Salvation Analogy                                                                July 24, 2016

The most common approach to explaining God’s salvation is with analogies that relate to a business deal or a legal action.

They go like this:

1. Business: Jesus paid the debt incurred by our sins. This debt is too much for anyone to pay. Jesus paid it all for us so we can go free with our debt forgiven.
2. Legal: Our sins have made us guilty and therefore subject to punishment in hell as offenders. But Jesus not only intervenes to his Father, the Judge, on our behalf but takes our punishment himself as our substitute and thus satisfies a cosmic principle that all sin must be punished.

All a person has to do for salvation is acknowledge either one of these. This is “accepting Jesus as your saviour.”

However, these analogies suffer from several weaknesses:

1. Business and legal analogies seem very inadequate to capture the grandeur of God’s love for his children and the power and mystery of Jesus’ death on the cross and resurrection.
2. When a debt is paid, the deal is done. When a judgment is rendered, the case is closed. When an item is purchased, no further action is needed. These one-time deals lead people to believe that everything is settled between them and God. Since God is satisfied they are free to go about their merry way as they please without regard to Jesus’ teachings.
3. The threat of hell is not far from the surface of these analogies. They are promoted as the means to avoid eternal punishment in the afterlife. Is fear really the best motive there is to enter into a life of love with God?
4. Focusing so strongly on the death of Jesus as his sole purpose diminishes the significance of his life and teachings. Was Jesus’ main mission to die on the cross? Or is there more going on here? Jesus’ example and teachings open up a new way to live. These technical analogies have little bearing  on Jesus’ offer of abundant life to all who would follow him.
5. These analogies assume that something has to be done for sins to be forgiven, as in a sacrifice for sins, as if there is some cosmic principle that not even God cannot just forgive sin without some other action.
6. Being more related to business or legal matters, these analogies are external and impersonal. They are transactions; they are not personal, as in a relationship. If “God is love” and our relationship with God is indeed of a personal nature, these “transactions” are woefully inadequate.
7. must be a better analogy that captures this.

There is a better analogy for God’s salvation. It is like being married. A marriage is where love is given and received, promises are made to last a lifetime. A marriage is based on mutual commitment and trust. A marriage grows over time as the love grows deeper, as promises are kept, as tests of commitment reveal true faithfulness, and as failures are forgiven.  It is a covenant where two parties voluntarily enter into a mutual agreement to support each other no matter what may come.

God’s salvation is like being married. A marriage begins with a wedding ceremony. Then the real marriage begins.  Our “wedding” to Jesus may begin in many different ways for different people. For some, it’s like they were always with Jesus from childhood.  For some, Jesus comes in a flash of emotion, or a tremendous release from guilt. For some it is a cerebral process of knowledge. Or many other ways. However the “wedding” may occur, it is like we stand up with Jesus to accept His offer of steadfast love and in turn pledge our love and faithfulness from then onward.  As life is lived and trials faced, our “marriage” with Jesus will grow deeper as love is tested and faithfulness is proven. Following Jesus in this relationship will lead to many wonderful experiences not possible any other way.

Who would ever say marriage is just an initial transaction?

The greatest sin in this relationship is not some trivial infraction of law but being unfaithful to our “Partner.” It would be like having a secret affair apart from your spouse; like turning your back to an old friend who helped you through life. When this happens, the relationship breaks down and can only be restored by confession and re-pledging our love and faithfulness, whereupon forgiveness is granted and the relationship resumes. God already knows the human heart, that we will fail. This is the amazing love of God for His children when God restores and heals us.

The business and legal analogies perhaps best describe the wedding ceremony, but the marriage begins after the wedding.  If a marriage exists solely based on a legal contract or a business deal and not a growing relationship of intimacy and love, what kind of marriage would that be? How can intimacy with God be based on a “transaction”?

The outcomes of these salvation analogies are vastly different. The external, impersonal, technical  expressions allow us to make an initial transaction then go about the rest of life with only a casual acquaintance of Jesus and his ways. This results in leaving many believers remaining comfortably satisfied that they are “saved” without seeking to actually live a life that grows more and more in union with God.  Without the intimacy of Jesus, God is kept safely at bay.  Even what might seem to be a long, devoted Christian life leaves many believers stuck not far from the salvation experience.  All their life they are “entry level” Christians.  It is like a legally married couple that lives apart.

The marriage analogy for salvation leads to a deeper relationship with God that continually grows over time as life is lived, as fears and prejudices are faced and conquered, as tests are passed and trials are overcome, as forgiveness and restoration is experienced, and love expands beyond one’s own tribe to include all people.  The marriage analogy goes far beyond a simple initial business deal or legal action by encompassing all of life.

Being limited in scope, the business and legal analogies are fairly simple to grasp and quite familiar to most people. They provide a simple black and white test: you are either In or Out. As such, they have become the most popular way of understanding God’s salvation. However, even as well known as marriage may be, it can be quite complex as seen in the large failure rate of marriages.  Marriage encompasses the full range of living, not limited to part of life, and lasts a very long time. As such, the marriage analogy seems a much better way to lead us to the richness and grandeur of the life with God.

The “benefits” of the business and legal analogies are mostly understood to become effective after death since they explain the requirements to enter heaven.  Thinking of salvation more as a marriage opens up immediate “benefits” as the recipients enter into an empowering relationship, learn lessons about love, patience, temptation, and find direction for all of life. The marriage analogy offers a positive reason to enter into the Way of Jesus instead of an escape from eternal punishment. The marriage analogy opens up hope for life in the here and now, not just some far off time in heaven.

Perhaps the biggest inadequacy of the legal and business analogies is the assumption that some sacrifice must be done to compensate, negate, or somehow wipe out the sin. This is the Old Testament requirement for sacrifices. But even in the Old Testament, there are many references claiming that God does not require sacrifices to forgive sin.
    “For I desire mercy, not sacrifice,
        and acknowledgement of God rather than burnt offerings.” (Hosea 6:6)
    “To do what is right and just is more acceptable to the Lord than sacrifice.” (Proverbs 21:2)

Is there some universal law that says sin requires some sacrifice or some kind of action in order to be forgiven? Would such a “law” even constrain God? Why cannot God just forgive sin as God’s choice?

If a sacrifice is needed, then God has provided it: Jesus.

        “He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.” (I John 2:2)

If not sacrifice, then how about some punishment to make God happy? A common explanation of Jesus’ death on the cross is that it satisfies God’s anger over our sins and God’s desire (or requirement?) for punishment. This view is not supported by Jesus! And what about John 3:16? “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son.”

It might be argued that the marriage analogy relates more to the Christian life after the salvation experience, but the business and legal analogies are still most favorable for the initial entrance into salvation (the “wedding”). If this were true, it would mean that entering the life with Jesus is one thing but continuing on is something else. How can that be true?

The marriage analogy for salvation is a strong biblical image for salvation. In the last chapters of Revelation describing the triumph of the kingdom of God and the consummation of the believer’s union with God, Jesus comes as a bride for his bridegroom.  Business or legal images would fall far short in capturing the majesty and glory associated with God’s ultimate victory and our forever life with God.

All these analogies, even the marriage analogy, are just analogies trying to represent how God deals with his children and how his children respond. They are concrete ways to describe things non-tangible like love, devotion, faith, repentance, and forgiveness. If the focus gets fixated on the analogy, the meaning of the analogy can get lost. Some analogies are better than others. The best analogy would put us on a path that continues to move us towards God, towards loving others, towards humility, etc.

How does a person become a Christian?  Is it by saying a “Sinner’s Prayer”? By going through the Four Steps to salvation?  By subscribing to a certain set of beliefs? What is the meaning of “accepting Jesus as my savior?” Or is our salvation obtained by entering into a love relationship with Jesus that starts by accepting God’s love and pledging our love by turning away from the sins of self-centeredness, greed, lust, blindness to injustice, and a host of ways to avoid intimacy with God? Thus are we saved!

Early in Mark’s Gospel, Jesus spoke to a paralytic person, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” (Mark 2:5) This bold statement immediately irked the religious authorities: “He’s blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?” Their objection was not because Jesus was claiming to be God. It was because forgiveness was a result of someone bringing an acceptable offering of some kind to the temple that would satisfy God who would then remove the sin letting the sinner go. But here is Jesus just simply granting forgiveness with no strings attached. The authorities “knew” this is not possible. The temple people also made their living out of the offering, so they had a vested interest in keeping the system.

This action of Jesus indicates that God operates with freedom to forgive at God’s own prerogative. No payment or legal action is necessary.

Their objection is based on ...

Does Jesus say this because, after all, he is God in the flesh and thus would have authority to forgive sins? If this is the case, then it seems to shoot down any requirement for a sacrifice. Or is Jesus opening up a new possibility for handling our sins?

If there is a requirement for forgiveness to be granted, it would be this, as Jesus said: to forgive others. Mt. 6:14,15 Mt 18:35

Salvation is one thing. Forgiveness is something else. Is forgiveness the doorway into salvation such that once we walk through we are “saved”?

Some claim that our salvation was “won” when Jesus died on the cross such that “all we have to do” is believe this and accept it. This fits well if our salvation is mainly a transaction between deities. But it leaves out our individuals as if our salvation has nothing to do with us. It’s not that we have to do something to earn salvation. But we still have to cooperate with God to accept God’s grace and forgiveness and live the life God desires for us. Is it possible to be “saved” and not live out the teachings of Jesus, as if they didn’t matter, as long as we are “saved”? This cannot be satisfactory to God!

Dallas Willard writes of “the gospel of sin management”... that some would boil the whole gospel down to this.

There is a life with God that God desires for all his children. How do we enter it? Do we want it?

Edited 1/28/21

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