Flanders on Salvation

This week at the Movement Campus Church we continue our series The Gospel of Ned Flanders, by building upon the contrast of Christian vs. Secular worldviews. In this sermon we will tackle the all important doctrine of salvation.

The Day after Babel
Religion has always been a little wacky. All religions share a common origin in confusion, the day after mankind was spread from the fertile crescent. From that point on we have been struggling to contextualize our relationship with God or gods, depending upon the perspective. But there is one element that survived the collapse of the tower; the feeling that mankind must earn the favor or grace of the gods.

Christian Mythology?
As long as there has been a combination of weather, natural disaters and blonde haired women, the result has produced the idea of sacrifice and mythology. In this capacity we are tempted to join with the atheists and proclaim religious insanity. My rationality is simply not prepared to accept throwing a person in a volcano, much less feeding Anne Darrow to King Kong. And yet, while many "enlightened" Christians would scoff at the idea of appeasement of the gods of Mt. Olympus, they share many of the same human religious characteristics.

First, like the ancient Greeks, they recreate God in our own human image, sharing in our knowledge and playing by our rules. Moreover, they have exchanged the ideas of collective interaction with God for a personal relationship. (Zeus no longer zaps with lightning bolts, that is God's job during the tribulation.)

The end result is no different from Babel. The focus is placed on us instead of on God. To pacify an angry god we offer sacrifice, to please god we offer worship, and to move a lethagic god we offer service. Our focus becomes what can we do for God, instead of what God has already done for us.

Our lives become thinly veiled failures of a reality that "we are none good, NO NOT ONE."

This is the nonChristian-Christian worldview presented in the gospel of Ned Flanders. It speaks the truth in frustration that no matter how hard we try, we can just not reach that standards of making God love us through our religious works. Many a faith has died along that journey in the knowledge that our sacrifice is always blemished and eternally unacceptable.

Enter the Gospel
The Bible presents an alternative view of christianity, as it speaks of salvation in terms of what Jesus has already done on our behalf instead of what we must continue to labor to accomplish for him. It illustrates the long lost relationship of God and man as a father to a son. It reveals that as a father loves his son in spite of his failures so also does God to those whom He has adopted through His spirit.

Hebrews 9:11-14
But when Christ appeared as a high priest, then he entered once for all into the holy place, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and bulls sanctify the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve God.