I don’t believe one has to understand or even know all that can be understood and known about the Godhead, even such essential doctrines as the Trinity, to be saved. Salvation happens when any soul turns sincerely and uniquely to Jesus as its Savior, and that is the core out of which all other experience, knowledge and understanding spring.
The thief on the cross beside Jesus knew only one thing, Jesus is the Messiah, the King of Israel. He didn’t even understand salvation apart from being merely remembered by Jesus. He hadn’t been instructed. He hadn’t been confessed of his sins. He hadn’t been baptized. He hadn’t received the Holy Eucharist. He hadn’t read the bible. He knew no other fact, other than the fact that the Man who hung beside him had ultimate and perfect power to save.
What astonishing faith! Knowing they were all going to be dead very soon, he asks the
Man beside him who likewise would be dead, to remember him in His kingdom. For me, what’s happening when a person is joined to Jesus unto the kingdom and life eternal, is exactly the same as what happened with the thief. Everything else that engulfs that moment of saving recognition can be dispensed with, when necessary. Everything can be dispensed with, except that moment.
2 comments:
Ah, Brother! Thank you so much. Evangelicals and others have so convoluted the whole act of salvation, that getting saved is an ordeal of Bureaucratic Proportions! I remember talking to a very devout Baptist brother about when I was saved, and he wouldn't accept my faith until I'd jumped through all his hoops. By the time he got through with me, I might have doubted my own faith, but for the words of Jesus,in Matthew 18:2-6
2 And Jesus called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst of them,
3 And said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.
4 Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.
5 And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth me.
6 But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.
In fact, I'd always wondered about the thief on the cross, and how he managed to get saved without filling out a ton of questionnaires and making sure he was properly 'immersed completely, for at least 3 seconds under the water...just to make sure.
So many times did well-meaning preachers and pastors wish to rebaptize me, because my previous baptism was somehow not quite...kosher. heh. You just demolished every one of their silly arguments.
Love C.S. Lewis, esp. Mere Christianity in this regard. "He doggedly emphasized the WHAT of the Cross, not the HOW." "His deliberate downplaying of Atonement theories...as Prof. Steven P. Mueller put it, suggests that he did want want his readers to become 'TRAPPED' [like he had] by logistical matters when the vital thing was effecting the 'MAGIC' of grace. Lewis's studied non-commitment to any one theory also seems to have been strengthened by what he saw as a weakness in Anselmic theory as he saw it..." Christus Victor!!!
aka Lona Mary
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