Core Convictions I: It’s All About Salvation by Maxie Dunnam

Statistics show that by 2034, many of the mainline denominations may cease to exist. The Presbyterian Church USA, Episcopal Church, Lutheran Church, and United Methodist Church have been in a kind of “free fall” in membership.

It is obvious; the Day of the mainline expression of Christianity in North America is coming to a close. 

It is clear, maybe condemningly clear, that these days call us to be certain about who we are and what are the core convictions that shape us in the Methodist/Wesleyan tradition of the Christian faith. That’s what I’ll be thinking and writing about in the next few weeks. We begin where the faith begins: it’s all about salvation.

A Return to the Foundation: Salvation

We can’t think and talk long about Christianity before salvation becomes the focus. It is at the center of one of the most familiar stories in the New Testament, Zacchaeus. We sing about him with our children,

Zacchaeus was a wee little man,

a wee little man was he

He climbed up in the sycamore tree,

For the Lord he wanted to see.

When Jesus called him by name, to come down, he responded immediately. Without hesitation he made his confession, to which Jesus made an immediate response, 

“Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”

Salvation! 

It’s all about salvation. For Zachaeus, and the people of Jericho, that day was something the prophet Isaiah had spoken of more than five hundred years before. For Zacchaeus, this was the moment God fulfilled a promise that was proclaimed over and over again: salvation.

The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me,

because the Lord has anointed me

to proclaim good news to the poor.

He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,

to proclaim freedom for the captives

and release from darkness for the prisoners,

to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor

and the day of vengeance of our God,

to comfort all who mourn,

I delight greatly in the Lord;

my soul rejoices in my God.

For he has clothed me with garments of salvation

and arrayed me in a robe of his righteousness,

as a bridegroom adorns his head like a priest,

and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels (Isa. 61:1-2, 10)

John Wesley’s Vision: Salvation from Beginning to End

It’s all about salvation.

In his sermon “The Scripture Way of Salvation,” John Wesley summarized the goal of genuine Christian religion: “The end is, in one word, salvation.” In its broadest sense, Wesley understood salvation as the entire redeeming work of God in a human life, “from the first dawning of grace in the soul, till it is consummated in glory.” Indeed, Wesley includes within his concept of salvation “all the drawings of the Father”-which he terms “preventing grace-in the heart of a person as yet uncommitted to God. Whether or not it is ultimately embraced, this preventing grace is part of salvation in its broadest sense.”

The transforming work of the Holy Spirit in the life of a believer was the chief theme of  Wesley’s life and work, and still is a distinctive contribution the Methodists make to the rest of the church. The British theologian, William B. Fitzgerald, summarized Wesley’s theology of salvation with this fourfold dictum: All people need to be saved from sin, all people may be saved from sin, all people may know they are saved from sin, and all people may be saved to the uttermost.

The Need for Salvation: From Genesis to Today

We don’t get far into the Bible before we are confronted with the fact of sin, and that all need to be saved. It began in the garden of Eden. The way the story is told doesn’t give a timeline, underscoring the fact that Adam and Eve didn’t live very long before they gave in to the serpent of temptation.

Chapters l and 2 of Genesis tell the story of Creation that is climaxed with God creating humans. All other dimensions of creation were described as good, but after creating humankind, God recognizes creation as “very good.” Chapter 2 closes with the beautiful expression of the marriage covenant. The last verse of the chapter is a superbly simple expression of innocence. “Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame” (Genesis 2:25).

In this fast-moving drama, chapter 3 opens with the serpent convincing Adam and Eve that they didn’t have to pay attention to God’s instruction –  that they were not to eat the fruit of one particular tree in the garden of Eden. From that point on, sin in human life has been a universal fact; and sin is like quicksand. When we get ourselves into quicksand and try to get ourselves out, we only end up getting in deeper. We are not capable of extricating ourselves from the messes we get into. And since we have violated God’s way for us, we are helplessly estranged from him. We need a rescue, a savior. There is hope. Not only do all need to be saved, all can be saved. That’s the clear message of Scripture. Yes, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” but they can be “justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus” (Romans 3:23-24).

It’s all about salvation! Do you know, or have you known, that you need to be saved?