My Journey Through the Course of Soteriology

Many of my questions on soteriology were answered over the last seven weeks. 

I have wrestled with the teaching of salvation; while I believe that salvation is readily available for everyone, my battle has been with the journey following salvation to eternity. In John Wesley’s sermon, The Scripture Way of Salvation, he expresses that nothing can be more complex to understand than religion; for me, this is exceptionally true as I have battled whether salvation is a once-in-a-lifetime prayer and done or if salvation can be removed from us when we sin. I related to Wesley’s teachings that sinful nature does not leave us when we are saved; sin is extracted from our hearts, but we soon find that sinful nature is still present. 

I have often been taught that once someone is saved, their sin is removed, and they are expected to sin no more. While this is ideal, as Wesley explains, it is not our nature. We must choose the process of continual growth through God’s grace that will lead us to become more holy (sanctified) and less likely to sin. The journey to freedom from sin begins with salvation. 

Many religions tend to focus either on justification or sanctification after salvation. Wesley brings clarity to the meaning of both terms. Justification is the pardon of our sins with immediate effects of the peace and joy of the Lord. After justification, sanctification begins; sanctification is an absolute and relative change that starts where the Lord's love works in and through us.   

In his book Responsible Grace, Maddox looks into what Wesley describes as prevenient grace. God’s initial move to restore a relationship with fallen humanity is prevenient grace.  God created us, yet we failed him; his love for us is more significant than our sins. His love is ever-present as he makes a way through prevenient grace. The Triune God gave all for us to be reunited and restored to what he initially intended for his creation.

Another way to understand God’s grace is to look at Ed Nissen’s teaching on the blessed fall. Nissen explains that through the fall of Adam and Eve, we stepped into a blessing as the fall provides salvation. I had never studied this theory before, but as I pondered it, I embraced it. For Adam and Eve to have free will, there had to be temptation. We know that Adam and Eve use their free will, give in to temptation, and are exiled from the garden, but God’s love for his creation is evident through prevenient grace. 

God’s love is full of grace as he desires to restore us to him. As Maddox points out, he will not force us to serve him but will draw us. It is this grace that carries us through our imperfect journey to eternity. But it is not in eternity that we must wait on the goodness of God; instead, he desires to bestow goodness and blessings upon us while we are on earth. He walks with us as we journey along our paths, feasting on the grace he loving bestows upon us. God’s grace is sufficient for our past, present, and future sins; we must allow him to continually work in us, with the goal being the ability to love others as God loves us.

References

Randy L. Maddox, Responsible Grace: John Wesley's Practical Theology. (Nashville: Kingswood Books, 1994), 90.

John Wesley, “The Scripture Way of Salvation,” in Bicentennial Works of John Wesley, ed. Albert Outler, Vol. 2 (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1984), 155.