How Traditional Salvation Concepts Allow “Christians” to Ignore the Ethics of Jesus
Ron Perritt
Many of us wonder how people who claim to be Christians can intentionally and consistently ignore the ethical teachings of Jesus. How can “Christians” have instigated and supported so much persecution and suffering in direct opposition to the ethical principles that Jesus taught? Why do they support politicians and public policies that disadvantage their neighbors and claim that religious freedom is the right to discriminate against people whom they happen to dislike?
I suggest the reason for this disconnect began early in the growth of Christianity. The first hints can be found in the New Testament book of James in the controversy over the meaning of faith. Then came the Nicene Creed and others which established orthodox systems of belief. What one professed to believe, one’s “faith,” became enormously important, often a matter of life and death. In its quest for power, the institutional church developed a system to control people by instilling fear of spending eternity in hell and claiming to have God’s exclusive authority to forgive sin and offer salvation.
Power often involved persecution of people with whom the church disagreed, which was clearly contrary to the teachings of Jesus; so it was necessary to provide a way to be “saved” which bypassed the ethical teachings of Jesus. The solution was to make salvation contingent on professing adherence to an orthodox set of propositions about Jesus, the efficacy of his death, God and the Bible, etc. This concept of salvation continued through the Protestant Reformation. “Faith” became assent to the truth of certain propositions with each denomination identifying itself by its own unique mixture of propositions and its method of achieving forgiveness. This concept of “faith in Jesus” became equated to “belief in Jesus” and was read back into Paul’s letters and passages such as John 3:16. Thus “believing in Jesus” often became little more than assent to propositions about Jesus.
Many of us who grew up in the evangelical tradition can clearly remember sermons laced with fear and guilt plus a lot of emphasis on the destiny of sinners. Our salvation and Christian status required that we profess our “faith” that “Jesus was our Lord and Savior who was sent by God to die on the cross for the forgiveness of sin.” With this profession of “faith,” one’s eternal destiny in heaven was secured. Ethics under this idea of salvation become a kind of negative concept in that one shouldn’t do anything that might be considered “really sinful” as defined by society’s cultural norms, rather than helping bring about the Kingdom of God for all.
I grew up in a racially segregated community. The church members I knew were not KKK supporters, but they also would never have publicly advocated for equal quality education for non-white children or truly equal rights and respect for all under the law. Being “Christian” simply did not require loving all your neighbors as yourself. Why cause upheaval and risk rejection by the community if it really doesn’t matter to your eternal destiny? Treating all your neighbors as you would want to be treated was more like a good suggestion, not really a requirement for being a Christian, in that one’s eternal destiny certainly did not depend on it.
The message of Jesus I read in the Gospels is that our responsibly as Jesus’ followers is to help bring about the Kingdom of God, a place in time where God’s desire for agape love, justice, mercy, respect for one another and reverence for God become actualized. Our salvation in this life and into the next consists of becoming free of our self-centeredness and learning to love by the Great Commandment, without regard for personal reward. Jesus taught this through his preaching and example. He condemned the religious leaders of his day, not for not knowing what they should do, but for not doing it. We are Christians, followers of Jesus, only to the extent our lives are actually guided by the teachings and example of Jesus. When Jesus encountered Zacchaeus (Luke 19:1-10) and announced that “salvation has come to this house,” it was not because Zacchaeus professed some notions about Jesus; it was because he vowed to live a life consistent with Jesus’ teachings. Faith, for a follower of Jesus, is trust that Jesus teaches what God desires for us to do and then actually doing it. “So, faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead” (James 2:17). “…I by my works will show you my faith” (James 2:18).
Some people might argue that this interpretation of faith is equivalent to works righteousness, that it says we can work our way into heaven. This is not what Jesus taught. We must not only consider the works, but also the motivation behind the works. When Jesus gave the Great Commandment to love God and neighbor, he was talking about a special kind of love, agape love. This type of love seeks only to enhance the well-being of the one loved, without any expectation of compensation or reward. It is a totally selfless type of love, the kind Jesus exhibited in his healing ministry. Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-36) is an example. The word “love” in the Great Commandment means an act of mercy, kindness or generosity, done with an unselfish motivation. Doing something for another in order to get a reward is not an act of agape love and thus fails the requirements of the Great Commandment.
Some of us are old enough to remember tent revivals at which the preacher exhorted the audience to “profess Jesus as your personal savior, if you want to go to heaven.” This, to me, is a classic example of the corruption of Jesus’ message at every level.
Today, we hear “Christians” preaching that religious freedom means the right to discriminate against anyone we don’t like. This hypocrisy, like that practiced in the past by “Christians” who persecuted those who were different, owned slaves or supported discrimination in all its forms, gives many, especially the younger generation, plenty of reason to reject Christianity.
For Christianity to survive, we must recover the principles laid down by Jesus. Believing certain ideas about Jesus is not bad in itself, but it is not what Jesus taught was necessary for salvation. The term “Christian” is not a title to be awarded by a church, like a school issues a diploma, but a lifestyle guided by the ethical teachings of Jesus.
— Ron Perritt is an electrical and computer engineer, a 2001 MDiv graduate of Candler School of Theology, and author of Coherent Christianity, published in 2019 by Nuturing Faith Inc.(Good Faith Media).
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