Divine Abundance

Chapter Three of William Willimon's book, Who Will Be Saved? just read me.

That's not a misprint.

The book read me.

Just as I was getting comfortable with the book, asking my questions, making assumptions, questioning the direction the author was heading, in general assuming the posture of an active reader, it suddenly became clear -- I was no longer the reader. I had become the text. The book was reading me.

Good books turn the tables on us in precisely that way, and this is a very good book.

Here's where the book got me: "If we think about salvation at all, it is curious, and a bit sad, how we tend to move from the claims that 'Jesus saves' immediately to the question, 'Who is saved?'" (44). Ouch. That's exactly what I was asking: Who is saved? Who's in? Who's out? Willimon's talking about how "the grace of God appeared bringing salvation to all" (Titus 2:11), and the only response I can think of is, "Yeah, yeah -- but just who does it mean by 'all'" (38)?

I am getting ahead of myself, and ahead of the book. Chapter three begins by noting that questions having to do with salvation are first and foremost questions about "the identity of God. Who saves?" (35). The Bible answers the question with stories. A farmer sows seed; a fisherman's net catches all sorts of fish. The God of Israel throws seed about indiscriminately, haphazardly even, not concerning himself at all with what type of soil the seed finds. The God who saves us doesn't keep the good fish and throw out the bad, but happily pulls in the entire catch.

"Who saves?", we ask. And the Bible answers us by telling us about a farmer whose crop of wheat had all sorts of weeds in it (the work of an enemy). Don't try to remove the weeds, we're told. That's God's business. God seems to be "more into careless sowing, miraculous growing, and reckless harvesting than in taxonomy of the good from the bad, the worthwhile from the worthless, the saved from the damned" (36).

The God Jesus called "Father," is like a shepherd who risks all his "found" sheep in order to go on a search for the one sheep who is lost. He's like a woman who tears the house apart to find her one lost coin. God is a broken-hearted father who welcomes home his selfish and wasteful son: "This son of mine was dead but now is alive; he was lost and is found"and who then throws a party to celebrate the finding.

[Unfortunately] most of us have been conditioned to read the Bible anthropologically rather than theologically, asking, "How is this story about me?" Therefore we need a general interpretive principle for reading the Bible: Scripture always and everywhere speaks primarily about God, and only secondarily, and then only derivatively, about us (37).

So rather than addressing our question, "Who is saved?" the Bible focuses on the more important question: "Who is the Savior?" The Savior is the One who comes for everyone regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, social standing, age or any other qualifier. He is the Savior of all.

There is a tension that exists in Scripture, a tension between "all" and "not all." On the one hand, the Bible says that there is punishment, a "place" reserved for all who are disobedient to God. On the other hand there are passages in the Bible stating that "God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he might be merciful to all" (Romans 11:32). Who, then, is saved? Everyone? Much of the Bible points away from that conclusion, attractive though it is. Three things we know for sure: we are all sinners in need of saving, God alone saves, and God desires salvation for all.

There is, of course, a distinction between "Jesus died for all," or "God seeks to save all," and "All will be saved." We trust in the God of abundance, the God who always wants more fish in the net. But what about the people who refuse the gift of God in Jesus Christ, who take a long look at Jesus and say, "No thanks"? First we can agree that we don't make the call of who is in and who, if anyone, is out. That is God's call and not ours. C.S. Lewis wrote in The Great Divorce: "There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done' and those to whom God says, in the end, 'THY will be done'" (79). Following Karl Barth, Willimon suggests

To the person who doggedly denies the Lordship of Christ and turns away from the open hand of salvation, 'God does not owe eternal patience and... deliverance'... But if there are limits to the love and patience of God, or if there are no limits on the love and patience of God, those matters are in God's hands, not ours. Though we cannot expect certitude in such matters...we can still hope" (49).

I do hope that God will save everyone. It is difficult to conceive of Jesus' Father doing otherwise as it is also difficult to get around the hard words of Scripture regarding punishment. Our role in the meantime, therefore, is to preach the good news that God saves -- all.