Means of Grace IV: Salvation

10 February 2019

Isaiah 6:1-8; Luke 5:1-11

It may seem strange to some that I would name “salvation” as a means of grace when we generally understand grace itself as the means to salvation.  When I first wrote that statement and let it roll around in my head for a moment, it sounded even stranger.  I have a concept in mind, but getting there will take some doing.  It also means it can no longer be “business as usual” in the life of The Church.

It is my sincere hope we will all have a better understanding of what salvation really means rather than what we think it means – not because we may have been wrong all this time but because what may be wrong can be made so right!  Much like the word ‘grace’, salvation can be so casually tossed about that we don’t really appreciate its depth.  In many cases, salvation has become an ‘event’ rather than a sustained life of spiritual growth and maturity; “grace upon grace”, as it were.

In the Wesleyan tradition of understanding grace, there are three stages in our spiritual development, each requiring The Lord’s mighty hand but each leading us to a greater sense of awareness.  Progression in this journey will come to require more of us, but each stage prepares us for what may come. 

Beginning with prevenient grace, we grow and are invited into justifying grace, and then sanctifying grace.  On the surface it may seem as though Methodists try to make “getting saved” harder than it has to be, much more complicated than the Bible seems to make it.  Yet each level speaks volumes about The Lord’s mercy and our active participation as genuine disciples. 

In prevenient (or preventing) grace, it is the Divine Mercy of The Father to “prevent” the total destruction of the Divine Image in which we are all created.  It is The Father’s Presence and Activity in our lives before we are even aware, and still we know something is stirring, something is awakening within us.  As John Wesley once wrote, “Prevenient grace includes all that is [brought about] in the soul by what is frequently termed ‘natural conscience’ … that light by which the Son of God enlightens everyone who comes into the world”.

Prevenient grace prepares us for justifying grace (what we commonly refer to as ‘getting saved’).  “Justification”, Wesley wrote, “is another word for pardon”.  In prevenient grace, we become aware of our sins, our failings.  In justifying grace, we become aware of His mercy.  We become aware that, by His mercy alone, we have been “justified” to stand before Him.  We have been freed from the shackles of our past, and we have been restored to a right relationship with Him.  Our journey, however, must not end there.  It is far from over!

This justification leads us into sanctifying grace, what Wesley believed the author of Hebrews meant in our need to ‘go on to perfection” (6:1).  It is this particular point of a deepening relationship with our Holy Father that becomes in itself a genuine means of grace, a level of mercy fulfilled not only by His Heart but also by our willing acceptance. 

Yet the “acceptance” is not one of simply saying, “Ok, I’m saved.  I’ve accepted Jesus into my heart”.  No, our Wesleyan tradition and the discipline of a Church charged with “making disciples equipped to make disciples for the transformation of community and world” challenges us to look harder and go farther and deeper to give real meaning to the idea of Jesus abiding within us.  To be sanctified, to be “perfected” in grace is to let Jesus be much more than a dashboard icon.  It is this point at which He becomes our True Shepherd as we also learn to shepherd others.

This entire process is one of “becoming”, but it is still not entirely of our own doing.  Rather, we are being led because we are willing to be led, allowing ourselves to trust The Word more than our own instincts.  Think of it in terms of our reading from Isaiah.  As the prophet gazed upon that heavenly vision, he became painfully aware of his sinful state; “Woe is me!  I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, The Lord of hosts!” (Isaiah 6:5) - the reality of prevenient grace; The Lord stirring in our “natural conscience”.   

Next we see the angel (seraph) coming to the prophet, “holding a live coal that had been taken from the altar with a pair of tongs.  The seraph touched my mouth with it and said, ‘Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out” (vs 6-7).  Isaiah, by his confession and the mercy of The Lord, has been justified strictly by the Hand of God to stand before Him; yet there is even more beyond this moment of justification.

In this moment of “becoming”, in this moment of spiritual clarity, the prophet is experiencing much more than merely “being saved”; he is being called.  In his willingness to answer The Lord’s plea, he is “becoming” all he was created to be.  Living into his salvation in responding as he did, Isaiah will find the grace necessary to begin his ministry in earnest and without fear.  The prophet still has his own mind, but he has surrendered his will.

In a manner of speaking, then, I submit to you there is not an ounce of difference between “being saved” and “being called”.  While we may typically think of “the call” as that of being called into pastoral ministry, what may be closer to the Truth is we are all “called” to some ministry according to our gifts.  We cannot all be prophets or apostles or preachers or teachers, but this does not diminish the sacred value of our own unique spiritual gifts.  It is a shame, when we stop to think about it, that we have come to believe pastors, preachers, and priests somehow have a higher calling than anyone else.  

We are all “called” when we are awakened to the reality of The Lord.  Though I may sound like a broken record, I think it cannot be stressed enough that not every decision we make is a matter of “heaven or hell”.  In the present reality, it is more like the difference between being asleep and awake. 

As we grow in faith and in love, then, grace becomes all the more necessary.  And as we grow into what we are created to be from the beginning, as we purposefully live into our salvation in what we are called to do and to be, grace is given all the more.

Like grace itself, salvation is the means to a Much Greater End.  It is the Light come into a dark world.  It is the clear Voice of the Shepherd calling us through the haze of cultural confusion.  It is discipleship, and it is Life itself.  Amen.