Going on to Salvation, Revised Edition: A Study of Wesleyan Beliefs - Softcover

Dunnam, Maxie

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0687653134 ISBN 13: 9780687653133

Verlag: Abingdon Press, 2008

Inhaltsangabe

The church today desperately needs to recover the depth, richness, and wonder of the biblical and Wesleyan doctrine of salvation. In this book, author Maxie Dunnam offers his perspective on how to make this recovery possible. Drawing deeply on biblical and Wesleyan sources, Dunnam leads his readers on a rich and challenging tour of what it means to say that we are going on to salvation—saved by grace. Ten well drawn chapters map the full terrain of justifying, sanctifying, and perfecting grace, and mark off those detours that too frequently have confused the way of salvation.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Maxie D. Dunnam became the fifth president of Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky and served for 14 years. Dunnam came to Asbury after 12 years of fruitful ministry at the 5,000-member Christ United Methodist Church in Memphis, Tennessee. From 1975-1982, Dunnam was world editor of The Upper Room. Dunnam is the author of more than 40 books, including the best-selling Workbook of Living Prayer (over one million copies sold). Dunnam presently serves as director of Christ Church Global at Christ United Methodist Church in Memphis, Tennessee.

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Going on to Salvation, Revised Edition

A Study of Wesleyan BeliefsBy Maxie Dunnam

Abingdon Press

Copyright © 2008 The United Methodist Publishing House
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-687-65313-3

Chapter One

The Keystone: Salvation by Faith

You were dead through the trespasses and sins in which you once lived.... But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God— not the result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life. (Ephesians 2:1, 2, 4-10)

If you were asked, "What is the goal of your life?" how would you respond? To be happy? To have a healthy, happy family? To be a success in business? To be wealthy? To serve other people and make others happy? To find the right marriage mate? To be fulfilled in your profession? Listen to the founder of Methodism, John Wesley:

To candid, reasonable men, I'm not afraid to lay open what have been the inmost thoughts of my heart. I have thought, I'm a creature of a day, passing through life as an arrow through the air. I am a spirit come from God, and returning to God: Just hovering over the great gulf; til a few moments hence, I am no more seen; I drop into an unchangeable eternity. I want to know one thing—the way to heaven; how to land safe on that happy shore. God himself has condescended to teach the way; for this very end He came from heaven. He hath written it down in a book. O give me that book! At any price, give me the Book of God! (John Wesley's Fifty-Three Sermons, edited by Edward H. Sugden [Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1983]. This quotation is taken from the Preface to the Sermons.)

This word expressed the fire burning in Wesley's soul: "I want to know one thing—the way to heaven—how to land safe on that happy shore." This desire of Wesley was like that passionate expression of Paul to the Philippians:

Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 3:12-14)

The goal of Wesley's life was his own salvation. History verifies that once he was certain of that—his own salvation—the passion became other-directed, and he started one of the great revivals of history as he sought to share the salvation message with others. Over and over in this Journal, he records his preaching activity in his simple sentence: "I offered them Christ."

John Wesley published four volumes of sermons—in 1746, 1748, 1750, and 1760. In 1763, he prepared a model deed for his preaching houses that set forth his intentions after his death. In that deed, it was provided that persons appointed by the conference should "have and enjoy the premises" only on condition "that the said persons preach no other doctrine than is contained in Mr. Wesley's Notes upon the New Testament and four volumes of sermons" (John Wesley's Fifty-Three Sermons, Ibid.; p. 1).

"Salvation by faith" was the first of Wesley's standard sermons. So this is where we begin, the keystone of his understanding of Christian doctrine—"salvation by faith."

Paul developed this theme systematically in his Letter to the Romans. His Galatians letter was an expression of the same truth primarily from his heart, not his head. Our scripture from Ephesians is a spontaneous outpouring of this conviction about salvation by faith in the midst of a commentary on the nature and mission of the church.

Since Paul, volumes have been written on this theme of salvation by faith; and I boldly propose to capture the essence of it (at least enough for us to go on) in this chapter by asking, in the style of Mr. Wesley's sermon on this theme, three questions:

One, who needs it? Two, what is it we need? Three, how do we get it?

WHO NEEDS SALVATION?

First, who needs it? The answer is clear, simple, and encompassing: we all need it.

Paul stated our predicament: "You were dead through the trespasses and sins in which you once lived, following the course of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient" (Ephesians 2:1-2).

In Romans 3, Paul deals specifically with the universality of sin, quoting passages from five psalms and one verse from Isaiah. Consider his terrible word:

"There is no one who is righteous, not even one; there is no one who has understanding, there is no one who seeks God. All have turned aside, together they have become worthless; there is no one who shows kindness, there is not even one." "Their throats are opened graves; they use their tongues to deceive." "The venom of vipers is under their lips." "Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness." "Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery are in their paths, and the way of peace they have not known." "There is no fear of God before their eyes." (Romans 3:10-18)

Paul begins this catalog of our common predicament by contending that we are all under sin. Think about that for a moment. Wesley was as adamant as Paul. Sin is universal. Likewise, as we will discuss later, the offer of salvation is universal. As all have sinned and come short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23), all are offered the saving grace of Jesus Christ. There is a sense in which Wesley's understanding of salvation is summed up in four "alls": all need to be saved; all may be saved; all may know they are saved; all may be saved to the uttermost.

In Romans 3:9, Paul contends that everyone, "both Jews and Greeks, are under the power of sin." The Greek phrase that Paul uses for this state of being under sin when we are without Christ is hypo harmartian, and it means "in the power of" or "under the authority of" sin. You get the scope of it by seeing the way Paul uses that phrase in other places: he described the relationship between a schoolboy and his teacher in Galatians 3:25 (KJV) as being "under a schoolmaster." In 1 Timothy 6:1, he said slaves were "under the yoke." In both these instances, to be "under" means to be dominated by or under the authority of.

That's the predicament of all of us. Paul summed it up: "For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:22-23).

Do you have problems believing that? Is the description Paul uses too terrible? In another chapter, we will deal with the whole issue of "original sin." For now, let's not debate the universality of sin, but seek to see where we are in the picture. Without dealing with...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Abingdon Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2008
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0687653134
• ISBN 13: 9780687653133
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 170
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
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