Text: Isaiah 58:6-9, Psalm 107:10-16
For the first 20 or so years of my life, I understood salvation as one concrete idea: that Jesus died for my sin on the cross.
Substitutionary Atonement is what we call it. Jesus took our place. He was our substitute and paid the price for our sins so we could go to heaven.
But before too long, I discovered that I was terribly mistaken.
Not about Jesus dying for our sins.
But about thinking that was all salvation meant.
In its fullest sense, “Salvation is ‘God’s deliverance of those in a situation of need… resulting in their restoration to wholeness.’ It is restoration because salvation does not offer something new; it is God’s original intent for creation.” (Introduction, The Lord is Our Salvation)
The best word I can find to describe that original intent, the life that God intends for each of us is the word shalom.
It means completeness, wholeness, well-being.
And God’s work of salvation in Jesus Christ rescues us from whatever hell we might experience in our lives that has destroyed shalom, so we might experience life and life abundant once again.
Christ dying and paying the price for our sins is one piece of that work of salvation. But it isn’t the only one.
In fact, in the Western world, there are three major understandings of what the cross means, all different ways of talking about how Jesus saves us.
These are called atonement theories.
They describe how we become at-one again with God… how we are brought back into shalom… how we experience wholeness once again.
The first is the one most of us grew up being familiar with – a Forensic understanding of salvation. These theories say we are like a defendant on trial and have been found guilty of breaking our covenant with God. So, a penalty must be paid. Jesus knows we are guilty and out of love, pays the price for us. He satisfies the debt we owe.
The second is called Moral Example. This grouping of theories claims that the cross is the natural outcome of the life of Jesus, who spoke truth to power and dared to love those who society rejected. And in his life and death, Christ shows us how we should live, too.
The third of the major groupings is called “Christus Victor” – Christ as the Victor! This theory talks about an eternal battle between the forces of this world… good and evil, life and death, abundance and scarcity. We find ourselves trapped and imprisoned by sin and destruction, but Christ comes to set us free and restore us to wholeness.
In Psalm 107, this story of God’s redeeming love is told.
Some wandered away and found themselves lost and starving, but God rescued them from their trouble and led them back home.
Some were foolish and stumbled down a destructive path, but God rescued them from death itself and healed them.
Some set out to make their own way and their own pride became their cage, but God rescued them and brought them out of their distress to safety.
And some became prisoners, sitting in darkness, suffering in iron chains because they rebelled against God’s commands. But God rescued them and broke away their chains.
We were lost, but now are found.
We were trapped by addiction, but now we are free.
We were dragged down by our addiction, but we have been lifted up.
We were drowning in our fears, but we have been brought back to the shoreline.
We needed freedom and saving, but we’ve got a prison-shaking Savior.
For a couple of years now, we have been singing, Chainbreaker, in our contemporary worship service. Written by Zach Williams, it captures those redemptive stories of Psalm 107 and invites each of us to tell the story of how God has invited us into a better life.
Williams had been doing prison ministry through his church and wanted to speak to what God had been doing through the lives of the people he worked with… but his own life as well.
He had found himself for years walking a dead-end road and kept hearing a voice that said he wasn’t going to make it. That he was a failure. That he wasn’t good enough.
And to be honest, that is all of us. We are not good enough. We are trapped by our own mistakes and failures. We buy into the lies of this world that tell us we cannot fully claim our identity. We let our worries and our addictions and our pride bind us up like chains.
As we say in our prayer of confession before communion:
We confess that we have not loved God with our whole heart.
We have failed to be an obedient church.
We have not done God’s will.
We have broken the law.
We have rebelled against God’s love
We have not loved our neighbors.
We are those prisoners, suffering in iron chains, sitting in darkness.
But then comes the line we pray after we ask for forgiveness:
Free us for joyful obedience.
Free us for joyful obedience.
Free us.
Williams found himself trapped by that voice in his life that told him he wasn’t good enough… until Christ came along and set him free from the weight of the guilt and the chains that he was carrying around.
He found a liberating freedom and joy in surrendering his life to Christ.
But he also realized that this freedom was not a personal gift.
No, it was meant to be shared.
And there is great joy and life that is found when we in turn head back out into this world to set others free.
In Isaiah chapter 58, the people have been trying to please God in their own way, but the prophet reminds them of what God wants from them.
This is the kind of fasting that God has chosen:
“to break the chains of injustice,
get rid of exploitation in the workplace,
free the oppressed, cancel debts.
What [God is] interested in seeing you do is:
sharing your food with the hungry,
inviting the homeless poor into your homes,
putting clothes on the shivering ill-clad,
being available to your own families.
Do this and the lights will turn on, and your lives will turn around at once.”
This morning, we sent out volunteers from our church to be in mission in Memphis. As they make that long drive today, they are heading out to souls that are hungry and burdened and stuck.
Our friends and neighbors and family have the opportunity this week to tell their own stories of God’s saving love, but also help to break some chains themselves.
But you don’t have to go on a mission trip to joyfully obey God’s will.
Right here in Des Moines, you can help us tackle hunger with your food pantry donations.
You can work to honor the dignity of women and girls and speak out against human trafficking.
You can volunteer with local refugee support groups.
You can donate your funds to our annual Peace with Justice Sunday offering – which is used to help effect change in a broken world.
This offering is used to support ministries like a peace ministry on Arizona border communities and address civil rights violations in Liberia.
In North Georgia, it helped provide resources to help low-income students attend preschool.
Grants from this offering have supported the Alaska Innocence Project, that helps to exonerate wrongfully convicted individuals.
This is what God wants for us.
God wants to rescue us from the hell we experience in our lives.
Jesus wants to save us from our guilt and addiction, from our sin and temptation, from our fears and our failures.
And then the Holy Spirit empowers us to turn back around into our communities and neighborhoods so that we can help take away pain, make a way for the lost, and break the chains of all who need freedom.
The story of salvation… the story of how we are made at-one with God… is about far more than a personal debt being paid.
It is also the story of coming home… of finding our place… of being rescued from anything that holds us back so that we can be restored back into the abundant life of community God desires for us.
That better life that waits for us is not simply a heavenly destination beyond the grave…
There is a better life right here and right now, for all of us, because Christ has set us free.
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