What's personal about salvation? (September, 2006)

Personal Savior.

As one who has both carelessly used this phrase and self-consciously avoided it, I appreciate Jay giving it depth.

Evangelical Christians frequently speak of having accepted Jesus as their "personal Savior." Critics of this language suggest it sounds possessive and excessively individualistic--like having Jesus as my personal banker or hiring Jesus to be my personal trainer. This is, of course, a caricature ... When we use such language we mean not peronal possession or personal servant, but personal as opposed to impersonal, active as opposed to passive, conscious as opposed to unconscious.

A transforming "personal Savior" transforms us personally...

... for Christians salvation is not just an occurrence, it is a process.

And undo the our culture's influence.

All of us have been powerfully, invisibly, and unwillingly formed by our culture--or should I say deformed by our culture. Our churches, our schools, and our homes are to be places of formation and imitation with Jesus as the model.

There's a paradox here that (I think) C. S. Lewis pointed out. He was responding to critics of Christianity who claimed that becoming "like Jesus" made all Christians want to be faceless clones, robbing of them of their individuality. Lewis pointed out that the more we become like Jesus, the more we really become our unique selves. It's our culture that herds us, trying to clone us into its image of a good "consumer."

And, as the Scripture says, "The goal of our instruction is love..."

To externalize the love of God involves obeying Jesus even when I am smiled at as naive, even when the smirk of the worldly wise or the Christian realists suggest I am a fool. But if I am a fool for aspiring to follow Jesus and externalize the love of God, so be it.

Amen.