Pastor’s Pen
As we head into October, we look forward to the leaves turning, the day’s getting shorter, and Halloween celebrations. October is a month that embraces scary movies, that encourages our superstitions, and gives us the imagination to see monsters in our closets. It is a time in which our culture fantasizes about a secularized heaven and hell. We talk about the euphoric, harmonious place we hope to go, and dread the dark, dingy place which we do not. We talk about heaven and hell in the context of these stories, but the primary goal of salvation in Jesus Christ is the restoration of God’s image in our lives. Salvation may involve heaven, but that is just one aspect of the good news we can expect as Christians.
In Scripture we learn that the world as we experience it today was not intended to be this way. Genesis describes a creation and humanity that were deemed good and very good respectively. The garden provides a harmonious picture of humanity, creation, and God in joyous and ignorant fellowship. And yet, we read on to discover that the innocence of Eden gave way to human maturity in the knowledge of God and evil. We were given free will, which is the opportunity to choose for ill or for good. The knowledge of good and evil created a new, deeper form of relationality between God and humanity. God, our holy and loving Parent, did not leave humanity to its own devices and to revel in darkness. By the witness of God’s chosen people Israel, the name and character of God was made known. A light shone through the darkness leading God’s people home. It is through the particular witness of Israel that God became human. Jesus became like us in life and death, so that we might rise with him in glory. He erased the separation between creation and the heaves and laid the foundation for us to be reborn in God’s image. Our salvation was not just about a destination, but about the full restoration of the universe.
The ultimate goal of salvation is not going to heaven nor a declaration of righteousness. These are a part of the larger goal of salvation. The end of salvation is for us to have the image of God restored in our lives so that we might live in mature love for God and others. It is the ultimate hope that our communion with God and our neighbor would be rightly restored. In this sense, the restoration of the image of God has personal, social, and cosmic implications on our lives. The ultimate aim of salvation reimagines our reality as ordered to the entirety of creation reconciled to God in Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit. While we shall enjoy a season of frights, hauntings, and scary movies, we can be assured that God came so to bring light to the world’s darkness.
