Formulas in Spiritual Life

Musings prompted by Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Seminary in Dallas.

John 3:16 can be used as a tool to help novices connect with God. It can also be used as a dogma that obscures or distorts the truth about God. It is our responsibility to use it as a helpful tool not as a deadly dogma.

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Sometimes I hear Christians say that the key to receiving healing and salvation is faith. They say this because of stories they have read in the Gospels. Sometimes when people came to Jesus asking for miraculous help, he answered, "May it happen according to your faith."

Reading these stories, it's natural to assume there is a simple formula for getting what you want through prayer: ask for what you want, believe you will get it and voila! You have it.

The problem with this formula is that Jesus' own example in other stories and some of his explicit statements contradict it. Once, Jesus interrupted a funeral procession outside the village of Nain and resurrected a young man who was being carried to the cemetery. In this instance, Jesus' intervention had nothing to do with the faith of the young man (He was dead!) or the faith of his grieving mother the faith of the pallbearers. The young man was resurrected (i. e. saved) simply because Jesus decided to do it. This is a vivid example of God's ability to act in the absence of explicit faith.

An entire group of illustrations that applies directly to spiritual life are the stories about Jesus' interaction with people possessed by demons. In every instance the demoniac never asks for help. In fact, taken at face value, the language of the demoniacs expresses rejection of the mission and person of Jesus. Still, every time Jesus encounters a person possessed by demons he sets them free. Jesus saves them in spite of what they say not because they have voiced any measure of faith.

What about the other side of the equation? Does it happen that a person with great faith fails to receive what they ask for? Jesus announced publicly that no human was greater than John the Baptist. Still, John the Baptist was executed (not rescued). In Matthew 10 Jesus said that his disciples would be killed. This would happen not as a consequence of defective faith but as a consequence of the purity of their faith. The final and greatest example of faith-filled prayer that did not produce the desired result is Jesus' own experience in the garden of Gethsemane. Three times he asked to be delivered from the impending crucifixion. God said no.

Some Christians argue that Jesus is not our example. He suffered so we don't need to suffer. However the apostle Paul explicitly talks about carrying forward in his own body the suffering of Christ. He understood this as essential to what it meant to be a Christian. Paul did not suggest that our suffering was some kind of payment for moral debt. Rather as people who are “in Christ” suffering is to be expected since our great leader also suffered.

If we accept at face value Jesus' teachings about the value and power of faith, we ought also to accept at face value his teachings regarding the limitations of faith. Faith has its place, but we do not create our own reality by our faith. We do not compel God by our faith. Faith prompts us to ask for what we want, and faith leads us finally to accept what we receive. Faith is not confidence that God will do what we say. Faith is confidence that what God does is best.

There is no formula we can use to bend the world or God to our will.

The value of formulas is providing guidance for novices. This applies to formulas for prayer, formulas for Bible study, formulas for how to be saved. The formulas can be enormously helpful for someone who is trying to figure out how to get started in their spiritual life. Formulas have proven their usefulness in teaching people. Often they work as a trellis, providing a sturdy framework for the upward growth of the vine of faith. But let's be careful not to confuse a useful tool with universal principles.

The value of a tool depends on the skill and experience of the user. And every tool can be misused. Let's use the tools of spiritual formulas wisely. For people needing structure in their lives let's offer the classic formulas of Christian spirituality. For people trying to make sense of God never offer a picture of small it will fit inside the tidy box of a formula.

To be very explicit about one of the most famous formulas in Christianity: Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. John 3:16 and Romans 10:10 assure us that if we believe we will receive salvation. The focus in both of these passages is inner confidence that the unique work of God in the person of Jesus was something that applies directly to me. Jesus completely erased my moral debt and opened to me the privilege of eternal happy life with God.

This formula, believe and be saved, has brought confidence and hope and assurance to millions of people. It is a wonderful formula. However, this formula says nothing about God's capacity to save people who do not have an explicit faith. No matter how powerful this formula is as a guide for spiritual life it is worthless as a description of God's capacity for saving.

I have known people in their 20s and 30s whose mental handicaps prevented them from escaping diapers or developing language ability. They could certainly never affirm with their mouths any belief or disbelief in God or anything else. God is not prevented from saving them by the formula of Romans 10 which says the key to salvation is believing in one's heart and affirming with one's mouth faith in Christ.

I am saying as strongly and emphatically as I can, God can save people who lack an explicit, conscious, measurable faith. Going further, God can save people who lack even an implicit, unconscious, imaginable faith. The doctrine of salvation by faith should be understood as a formula to help people give shape to their spiritual life. It is worthless, even worse than worthless, as a box which God cannot crawl out of.

The great hope of the world is not the simple formula, believe and be saved. The great hope of the world is the good news that God is a savior. In the Bible God is sometimes pictured as a judge and as a king. But the title, Savior, stands above both of these more formal roles. God's primary objective is king is not the vanquishing of enemies but the saving of his subjects. God's primary objective as judge is not the condemnation of the wicked but the deliverance of the oppressed.

I suppose if someone insisted on writing a formula that was more than an aid for spiritual life, a formula that came close to describing God himself, then perhaps this will do: Jesus saves.