WESLEYAN WISDOM: ‘Way of Salvation’ begins with love, not sin Donald W. Haynes, Aug 5, 2009
Donald Haynes
By Donald W. Haynes UMR Columnist
Our local faith community is a typical “First UMC” in a small town—an aging congregation that needs children and their parents!
Recently we held a “children’s festival” for the whole town, renting huge inflatable games, playing contemporary praise music and cooking hotdogs for the crowd.
I went at lunchtime to support the effort, and was eating my hotdog when Susan, a member, handed me a card that read: “The Theology of Fundamentalist Soul Winning.” A group from a Baptist church had been canvassing everyone at our festival, asking if we were saved!
Susan said she had told them: “I told them that I was going to heaven when I died, but right now was making hotdogs for children in the community. Can you believe this?”
I replied that not only was their audacity rude, their theology was wrong. The first statement on the tract—“You are a sinner”—should have been No. 2, I told Susan. She smiled, but did not quite follow my objection.
“Susan,” I continued, “we United Methodists do not believe that God’s way of salvation begins with the person’s sin; we believe it begins with God’s character, which is love.
“Almost all these tracts begin with Romans 3:23: ‘For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.’ We believe that God’s way of salvation begins with Genesis 1:27: ‘So God created humankind in His own image.’
“See the difference?” I asked. “If I have not yet responded positively to God’s grace, my identity in the sight of God is not ‘sinner;’ my identity is ‘child of God who has lost his way and cannot get home alone.’”
She smiled. “Thanks, Don. You just taught me something I never heard before. That feels good.”
I later realized that many United Methodists might be like Susan in that they suffer from “doctrinal amnesia,” as Perkins School of Theology professor William Abraham put it so well.
The evangelism tract asked a familiar “soul-winning” question: “If you died, do you know for sure you would go to Heaven?” It instructed the reader that to be sure of their eternal destiny, four things must be understood and believed:
1. You are a sinner (Romans 3:23); 2. There is a price that must be paid for sin (Romans 6:23); 3. Jesus died and rose again to pay the debt for our sins (Romans 5:8); 4. Therefore God offers us eternal life (Romans 6:23).
The tract then stated, “If you would like to receive this gift and know that you will go to heaven, simply call on Jesus and he will save you: ‘The gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ’” (Romans 10:13).
Then came the “sinner’s prayer.”
“Dear Jesus,” it began, “I realize I am a sinner deserving to go to Hell. I believe you died and rose again to pay for my sins. Today I put my trust in you alone as my Savior. I here and now call upon you to save me from Hell, and receive your gift of eternal life. Thank you for saving me. Amen.”
The Baptists from this nearby church had been instructed to tell people who prayed this prayer that, “Now you are saved.”
The Wesleyan Way
We United Methodists seldom are out distributing tracts about what John Wesley called not “God’s Plan of Salvation,” but “God’s Way of Salvation.” Perhaps that is why we bring far fewer people to the blessed assurance of being saved! In spite of their rudeness for “invading” the children’s festival we were holding in our own church parking lot, we have to acknowledge the Baptist folks’ “radical outreach.”
I decided long ago that my faith sharing must be about more than just criticizing fundamentalists. We don’t have a right to criticize others’ efforts if we are content to sit on the sidelines while millions of God’s children have lost their way and cannot get home alone. We need to connect the passion the fundamentalists have with the message of grace that we have.
Wesley was clear: The “way of salvation” does indeed begin with God’s love, not our sin. The first message every baby needs is to feel and hear and see is love. That is also the first message that God’s lost children need to sense. Randy Mattox, a professor at Duke Divinity School, has rightly insisted that for John Wesley, salvation is more therapeutic than juridical.
Let’s look at some differences between faith sharing from a United Methodist perspective and “winning souls” as the good folks at the Baptist church understand it.
* No. 1 on the evangelism tract card should have read, “God created humankind in his own image”(Genesis 1:27). Wesley called this “original righteousness.” Indeed the climax of creation is God’s observation of all creation: “God saw everything that He had made and it was exceedingly good” (Genesis 1:31).
* Sin is the corruption, the infirmity of that nature which God created as whole. Wesley called sin the “diseases that drink up our blood and spirits . . . ” He called our sin “chains of iron and fetters of brass.” He said our sins are “wounds wherewith the . . . devil has gashed and mangled us all over.” Wesley called sin “loathsome leprosy.” Sin is dysfunctional to God’s creation; we are sick in sin and need divine healing. Jesus is the “Great Physician.”
* Jesus did not have to pay God to forgive my sins. God loved me as much before I turned my life over to him as he does now. Is it not that way with a parent? Does love only begin when a “price is paid?” Jesus said clearly, “I am in the Father and the Father is in me” (John 14:11); and “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). “God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself” (II Cor. 5:19). It really is heresy to portray God as the judge about to condemn us to hell, and Jesus as the defense attorney who pleads for mercy and offers to “purchase” our salvation with his life.
* God’s will is lived out in human history through Jesus’ mission: The renewal of our souls in the image of God. Renewal means to restore us to that original oneness with God. Jesus said, “It is my Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”
* We are saved from the addictive consequences of sin when we embrace the love that God has for us. Some of God’s children are separated from their real selfhood because their lives are marked by rejection, failure and guilt.
Some people have rejected God and said, “I’ll do it my way.” Rebellion is the word that describes their estrangement from God. Prevenient grace assures us that God’s love will never abandon us and will always reach out to us. The “arms of grace” are always open to our coming home to our real identity as a child of God. We must get into our Methodist message, “Nothing and no one can separate us from the love of God” (Romans 8:35).
The Father’s love
The message of the so-called “Parable of the Prodigal Son” is not the son’s prodigality! It is not even the elder brother’s judgment of his brother. The message is the Father’s love. Theologian Helmut Thielicke is right in calling it the “Parable of the Waiting Father.”
The turning point in the story is when the younger brother “came to himself.” Aha! Deep inside that wayward boy who had wasted so much of his life was a faint memory that he recalled while in the pigsty. He knew that he was his father’s son!
In Rembrandt’s painting of the story, one of the son’s feet is bare, but on the other he still wears the sandal of his inheritance. Indeed, with all his tattered rags, he still has a sword, obviously given to him by his father for protection. Even in his rebellion, he retained some semblance of his identity as the son of a loving father. Furthermore, as the father’s hands are draped over the kneeling boy’s shoulders, one is the hand of a man and the other is the hand of a woman!
Salvation is all about love—coming home to a reception of love. This is the message we must get straight and get out!
Dr. Haynes is an instructor in United Methodist studies at Hood Theological Seminary. dhaynes11@triad.rr.com.
Donald Haynes
The Father’s love 
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