02 October 2023
Faith is a gift from God; you are the one who must exercise it.
The Philippian jailer asked his Christian prisoners what he had to do to be "saved" (Greek: sozo). As commonly used throughout the Roman Empire, the term refers to being safe, rescued, preserved from impending doom. He wasn't asking how to be "born-again"; that was not a common concept anywhere in the world, neither among Jews nor Gentiles. Among those who spoke Greek, salvation was not that specific. It was a question of connecting with the gods, of making peace with them in this life.
In the case of the Philippian jailer, it was just one God the man needed to worry about. Indeed, Paul made it clear that the Lord this man should seek is Jesus Christ. Paul used the terminology of trusting oneself as feudal vassal to Him. Common notions of spiritual realms were all over the map, so there was no way this question could be a matter of seeking eternal salvation as we think of it in the West. Rather, the man was asking whom he must serve as his deity to harvest the kind of outcome he saw for them in the earthquake, and which caused them to stay put. The distinction between now and forever probably didn't even cross the jailer's mind.
It took time to introduce the ancient Hebrew concept of Eternity as an entirely different realm of existence. You can bet the average Gentile struggled with it unless he was already familiar with Ancient Near Eastern philosophies. Jews also struggled with it, because they had become Hellenized in their thinking, and that meant a greater emphasis on this life. While the Jews did keep the intellectual meaning of the higher realm, it became an empty doctrine. It had no life, no immediacy in their sense of reality. Instead, Jews became consumed with gaining everything they could in this life.
The Greek-speaking world in general didn't believe in any kind of afterlife. Thus, much of the preaching to non-believers was couched in terms they were ready to hear. They might believe in rising from the dead, because most of them lacked the hard intellectual prejudice of the philosophers in Athens who cut Paul off after he mentioned the resurrection. But there was no uniform concept of afterlife, only a vague notion that it might exist.
Most of the chatter in the New Testament about "salvation" didn't assume the distinction common among American Christians regarding what is better termed "spiritual birth" versus living a blessed life. Rather, "salvation" was mostly about this life with some implication for something eternal. It boiled down to talking about making Jesus your Lord, regardless of what came after death.
Greeks generally understood already that no deity would tolerate merely going through the motions. The concept of "works alone" was actually a bigger problem with Jews than with Gentiles. The Talmudic religion made way too much room for empty ritual observances and actually taught that God operated in those terms. That wasn't true early on as Old Testament religion shifted into Judaism, but in the First Century AD, it had already become quite wide-spread. In general, those who escaped Judaism into Christ were the target of that kind of warning, that works alone would not do you any good.
Thus, the focus on New Testament teaching is mostly a matter of claiming the Covenant promises for this life. You cannot know much about what comes in the afterlife except in symbolic terms, and the Doctrine of Election is not that well-defined in Scripture. This is why there was so much debate over it, as Europeans were obsessed with detailed explanations of everything. In the New Testament, faith was still an Ancient Near Eastern thing; election was simply something you accepted.
Paul noted in 1 Corinthians 9 that he was by no means a volunteer for the gospel ministry. He was taken captive, humbled and forced to submit. He never forgot that. It informed his image of how election worked. Thus, the question of spiritual birth could never, ever be a matter of human choice. It was not a human decision; it was solely in God's hands. It was a miracle or it didn't happen.
What you could choose was to accept the feudal vassalage of serving Christ and make the most of it in this life. Thus, "salvation" is wholly a matter of embracing the calling and claiming the promises that come with the Covenant. Paul kept insisting that trying to separate works (AKA obedience) from faith was completely artificial. You must enthrone Jesus in your heart or what you did made no difference at all. Faith and obedience were impossible to distinguish.
You can fake out the people around you, but God is not fooled, so why try?
I worry about all those people who are quite likely Elect, but who will never taste their divine heritage because they keep chasing the wrong thing. They have no clue about the Covenant of Christ and how much of the Covenant of Moses carries over. They are too deeply pickled in the notion that the true American lifestyle is fundamentally the same as following Christ. They may or may not be aware of the Enlightenment, but they have no comprehension of how American evangelical religion is almost a rote copy of Enlightenment values.
In other words, they are very religious, but precious few have a clue about the Covenant boundaries, much less live within them. They are too busy being some flavor of American to actually follow Christ. They don't know just how different those two things are.
Do you recall how Paul said the Lord was patient with the pagans until His Son could come and declare the truth? That was during Paul's message on Mars Hill (Acts 17). That was for the few who paid attention to the spark of moral awareness God implanted in every human. Those who didn't pay attention were given over to their own degrading lusts (Romans 1) and the guidance of the elohim council. I believe the Lord is being patient with His Elect who are laboring under a vast deception.
But they aren't going to see very much of the Covenant blessings. They'll get just a taste now and then to make them aware of what they are missing. It's up to us few to walk in the Covenant boundaries and manifest the blessings they don't see in their own lives. I'll tell you it's a lot less about miracles of provision, and a whole lot more about the miracles of changed lives. We are being saved day by day, and the world at large needs to see it, because there's no way we can guess who is and isn't Elect.
Draw them out by walking in faith.
Comments
Fun and Prophet
Discovering Proverbs 29:25, which references that kind of here-and-now safety:
Anxious attention / to their threats or opinions / would snap / the trap / on my ankle or neck.
Rather, rapt in His eloquence,
wrapped in His excellence,
I rise in reliance
and willing compliance,
undamaged by all of their wreck.
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