Well, not quite! At least, that's not quite what the verse says.
What Paul actually writes in Rom 1.16 is that the gospel "is the power of salvation for everyone who believes" - and that makes a great deal of difference!
You see, I think what we usually mean when we talk about the gospel as the power of God for salvation is that it is the power of God to convince people to believe. In other words, that the announcement of the gospel to unbelievers is what causes them to have faith. And, of course, there is truth in that - after all, as Paul puts it in Rom 10.14-15, "how can they believe in one of whom they have never heard?"
However, in Rom 1.16, Paul is saying that the gospel is God's power to bring people who already believe to salvation; namely, to escape from the wrath of God that is being revealed (Rom 1.18). He's not at this point talking about what causes people to have faith, he's talking about people who already have come to faith.
Why does this matter? I think there are 2 reasons.
First, according to the New Testament, the agent who works to bring people to faith is the Holy Spirit. As Jesus puts it in Jn 3.8: "The wind blows where it chooses ... so it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit." Of course, the Spirit uses the announcement of the saving significance of the life, death, resurrection, ascension and return of Jesus Christ; but it is the Spirit who brings new life - after all, he is the Lord, the giver of life.
The difference here is one of control. You see, we are in control of the way we proclaim the gospel. The words we use, the ideas we put together with those words, the force with which we communicate those ideas - these are all decisions we make. And I wonder whether sometimes, when we say that the gospel is the power of God for salvation (in the sense that it is what brings people to faith), what we implicitly are saying is that if only we get the words and ideas and communication right - really, really right, perfectly faithful to Scripture in every way, with no gap or remainder - then people will surely come to faith!
Which then leads to a flip side. Namely, that if people are not coming to believe, it must be because we - or others - have not articulated the gospel accurately enough!
Now, don't misunderstand me. I'm all for accuracy - that is, Biblical faithfulness. Our concern for accuracy must come from a deep devotion to God, so as not to be found to misrepresent him - God forbid!
But there's more to faithful proclamation of the gospel than accuracy, in two sense. On the one hand, accuracy does not replace the life-giving, faith-giving work of the Spirit - he is the one who blows unbelief away, where he chooses. And on the other hand, our proclamation needs not to be merely accurate - although it certainly needs to be that - it also needs to be intelligible. And that means not only linguistically intelligible, but also culturally and conceptually. And that means contextualisation.
Andrew
Reading CS Lewis' Mere Christianity, I came across another one of those quotes I had heard before, but never located. It's in a chapter titled 'Good Infection', and is really talking about the nature of the connection between us and God.
Here is the quote:
"Good things as well as bad, you know, are caught by a kind of infection. If you want to get warm you must stand near the fire. If you want to be wet you must get into the water. If you want joy, power, peace, eternal life, you must get close to, or even into, the thing that has them. They are not a sort of prizes which God could, if He chose, just hand out to anyone. They are a great fountain of energy and beauty spurting up at the very centre of reality. If you are close to it, the spray will wet you; if you are not, you will remain dry. Once a man is united to God, how could he not live forever? Once a man is separated from God, what could he do but wither and die?"
This, I think, is brilliant. It highlights the 'intrinsic' character of salvation, as opposed to an 'extrinsic' version - intrinsic to God that is. What do I mean?
Lewis highlights the fact that salvation and all its blessings are not somehow separable from God, as though you could have the blessings without having God.
On the one hand, this helps us understand what Paul (especially) means by "union with Christ". Our connection with Christ is not like the way we connect with a supplier, where a buyer pays something, and gets something in return. It's not only that we could never 'pay' God for salvation - it always comes to us as a gift, because of the price that Jesus paid - but also that there is no necessary relation between the supplier and the item that is supplied - it could be anything! Whereas what Lewis is pointing out is that what God gives us is nothing other - and nothing less than - himself! Hence, salvation could never keep God at a distance, as so many unbelievers think, who see themselves as "going to heaven" but have nothing at all to do with God.
On the other hand, it also helps us to understand why condemnation is not the arbitrary withholding of a "prize" from people who don't meet the selection criteria. To keep oneself from God is necessarily to keep oneself from the blessings of salvation, because salvation is nothing other - and nothing less - than the blessing of God's glory present and powerful for you.
Why does this matter? I suspect that many unbelievers in our post-Christian but still Christian hung-over context believe in God and salvation (at least, that's what the census says), but see salvation precisely like a prize, in the way that Lewis speaks about. And when we speak about salvation without clarifying its intrinsic character, we are heard to be saying, 'God is a prize giver, and you need to meet the criteria'. What happens then is an argument about the criteria - and many unbelievers are simply offended when you try to tell them they don't meet the criteria.
What Lewis helps us to see - and this is part of the whole contextualisation challenge - is that the problem here lies with the way the issue is framed in the first place. Salvation is not a prize, it is a 'good infection'.
Andrew Katay
A few weeks ago, a guy approached me outside our church building and indicated that he wanted to know more about God - he felt a spiritual vacuum in his soul, and knew that he needed to do something about it.
He was a senior, quite proper Englishman, and it occurred to me that reading Mere Christianity by CS Lewis might be a way to begin to address his questions - and then to move on from that to a gospel in due course.
It's been a joy to see him open up spiritually. At the same time, one of the great things about reading the book cover to cover is that you find out the context of many of the great CS Lewis quotes you've heard a dozen times, but not been able to place.
The thing that stands out to me is that Lewis engages in a brilliant piece of contextualisation. The first part of the book is a sustained argument for the existence of God on the basis of morality - I'll leave you to read it to get a sense of how he does it.. How is that contextual? The book started its life as a series of broadcasts during the second world war, where issues of right and wrong, and in particular the growing moral outrage at the actions of the Nazi regime, were at the forefront of people's minds. And so Lewis takes that and uses it as a starting point for his presentation of the gospel.
The point is this. Culturally, we are in a very different place from mid-WW2. And so the question for us has to be, what constitutes contextually strategic starting points for our presentation of Christ? What are our cultural narratives that either presuppose or are completed by, Christ?
Of course, we could just say, 'just preach the gospel'! But actually, that just pushes the question back a little further - is there any 'just' when it comes to peaching the gospel? Or does every presentation of the gospel have to start somewhere?
We'll look in more detail at this in later posts. For now, take this as an encouragement to read Mere Christianity, and see how someone else in a different time and place had a go at really insightful contextualisation, as a stimulus for our own efforts - and enjoy discovering the quotes!
