THE CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH OF CANTON
Dr. John Tamilio III, Pastor
Sunday, March 11, 2018 ~ Lent IV
Sermon: “God ‘So’ Loved Us, or Why I Am an Evangelical”
Scripture Lessons: John 3:14-21 and Ephesians 2:1-10
© 2018, Dr. Tamilio
At heart, I am an evangelical. I don’t say that too loud, because I am afraid that people will assume that I am a Fundamentalist, or a member of the Religious Right, or an ultra-conservative who is homophobic and pickets Planned Parenthood in his spare-time. That is not who I am. Not even close. I say I am evangelical, because I have a deep love of Jesus Christ, who I believe is the Messiah. I have an affinity for the Scriptures. I feel called to share the Good News with others. (Engaging in deep, theological conversation is my passion.) When it comes to interfaith relationships, I am an inclusivist, which means I believe that people of other faiths are saved, but somehow, in ways they may not even understand, Jesus is at work within their religion. (I wrote an article about this for a recent issue of our denomination’s journal, The Congregationalist. I have copies for those of you who have trouble falling asleep.) When I was in the United Church of Christ, many of my colleagues claimed that my theology is conservative. I consider it traditionalist. I’m a Trinitarian. I believe that Jesus died for our sins and actually rose bodily from the dead. I believe that we are saved by the grace of God. I take the Bible very seriously, but not always literally. In fact, I believe in the infallibility of Scripture — meaning that it can never fail us in terms of guidance, doctrine, and practice — although I do not think it is inerrant, meaning that it is void of historical errors. Like the Reformers, I also see the Bible as the primary authority for the Church. To a large extent, these are the hallmarks of an Evangelical Christian.
Why this long, theological introduction? I do not need to prove myself to you. You already know who I am. You called me to be your pastor several years ago.
This aspect of my theology came to mind this week when I read two of the Lectionary readings for today: the one from Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians and the other from the Gospel According to John. Both passages play a foundational role in Evangelical theology.
Ask any Evangelical and they will say that you are saved if you accept Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior. It has almost become a catch phrase. They say it all the time. This statement is based (in part) on what Paul told the Ephesians. To caution those who thought that they could earn their way into Heaven through their good deeds (as if they were purchasing God’s favor through their actions), the Apostle said, “For it is by grace that you have been saved, through faith — and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God — not by works, so that no one can boast.” Professing that we have been saved by God’s grace that we receive through faith is a critical part of Protestant soteriology: the doctrine of salvation. Martin Luther, the great Reformer, made the same claim 500 years ago when he protested Rome’s selling of papal indulgences. Salvation lies in God’s hands solely and it is achieved through what Jesus did. It has nothing to do with what we do.
Evangelicals also love one of the verses the great Richard James read today John 3:16 — “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” You see this everywhere: on bumper stickers, on placards at football games, some people even burn it into their flesh. This verse complements the one from Ephesians nicely. The New International Version Study Bible published by Zondervan claims that the word “so” in this verse (“For God ‘so’ loved the world”) does not mean “so much,” but rather “in this way.” In other words, John is not saying God loved us so much, but rather this is how God loved us: by sending us his only Son. Is this not the crux of the Good News! Martin Luther, whom I just mentioned, claimed that John 3:16 is “the Gospel in miniature.”
Is this not why we are here? Is this not why we follow Jesus as the Christ? If Jesus is not the Messiah — if he is just some ancient prophet or a wisdom teacher who offered sound, moral philosophy — then why not worship someone else? Why not worship Gandhi or Mother Teresa? What makes Jesus so special?
Jesus is the ultimate expression of God’s love. Humanity was adrift due to sin — due to our disobeying God and trying to go it our own way. Look where it got us. History is penned in blood. We are a broken people. God wanted to call us back to himself, so he sent Jesus. But Jesus isn’t just anybody; he is God in the flesh. God loved us so much that he wanted to become one of us. Some theologians claim that God needed to share in our plight in order to reconcile us. Writing about the great nineteenth century Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, Simon D. Podmore notes that, “The question of the self before God is a question of receiving the revelation of the infinite qualitative difference between self as sinner and God as the Wholly Other [wholly with a w] in such a way as to come to terms with the healing grace of forgiveness — the divine gift by which one becomes a self in relation rather than annihilation.”
Perfect. We are not annihilated. We are redeemed. We are forgiven. God has bridged the chasm that sin forged between us and him — he did it by becoming one of us; he did it on the cross; he did it out of love.
Love is what it’s all about, my friends. Love moves mountains. Love makes all things new. Love takes you from the darkest confines and brings you to the summit of light. John said that “God is love,” and so when we love we are in the presence of God. Nothing else matters. Nothing else compares. God is present when we love one another, because that is what God is!
Real conservative and fundamentalist Evangelicals turn mainline Christians (and many non-Christians) off because they are aggressive in their approach. They use passages like John 3:16 and Ephesians 2 as a scare tactic. God sent Jesus. You better believe in him or else! Instead of this, we can read such passages as the gracious invitations and sacred promises that they are. God came in the form of Jesus to have a personal relationship with us and to offer us life eternal. It is a free gift. If nothing we do can earn it, nothing we do can lose it. As Paul told the Romans, nothing can “separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Being grateful for this gift, loving the giver, and immersing myself in the book in which this promise is recorded is why I don’t shy away from the word evangelical. I just spell it with a small “e”. Amen.