I broke the rules), it is legally or technically true (the debt has been paid by someone else, so I am no longer being treated as a guilty person).





“…and am no longer bound for hell, but I’m headed to heaven now.”

What he means is, “Before Jesus paid my debt, I was headed for an afterlife of everlasting torture and torment. But now, because I’ve been moved over into the not-guilty column in God’s register, I am headed for a place that I don’t really know much about, but it is going to be super perfect and joyous and peaceful, and I will live eternally there instead of in the fires of hell.”

For our friend, salvation is a legal transaction that happens because of Jesus paying the debt and taking the punishment for us, and the consequence is we are technically not guilty and get to enjoy the benefits of innocence.

But here’s the problem: that’s not at all what I mean when I use those words (saved, hell, heaven)





A Recent Conversation

I was in a conversation with a couple of folk recently where one fellow, we’ll call him Adrian, was asking if we were saved by grace or if we had to do something to gain salvation. Someone else, we’ll call him Zachary, piped up and said, “We have to repent.” Adrian responded, “So salvation is dependent on how well we repent instead of what Jesus did on the cross? If we could just repent, repent, repent, then why did jesus have to die? If you have to repent in order to receive salvation, then it is not by grace. Grace, by definition, is something that is freely given. If you have to repent to receive salvation, then you are not being saved by grace.”

Now, Adrian admitted he wasn’t a believer, but was interested in the subject. But I’d bet good money he was raised in the Christian faith, because he spoke the same Evangelical language as Zachary; they were both referencing the same system of thought.

That’s when I weighed in and started speaking from a completely different frame of reference: “Salvation is dependent on us cooperating with the grace of God. It isn’t about being move over from the guilty column to the not guilty column in some legal fiction because of Jesus dying on the cross. Salvation is about us being conformed into the image of Christ; us being brought into union with God. That doesn’t happen without our cooperation.”





How I Understand The Coffee Shop Conversation

Back to the coffeeshop. Remember the line from the Christian when I was having the Americano? “I have been saved by the sacrifice of Jesus, and I am no longer bound for hell, but I’m headed to heaven now.”





“I have been saved by the sacrifice of Jesus…”

I agree. But I’m using different definitions and a different way of understanding. Being saved isn’t about a guilty person being found not guilty. Being saved is about a sinner being transformed by God working in him. It isn’t about legality or technicality. Salvation is about actual change. It is ontological; it deals with the reality of the situation. Salvation is an ongoing process that has a beginning, a continuation (the rest of our lives), and a culmination (at the resurrection on the Last Day). Salvation is, to borrow the words from St. Paul, being “conformed to the image of His Son.” (Romans 8.29) God is doing a real work in us; shaping us, molding us, cutting some things away, adding some things - and his goal (and our goal) is for us to be like Jesus. For us to be like God. For us to be in union with God.

Jesus’ sacrifice wasn’t about paying our penalty or taking our punishment. He sacrificed himself in order to defeat sin and death, so that we too may do the same. We aren’t there yet, but we are in process. God, by the working of the Holy Spirit, is in the process of healing us from spiritual influenza. Only this time, it isn’t the influence of the stars, it is the influence of our separation from Him-Who-Is-Life, the influence of our fallenness, the influence of sin. Jesus didn’t die in order to change God’s heart toward us, he died in order to change our hearts toward God. God has always been forgiving, longsuffering, loving, and desirous of our wholeness and our union with him.





“…and I am no longer bound for hell, but I’m headed to heaven now.”

God is not in the torture business. Hell isn’t a “place” where people are tortured eternally by God just because they never believed the right doctrine or prayed the right prayer. Hell is the condition and consequence (in this life and in the age to come) of people embracing their own spiritual disease and refusing the Doctor who is hellbent on healing us.

It isn’t about being “bound for hell” when we die; many people are in the middle of hell in this present life. OK, I’ll say it: there are Christians walking around today who are experiencing hell because they haven’t cooperated with God in the healing program. And they’ll keep on experiencing hell until they do!

And heaven isn’t a “place” somewhere “far beyond the blue,” some ethereal state of being where we go after we die. Heaven is the fullness of union with God. Heaven is being set free from the influenza of sin. We as believers already have a “foretaste” of this (Romans 8.23, 2 Corinthians 1.22), and if we are cooperating with God in our spiritual healing we are enjoying it more and more in this life, and will enjoy it fully in the life to come, in the resurrection, in the new creation. Jesus didn’t come announcing that he was paying God our penalty so we could someday in the sweet by and by live in heaven. He came announcing that the Kingdom of Heaven was a present reality that we could begin experiencing now: “The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand,” he said (Matthew 4.17). “The Kingdom of Heaven is so close you can reach out and touch it.” Jesus didn’t come to take us away to heaven. He came to bring heaven to us.

All the ethics in the New Testament, the “rules” we read in the words of Jesus, or Paul, or the other Apostles, aren’t given as laws to be kept so God will love us, they are given as spiritual medicines and regimens that we use to make us more like Jesus, to bring us more and more into union with God, to rescue us from the hell of our own fallen inclinations and to bring us into the heaven of wholeness, of health, of being with God in the fullness of our lives.

St. Paul says it best: “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.” (2 Corinthians 3.18).

Maybe the old Gospel song gets it right: “Heaven came down, and glory filled my soul.”