The Gospel Is a Promise

For the promise that he would inherit the world did not come to Abraham or to his descendants through the law but through the righteousness of faith. (Rom 4:13)

Precisely 278 years ago, on May 24th, 1738 a young British clergyman was wandering the streets of London with nothing but doubts and fears weighing down his heart, mind, and soul. Raised in a faithful family, he had done all the right things: he went to the right school, he knew all the right scriptures, and all the right songs, but it wasn’t enough.

No matter how hard he prayed, no matter how dedicated he was to spiritual disciplines like scripture reading and fasting, it always felt like something was missing. In short, his faith wasn’t very faithful.

Perhaps you know this feeling. On the surface everything is as it should be, but underneath it’s a mess. Or, you’ve put in the time and the work but the results just aren’t there. Or, you’ve committed yourself to being better, really you’ve tried, but at the end of the day you’re no different than you were a year ago. It’s the feeling of doing all the right things, but nothing feels right.

And so, on that fateful evening in 1738, the young preacher reluctantly attended a meeting that was happening on Aldersgate Street in London. And miracle of miracles, everything changed for him. His name was John Wesley, and without that night, there’s a better than good chance that there would be no such thing as a Methodist Church.

We know what happened because Wesley wrote about it in his journal shortly thereafter. Someone was reading from Martin Luther’s Preface to the Epistle to the Romans and:

While he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation; and an assurance was given me that God had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.

In his heart strangely warmed experience, Wesley went from believing salvation was up to him to realizing that salvation comes by/from/through Christ alone. And that difference makes all the difference in the world. So much so that Wesley’s experience of grace in that moment was the spark that ignited the movement we call Methodism.

This is the beginning of Luther’s preface:

Romans is really the chief part of the New Testament and the very purest Gospel, and is worthy not only that every Christian should know it word for word, by heart, but occupy themselves with it every day, as the daily bread of the soul. It can never be read or pondered too much, and the more it is dealt with the more precious it becomes, and the better it tastes.

Why is Romans so special? What is it about this letter that it holds the power to strangely warm the hearts of those who receive it? Paul, wonderfully, answers those questions at the very beginning of the epistle:

I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith; as it is written, ‘The one who is righteous will live by faith.’

And what is faith?

It is not an art or an achievement. It is not a good work of which some may boast while others can excuse themselves for not being capable of it. Faith is not something we do or create. Faith is a gift. Faith is often nothing more than trusting God to do for us that which we cannot do for ourselves. Or, to use Wesley’s words, faith is trusting in Christ, Christ alone for salvation.

And for Paul, Abraham is at the center of his understanding of faith.

There has been a debate in the church recently, a disagreement about the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion. Who is in and who is out. And, notably, this is not a new debate. During the time of Paul, the friction was found over the real descendants of Abraham. Were the descendants only according to the flesh, therefore making Gentiles outside the realm of the covenant? Or was it possible to be a descendant according to some other marker or signifier?

Who is included in God’s great work, and who is excluded? It’s a question that we’ve had since the beginning.

Notice, however, that there seems to be a growing consensus that for a church to be a church today it has to be “welcoming of all people.” Whether it’s on a church marquee, a newsletter, a postcard, whatever, churches want everyone to know that everyone can come. We describe ourselves thusly as open, friendly, inclusive, etc. Ecclesial buzzwords.

And yet, just as sure as I am that the Gospel is for all persons I am sure that there is not a church that is welcoming of all people. There are scores of people who have felt the exact opposite in church. And not even for the big-ticket reasons that seem to divide the church, but for weird and strange and petty things like what college we went to, or what songs we preferred to hear in worship, or what we chose to wear to church.

Here’s something the church doesn’t want to confess, but must: It is not possible for any church to inclusive of everyone. Someone is always going to feel like an outsider when they are inside the church.

Why? The answer is Sin. Our judgments and our preconceived notions and our general dispositions will make it such that we cannot unconditionally accept every person who comes through the door, because we never know who might come through the door. We can certainly strive for it, but we are not capable of it. The only One who was ever able to receive everyone, unconditionally, was Jesus and he was capable only because he was God in the flesh.

Which brings us back to Abraham and Paul. Abraham can, and has, been understood in two different ways. The most obvious way is as the model of righteousness. Hence the desire to know who the descendants of Abraham are. Abraham, after all, is the one who goes where God calls, the one with whom God sealed the covenant, the one who becomes the father of many nations.

When many talk of Abraham we tend to emphasize his radical willingness to travel into an unknown land, his perseverance, his patience. Oddly enough, that’s not the way the Bible sees it!

In Genesis 12, God spoke to Abraham saying, “Go from your country and your people and your father’s house to a land that I will show you. For I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing … and by you all the nations of the earth will be blessed.” But in this call of Abraham, it’s more about God than it is about Abraham, it’s more of a promise than a call. And the promise is unconditional, there are no “ifs” in it.

God doesn’t say, if you stay faithful in your marriage I will bless you with many children. God doesn’t say, if you’re righteous I will bless you. God doesn’t say, if you repent for your mistakes I will change the world through you. God just says, I will bless you. Period. Full stop.

At no point in the Biblical witness does Abraham do anything to earn the honor bestowed upon him by God (if anything, it’s the opposite!). Paul says, he has no ground for boasting. In fact, the only thing Abraham really did, was trust God. Abraham’s righteousness comes not because of what he does, but because he trusts God who justifies the ungodly.

The biblical word of importance here is reckon. Paul reminds the Romans that God “reckoned” Abraham as righteous. Paul says that Abraham was righteous not because he was faithful, or good, or obedient, or godly, but because God reckoned him as righteous. Basically, righteousness comes to Abraham as a gift. We call it grace.

Abraham, far from being the model that all should strive to be, is the first justified sinner, the original ungodly person who is remolded by God in godliness and not because of his deeds or actions, but because God delights in unimaginable things. God is in the business of justifying, rectifying, redeeming, and remaking the least acceptable, and most ungodly people.

Even people like us.

Go read Genesis sometime. Start with chapter 12, and check out the kind of wild, ungodly, things Abraham gets up to. It’s shocking. And all the more shocking is God’s choice to make him the father of many nations. This is why Abraham is so central to Paul’s argument in Romans. You see, the promise of salvation rests on grace and is guaranteed to all Abraham’s descendants, whether they follow the Law or not because if salvation only came through following all of the rules, doing all the right things, then nobody would make the cut. Not John Wesley, not you, not me, not even Abraham!

Paul says the law brings wrath, but the gospel sets free. Doing all of the right things, and knowing the right people, and making the right choices, sounds wonderful in principle, but turns out to be impossible. We can’t make ourselves righteous, we can’t rectify ourselves, we can’t redeem ourselves. We can’t even be the inclusive church we want to be. That work is exclusive to God and God alone.

Thankfully, God is completely caught up in the work of doing things we could never do ourselves, by giving life to the dead and calling into existence the things that do not exist. Which is another way of saying, the most inclusive thing about the church, is that the church is full of forgiven sinners. We’re not a bunch of good people getting better all the time. We’re a bunch of broken people making mistakes constantly who have the good fortune of a community that says we are welcome when we are broken because we are broken.

For some strange reason God delights in this, and, wonders of wonders, God continues to hand over the good news through letters, songs, preachers, and pulpits until our hearts are strangely warmed and we know, deep in the marrow of our souls, that Christ has taken away our sins, even ours, and has saved us from the law of sin and death.

It is through our faith in the God who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist that we are reckoned righteous.

That’s the promise John Wesley heard so so long ago, the promise that ignited in his heart, that set him aflame to proclaim the truly wondrous good news to a people drowning in bad news. It’s the same promise that Abraham heard in the wilderness that set him on a course to father a people who would bless the world. It’s the same promise held inside the empty tomb on Easter that delivers us into God’s strange new world.

The gospel is a promise, a promise that is worthy not only that every one of us should know it beat for beat, but occupy ourselves with it every day, as the daily bread for our souls. It can never be received or pondered too much, and the more it is heard the more precious it becomes, and the better it tastes.