“Impartial Salvation”
Rev. Dr. John J. Lolla, Jr.
May 6, 2018
Text: Acts 10:34-35, New Testament: Acts 10:34-48, Gospel: John 15:9-17
The Apostle Peter made a remarkable statement to the Roman centurion, Cornelius. “I truly understand that God shows no partiality. In every nation, anyone who fears Him and does what is right is acceptable to Him.”
Peter knew the secret to Jesus’ message – Jesus came to bring salvation to the entire world. He was not the exclusive property of Judea, King Herod, or the Temple priests in Jerusalem. He had a view from heaven that demanded righteousness of all nations, not simply the Jews.
God is not partial to nationality. God is partial to righteousness.
If a nation is not righteous, God doesnot accept them. If a nation is righteous, God accepts them.
No people or their government is acceptable to God if it is not righteous – if it does not do what is right in God’s eyes. No government leader can claim to represent God if he does not do right. No people can claim to be God’s people if they do not do what is right according to God.
Righteousness is a basic condition of salvation through Jesus Christ. God accepts the righteous, those who suffer for doing righteousness and those who do good by caring for people who are most destitute.
Jesus Christ did not come for people who are self-righteous. Jesus did not come to serve people who were only interested in serving themselves and the expense of others. He considered such people unrighteous. Jesus Christ came for those who give up their lives for others in the name of Jesus’ forgiveness and peace.
Those who hunger and thirst after righteousness; Those who devote their lives to seeking after righteousness will be filled by God’s blessing.
This is the message of Jesus Christ’s Testament. This is Jesus Christ’s promise. People are served by righteous neighbors who are practicing Christ’s love ethic. People are served by righteous government practicing Christ’s love ethic.
God’s mission is served by righteous people in neighborhoods, nations, and governments. God’s mission is not served when people are terrorized by unrighteous government. Christian government is accountable to Jesus Christ. Christian leaders are representatives of Christ’s Gospel of peace.
This basic standard of biblical teaching in the Book of Acts about Jesus Christ was understandable to the people of Scotland in the sixteenth century. They knew its importance and were willing to hold not only the Church’s leader to this standard, the pope. They were willing to hold Scottish king to its standard, the king of England as well, and the people they believed they ruled.
They were not only willing to call ecclesiastical leaders to humble themselves before Christ and be His true representatives on earth, they were calling their civil rulers to accountability by Jesus’ standard of righteousness.
The Scots had their doubts about the Church’s righteousness when Patrick Hamilton was burned at the stake in 1528 at St. Andrews, Scotland. His crime was wanting the Bible available in Scotland’s native tongue, Gallic. He had been a 23 year-old idealist who had studied with Martin Luther in Germany.
Patrick Hamilton was excited about the Luther’ teaching of Church reform. The Church could be better. It could rise above its unrighteousness when church leaders were accountable to Jesus Christ’s Gospel before the people of the Church.
When the people of the Church knew the Gospel rightly preached, the sacraments rightly observed, and church government righteously administered, there would be a better Church and a better nation!
Patrick Hamilton’s burning exposed the unrighteousness in Church and state in the early sixteenth century. What happened to him was sanctioned not only by the Archbishop of St. Andrews, but in the name of the Scottish monarch in whose name the bishop led the Church.
Eighteen years later, the itinerate Scots preacher, George Wishart, translated the Second Helvetic Confession of Faith into Gallic. It was the confession of the Swiss reformation. He was perceived to be a threat to the Church and the state. Wishart was hung and burned at the stake for teaching John Calvin and Ulrich Zwingli’s reformation to the Scottish people.
The people of Scotland did not see righteousness in these deplorable acts. They saw unrighteousness of Cardinal James Beaton that did not represent Jesus Christ’s message. The Scottish people condemned the privy courts where mock trials were held before condemning the reformer preachers to death.
One impressionable young man was incensed by the stake burnings. He was a supporter of George Wishart by the name of John Knox. Knox became a priest in the Church. He was dedicated to its reform. He preached against not only Church leaders in Scotland and France, but the governments of Scotland and England. He condemned Mary Queen of Scots and Queen Elizabeth from the pulpit, calling for government to represent God’s righteousness.
For Patrick Hamilton, George Wishart, and John Knox, neither Germany, France, Spain, Ireland, England, or Rome could claim exclusive title to the salvation of Jesus Christ. Each nation needed to model God’s righteousness.
Scotland’s people were as valuable to God’s as any other nation. But their relationship with God was in peril. The Scottish people prayed for independence from a corrupt culture that did not tolerate Church improvement. Neither the Church nor the state was living up to God’s righteousness in Jesus’ teachings.
Equally important, the Scottish people needed to know the Bible’s righteousness. They could only know it if they could understand its message in their own language. Then the people could hold accountable church and government leaders to a higher calling than simply, “Might makes right.” Just because thereare leaders of Church and state does not mean they are above being righteous as God defines righteousness in Jesus’ teachings.
The Scottish people were calling for a reform of both the Petrine principle of Church authority and the divine right of kings. They demanded a Church free from Machiavellian politics, and a civil government where the monarchsubmitted to God’s righteousness by showing compassion and grace. They became known as Presbyterians – whose maturity in faith sought maturity in righteousness.
Baptism for them was not an entitlement by birthright. Just because a child was born Christian didn’t make that child righteous. Baptism in Christ was a calling to defend the integrity of Christ’s Gospel in a world of gross inequality and terrible injustice.
All were subject to God’s governance, including those in high civic places in Edinburgh and London. All were subject to Christ’s humility, including those in high church places in Canterbury and Rome.
God shows no partiality with His salvation to those who follow their callas Christ’s people. But God will withhold His blessing from a nation whose Church and civil leaders are unrighteous.
God expects righteousness and holiness that serves His Son’s mission of disciple-making. New disciples need spiritual and civic leaders who represent Christ as Christ represents Himself.
The Scottish people from the Lowlands to the Highlands could not sit back and accept the unrighteousness of their leaders. Their leaders’ unrighteousness reflected poorly upon them before the Great Judge of Life, Jesus Christ.
A Church seeking to represent Christ’s righteousness will always be open to reforming itself around Christ and His teaching. This was the goal of the Franciscan Order. Their vow of poverty was a prophetic voice to Rome for 300 years prior to Patrick Hamilton being tied to a stake at St. Andrews.
The Church had been challenged by reforming voices of Christ’s righteousness from the Lollards and Wycliffites in England 250 years before John Knox. From France’s and Italy’s Waldensians the voices of reform had been raised to challenge the Church to righteousness.
The voices of John Hus, Martin Luther, Menno Simons, Ulrich Zwingli, Heinrich Bullinger, John Calvin, from the Czechs, the Germans, and Swiss, pled on behalf of the people for Church righteousness that served Christ’s children inside the Church.
William Wallace, and Robert Bruce were willing to die to hold the English monarch to a higher standard of righteousness – for salvation in Christ was at stake for a people – the people of Jesus Christ. God’s righteousness would free them from a yoke of slavery to tyranny!
This is the faith legacy we have inherited as Presbyterians! We are a people whose freedom from tyranny came from proclaiming Jesus Christ’s righteousness!
Today, the number of religious non-believers has increased to a quarter of America’s population. Judicial decisions against Christian public expression goes un-noticed by Church and state who have no sympathy for the value of Christ’s righteous for national justice. The same challenge posed to our Scottish ancestors rises for the people of Christ today.
When school shootings mar public education where fewer families support the value of the Church, an opiode epidemic is taking the lives of teenagers who are dying in a spiritual desert void of God, and the righteousness of Christ’s ethic is not tolerated by the state in its curriculum, can we say our national righteousness is in peril? What kind of people are we becoming?
What is God seeing in us from His heavenly vantage point?
The Apostle Peter’s message to the people of Jerusalem so long ago is a wake-up call for the Presbyterian Church today. It is a wake-up call for America as well. Our Pilgrim and Puritan ancestors left England for fear they would not be saved when Christ returned because England still was corrupted by injustice and immorality. We are the inheritors of a spiritual tradition that rose up once upon a time to call the leaders of Church and state to a higher standard of righteousness.
We Presbyterians broke the laws of Scotland and England in their unrighteousness to declare the Judge of Life is the true giver of the Law that sees the salvation of the world as its end. We Presbyterians, who have sent missionaries around the world in Jesus Christ’s name to share that vision of salvation’s righteousness are being challenged to be sent into our community, our state, our nation with a fire in our hearts for God’s righteousness.
We have stories of martyrdom and faithfulness of our Scottish past to inspire us and empower us. But no story is greater than that of the Church’s first martyr, Jesus Christ, and His Apostles who followed Him to the cross.
They call for us from the great cloud of witnesses in the Kingdom of Heaven to be the people who hunger and thirst after God’s righteousness in this time, and in this place!
To be a people who seek reform for a better Church, and a better nation! That the whole world might know the Glory of God!
Amen.
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