Jesus Creed 22 – Restoring in Jesus

Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.
Love the Lord you God with all your heart,
with all your soul,
with all your mind, and with all your strength.
The second is this: Love your neighbor as yourself.
There is no commandment greater than these.

This is a series of reflections on Scot McKnight’s book, The Jesus Creed: Loving God, Loving Others. It’s a book I unequivocally recommend for anyone. Each chapter opens with recommended Gospel readings. The readings for this chapter are: Mark 4:35-41; 9:14-19; John 21:1-25.

When we fall, Jesus picks us up. He’s busy. A disciple is called to love God and to love others, and this means: trust completely, abide constantly, and surrender totally. This is difficult.

That’s an understatement, of course. This chapter reminds me of something I heard once. An Orthodox monk was asked about life in the monastery and his response went something like this, “We fall down and get back up; fall down and get back up.” In many ways, that’s the image of the journey of the Christian life. Although we fail uncountable times, we only truly fail if we are no longer willing to get back up and remain determinedly unwilling. Jesus is always there to forgive and restore us “70 times 7 times,” which is to say as many times as it takes. He did not come to condemn us, but to heal us and give us life.

Salvation is union with Christ.

I think it’s important to emphasize that point, because I think salvation is often confused as many other things. Sometimes it seems to me that some Christians confuse salvation with forgiveness. Thus, once they have been forgiven, they sometimes believe they are saved. Forgiveness is certainly a part of the whole journey of salvation, but it is not in and of itself salvation. Nor does our journey toward salvation begin when we recognize our need for forgiveness. I tried to express some of that from my personal perspective in my post, Walking in my Shoes.

At some point in the course of that journey you will recognize your own failure. You will know that you need forgiveness. You will know that you need restoration. And when you do, as long as you are willing to get back up, it’s there in endless supply. But those points will come at different places for every human being. And that recognition and decision to get back up, whether mild or intense, understated or dramatic, is not salvation. It’s a mile marker on the way of salvation.