John Duns Scotus said that although, in the Incarnation, Jesus died for sinners, God would have become incarnate for us even if we had not sinned, our sin not being the whole point of the Incarnation but rather God's determination to be with us.
In an aside in his Dogmatics in Outline, Karl Barth wonders why a political hack like Pontius Pilate made it into our Apostles' Creed. Why do we have to believe in Pilate while we are believing in Jesus? Pilate is af-firmed, says Barth, in order to remind us that Jesus is always hic et nunc (here and now). Jesus was not some mythological figure who hovered above this grubby, politically infatuated world. Jesus went head-to-head with Pilate over who is in charge. Jesus came to deliver people, to save people from Caesar's power, to transfer their citizenship to another Kingdom. The kingdom of God has come near and, in so doing, rescues people from the grip of politicians. Salvation thus conceived is not simply that which believers receive when they die and go to heaven but rather that present dynamic in which we pass from death to life here and now (1 John 3:14). Salvation is thus a given, decided, present reality, not a yet-to-beaccomplished work of God. "We are not left alone in this frightful world. Into this alien land God has come to us," says Barth.6 To discover who sits on the throne is yet another way of saying that God is salvation.
In saying that Christ's incarnation was "for our salvation" we see the major reason why the church so strongly asserted that Jesus was truly, fully human. If all we needed for salvation was a helpful moral nudge, then God would have sent a skilled teacher, another Moses to instruct us. If our problem were simply liberation from unjust social structures, God would have surely given another ranting Amos. Knowing that our need was greater than the didactic or the political, the agent of our salvation is both fully divine and fully human; any less complicated a Savior would have been unhelpful.
Salvation is not only what God does in Jesus Christ (what theologians speak of as grace) but also who we are in that converting awareness that God is not only God but also God "for us and for our salvation" (justification and sanctification). When the God who was presumed by us to be an enemy against us is known as God the friend pro nobis, that is salvation in its fullness. To be saved is the fitting human response to the stunning divine move on us. This is why Peter can say to the street mob, "Save yourselves from this corrupt generation" (Acts 2:40). Though we are not the agents of salvation, God's salvation is meant to be received, embraced, and enjoyed.
THE GOSPEL OF SALVATION
What is the gospel? Karl Barth says that when we say "gospel," good news, we are talking about salvation, about the mighty acts that God has worked pro nobis:
The gospel is constituted by the mighty acts of God in history for the liberation of the cosmos. It is not a set of rickety arguments about the divine order; it is not the expression of some sublime religious experience brought mysteriously to verbal form; it is not a romantic report about awareness of God in nature; it is not a speculative, philosophical theory about the nature of ultimate reality; it is not a set of pious or moral maxims designed to straighten out the world; it is not a legalistic lament about the meanness of human nature; it is not a sentimental journey down memory lane into ancient history. It is the unique narrative of what God has done to inaugurate [God's] kingdom in Jesus of Nazareth, crucified outside Jerusalem, risen from the dead, seated at the right hand of God, and now reigning eternally with the Father, through the activity of the Holy Spirit, in the church and in the world. Where this is not announced, it will not be known.7
Barth says what the gospel is not—not religious experience, not moral platitudes, not an attempt to straighten out the world, not a deeper appreciation of nature, not something personal and subjective, not ancient history—in order to say that salvation is "the mighty acts of God in history for the liberation of the cosmos." The first book of the Bible says that the world is initiated solely through an act of God and the last book of the Bible is a sustained hymn that sings the great triumph of God in which creatures in heaven and on earth sing that "salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne" (Rev 7:10). Crucified Jesus is the one who brings, "Salvation and glory and power" (Rev 19:1).
A Christian is someone who lives in the light of this story. A Christian and a Buddhist (or for that matter, a Republican or a Democrat) differ primarily on the basis of the stories they are living. These stories tell uswhat is going on in the world, what we might reasonably expect and who really sits on the throne.
We could never have made this story up by ourselves, "this salvation of God" (Acts 28:28). We thought we knew what salvation was until we were face to face with the Christ, God's definition of salvation. Salvation does not mean anything we would like it to mean. Salvation has a particular face, a specific name, a location. We might have liked to be saved in Switzerland, which is a beautiful place. Instead, God reveals our salvation in a dusty, utterly unappealing locale (ugly back then and still is) like Nazareth. We might have received our salvation more gladly had it come to us more generally as the highest and best of humanity rather than specifically as a Jew from Nazareth who was tortured to death.
Salvation is learning to live with the God that we've got, now and forever, learning to love the God who saves. You can easily see that the thing that impresses me, as a Wesleyan, about the God we've got is that God is love. Of course, the statement, God is love, is problematic. For one thing, we don't know God. For another thing, our talk of love is suspect. Both the word God and the word love await content and definition by the particular stories that are Scripture.
We must therefore attend to Scripture, listening carefully, enjoying the particulars, looking for the overall picture that emerges, so that we may know the God that we've got, or, more specifically to the way the Scripture tells it, the God who has got us. (Remember that you are reading the thoughts of one who, when asked by a bishop the traditional ordination question, "Are you convinced that everything necessary for salvation is contained in the scriptures of Old and New Testaments?" answered, "yes.")
A good place to begin is with attention to one of Jesus' greatest hits, the so-called good Samaritan (Luke 10). A man on his way from Jerusalem to Jericho is victimized by thieves who rob him, beat him, and leave him half dead and in the ditch. Down the road comes a priest. This officially religious man will surely be the salvation for the man in the ditch. No, the priest passes by on the other side. If the clergy won't save you, who will? Then comes a pious, Bible-believing layperson—who passes by on the other side. Last comes a despised Samaritan. You have lost a lot of blood. This is your ultimate hope for rescue but you are aghast to learn that your hope, your salvation is none other than a good-for-nothing, anything-but-poor-and-pious, lousy Samaritan.
"I'm OK," you protest. "It's just a flesh wound. Don't bother yourself," muttering under your breath, "I'd rather die in this ditch than to be saved by the likes of you!"
The loathed Samaritan risks all, extravagantly responds to the need of the man in the ditch. So this is not a story about a person who stops and gives the man in the ditch the use of his cell phone in order to call the highway patrol—we would have done that. It's a story about the odd, threatening, humiliating, and extravagant form by which God draws near to us for our rescue. And, in noting our reaction to the story, it's a story about our shock at the peculiar One who risked all for us.
Like most of Scripture, the story of the man in the ditch is a story about God before it is a story about us, about the oddness of our salvation in Christ. I've used this interpretation of the parable of the good Samaritan before, and I can tell you that my congregation didn't like it. They like stories about themselves more than they like to hear stories about God. They are resourceful, educated, gifted people who don't like to be cast in the role of the beaten poor man in the ditch. They would rather be the anything-but-poor Samaritan who does something nice for the less fortunate among us. In other words, they don't like to admit that just possibly they may need to be saved.
Why is this story not about us? Doesn't the story end with Jesus saying to his interrogator, "Go and do likewise"? "Go" and "do" what? I'm saying that more difficult even than reaching out to the victim in the ditch (which is hard enough for us) is coming