DO WE HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH BEING SAVED?

A brother in Christ in nearby Fort Worth, Tommy J. Hicks, has an article in the July 10 Firm Foundation titled “Salvation by Grace Only,” a proposition that he rejects. He tells of a conversation with a Church of Christ minister who told him, “In spite of years of negative, legalistic, guilt-trip preaching, I discovered GRACE!” He quotes the preacher as going on to say, “I had absolutely nothing to do with my own salvation!” Brother Hicks is alarmed that preachers who hold such views sometimes minister even in “conservative” churches.

While I see reason for brother Hicks’ concern, especially with the view that a man has “absolutely nothing” to do with his salvation, his essay may raise more questions than it answers. If he questions the doctrine of salvation by grace only, what would he add to grace? Is he implying that one is saved by works also? The Scriptures make it clear again and again that we are not saved by works. On this point the Scriptures even affirm: “Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit” (Tit. 3:5). If one is not saved even by righteous deeds, then surely he cannot be saved by any deeds at all.

Our brother says that one is saved by obeying the gospel, not by grace only. Does the fact that one is to obey the gospel negate the proposition of salvation by grace only? What is the gospel but “the gospel of the grace of God”? That one must make a response to the grace that God bestows does not indicate that there is anything involved but God’s grace and mercy.That I accept God’s grace (in ways God has determined) cannot mean that something is added to grace — as if grace were not sufficient.

When brother Hicks questions the proposition that there is absolutely nothing one can do with his own salvation, his case appears stronger. But it may be a matter of semantics. When the preacher was describing his liberation from legalism by finding grace, he might be excused for overstating his case. I wonder if brother Hicks would have objected if the preacher had said this instead: “There was absolutely nothing that I did or could do that would merit or earn or gain for me my salvation.” That is almost certainly what he meant. He could hardly have meant that he had no responsibility to respond to the grace of God in faith and obedience. Yet he must have meant that even his obedience (in baptism) did not itself save him, for it was God’s grace, only God’s grace. And if that is what he meant, I agree with him.

Our Fort Worth brother takes a position that has hung as an albatross over Churches of Christ all these years; “Grace is extended by God and it is received by faith. Thus, one can see God’s part and man’s part in salvation.”

It may be all right to speak of “man’s part” in salvation if we mean only that man is to make a faithful response to what God has done. But even here it is not what we believe or do that saves us. It is only what God has done for us through Christ that saves us. There is no “Man’s part” if we mean there is something we do that procures salvation.

This doctrine of “God’s part and man’s part” has misled our people to an exaggerated view of baptism. Many of our people presume they are saved by being baptized. While there is surely some symbolic sense in which it can be said that “baptism saves us,” as 1 Pet. 3;21 states (though the same verse disclaims any cleansing power in the act itself), we must avoid any conclusion that makes baptism a work whereby we are put right with God. We have already noted from Paul’s own words that even righteous deeds cannot save us. And that is what we have done to many of our people (but not all), for they see baptism as a righteous work, ordained of God, whereby they are saved. It is thus “their part” of being saved. But this stands in awful contrast to the apostle’s grand propositions: (1) one is justified by grace as a free gift (Rom. 3:24); (2) to the one who works, his wages are not reckoned as a free gift but as his due (Rom. 4:4).

This is why I cannot view baptism as a righteous work. I agree with Alexander Campbell, who championed the place of baptism as much as anyone, that baptism is a work of God’s grace. It is not something that we do, but something that God does to us. The command to be baptized is in the middle voice rather than the active. Baptism is done to us by God, by His Spirit. Col. 2:12 not only identifies baptism as “the working of God” but as a circumcision not made with hands, a circumcision of the heart.

This is why Campbell insisted that baptism can never be viewed as a procuring act but rather as a confirming act (on God’s part). We are saved by grace through faith, as Eph. 2:8 says, and this is confirmed by God when we submit to baptism as “the answer of a good conscience toward God” (1 Pet. 3:21). This is why baptism is never referred to as regeneration in the Bible, but as the washing or the bath of regeneration (Tit. 3:5).

There is surely some sense in which baptism is for the remission of sin, or Acts 2:38 would not read as it does, but it is clearly not for the remission of sins in an absolute sense or in every sense. Again I will follow Campbell and say that in baptism our sins are formally (not actually) washed away or forgiven. But in view of Acts 2:38, as well as other passages, we can say that baptism as a command of God is necessary for the formal remission of sins. That is why there should be no such thing as an unbaptized Christian. But, to use Campbell again, baptism is the formal culmination of the regenerative process, the bath of regeneration, which begins as a free gift of God at the point of faith. Thus Campbell said, both early and late in his ministry: “One is really saved when he believes, formally saved when he is baptized.”

Alexander Campbell’s balanced view of baptism would prove helpful to the modern church, not only to his own heirs among Christian Churches-Churches of Christ, but to the church generally. If some of us have made too much of baptism, exalting it to an act of regeneration, others have made too little of it, divorcing it completely from the regenerative process and making it no more than a way to join a denomination.

But getting back to brother Hicks’ article, he concludes by saying: “Only when one hears the gospel of God’s grace, believes the gospel of God’s grace, and obeys the gospel of God’s grace, will one be saved by God’s grace.” Within the context of what I have said herein I buy that, and that is why the preacher that upset brother Hicks goes too far when he says he had absolutely nothing to do with his salvation.

But our Fort Worth brother may have been insensitive to his friend’s greatest need, to be understood, lovingly understood. Tired of legalism and guilt-trip preaching, his friend had found liberation in the grace of God. Trying to make it on his own proved too much for him, so he at last caught the vision of salvation by grace apart from works, which sparked the great Protestant Reformation. And once one sees the glorious truth that it is, after all, God’s free gift, life is never the same again. And the Scriptures do say, again and again, that salvation is God’s free gift to us, a truth that we allow to pass us by.

A free gift! Glory be! When one sees that, he can be forgiven if in his exhilaration he overstates his case.

So brother Hicks needs to encourage his preacher friend. I am sending him an extra copy of this essay in hopes that he will pass it along to him, so he can see that he by no means stands alone in his quest for God’s glorious grace, not even among Churches of Christ. —the Editor