How would you complete this phrase: “ God saved us to ….”? There are many ways that you could end that sentence. But considering a theme that is dominant in all the lessons today, how would you finish the sentence: “ God saved us to….” ? Think especially about the story of Thomas (Jn.20:24ff).
This is how I would finish it in view of our lessons today: God Saved Us … to Believe It! He didn't bring about this great salvation for us to ignore it. He didn't sacrifice His only dearly beloved Son in our place for us to question it. He didn't raise Christ from the dead for us to wonder if it is true. He saved us to believe it . If we don't believe “we are to be pitied” (1Co.15:19), and like Thomas we will wander about in the darkness of doubt – lost, despairing, and lifeless.
Doubt is a horrible thing. It's the reason that Peter Marshal, a former chaplain of the United States Senate, once offered the following prayer during a trying time in our history. I think you have heard part of it. It went like this: “Lord, give us clear vision that we may know where to stand and what to stand for, because unless we stand for something, we shall fall for anything.” Doubt is a hindrance to confident, positive action in life. Doubt is to faith as rust is to steel. What does that mean?
The first car I ever owned was a 1968 Rambler American. It wasn't a fancy car; it wasn't a muscle car; it wasn't a fast car. You may even laugh about it, but I'll tell you it was a durable car. That car ran and ran and ran without my doing much work to it. It might still be running today except for one thing that did it in – salt. The salt on the snowy streets caused it to rust, and the rust slowly ate away at the car's body. If allowed to continue, rust destroys things.
Like rust is to steel, doubt is to faith. If doubt continues, it will eat away and destroy faith. And not just faith, but life itself, or at least the kind of life God wants to give us through the risen Savior.
I. …So that He might transform us.
Sadly, that's such a big part of the Easter story. All the disciples were afflicted with doubt and it affected their lives. But for Thomas who would not let go of his doubt, it was even worse. Weighed down with doubt, he was falling from faith: “Unless I see the nail marks in His hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe it” (Jn.20:25).
To lay down such a condition (“unless”) is finally a declaration of unbelief because faith is not based on a sight test or a touch test. Like Paul said, “We live by faith, not by sight (1Co.5:7).” And again, “Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see” (Hb.11:1). “Hope that is seen is no hope at all” (Ro.8:24). To demand the ability to see or to touch something as a condition for faith isn't faith. It's a good thing our risen Lord transformed Thomas' heart by ministering to him for he was in a bad state. So Jesus went to work on Him.
When Jesus goes to work, things change. Remember how that worked in Thomas's case? He was absent Easter evening when the risen Lord appeared to the other disciples. We don't know where he was, but he seems to have completely given up his dreams about Jesus. He certainly had given up trusting Him. When Thomas came back home, some of the other disciples ran to him with joy, “We saw the Lord Jesus alive.” Thomas shook his head in doubt, “Oh, no. I won't believe that till I can put my fingers on the nail holes in His hands and touch the gash in His side.” Doubt ate away at him and was destroying his faith. And he did nothing about it.
A week later the disciples were meeting again. This time Thomas was with them. The doors were locked. But suddenly the Lord Jesus came to them and said, “Peace be with you.” Then He approached Thomas directly and said, “Put your finger here. Touch my hands. Feel the wound in my side. Stop doubting and believe.” When the Lord ministered to him in such a way, He transformed Thomas for Thomas confessed, “My Lord, and my God.”
When the risen Lord ministers to us, He seeks to drive away the doubts that plague us. He wants us to believe in our salvation in Him. After all, God saved us to believe it , not to doubt it, so that He might transform us into people who trust Him, people who love Him, people who find their rest in Him, people who obey Him and live for Him, people who show that they are His by how they treat others. He transforms us from self-centered people into outward looking people who give of themselves as Christ gave of Himself to us. When we are so transformed by Him, then we really live in Him for there is more to the life He gives than we tend to think.
Life in a risen Savior means more than life in heaven later on; it means life in Him now (Ro.6). Too often we grossly underestimate what that means for us in the present. John writes about this in our text when he said, “Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves the father loves his child as well. This is how we know that we love the children of God: by loving God and carrying out His commands. This is love for God: to obey His commands.”
If the Lord Jesus has chased away your doubts and you have been born again through faith in the risen Savior, you love God. And if you love God for the forgiveness and life He has given you in Christ, you automatically love people. It can't be any other way. You love the Father, you love His children too. It's like a seamless garment; they are not two separate entities, but one entity. No seam divides the back from the front. Or think of it this way: real faith and real love are inseparable. They are like heads and tails on the same coin – two faces of the same power.
That means, dear friends, if we harbor resentment and anger in our hearts against any of God's children, our faith is not complete and doubt is somewhere eating away within us for you see, in light of John's words, God's goal in saving us was not merely negative – to get us out of hell. Oh, He desperately wanted that – to get us back to heaven to be with Him. But there's more. His goal was not only to get us out of hell, but to take us back to where Adam and Eve were originally. He saved us to believe it so that He might transform us into something positive – people who think and act like He does, people who gladly and joyfully follow His commands to love Him above all things, and to love their neighbor in every way just as ourselves. That's the full life He wants to give us in Christ.
Imagine how much different our lives would be if every one of us joyfully kept His commandments. Imagine how much more enjoyable and easy it would be if we no longer had to experience disrespect, violence, unfaithfulness, stealing, bad-mouthing, and evil desires. What a joy that type of life would be.
It is to such a life the risen Lord Jesus calls us in faith. His goal was not only to get us out of hell, but He saved us to believe so that He might transform us into something positive – people who think and act like God. In that He shares His triumph with us in the present.
II. …So that He might share His triumph with us.
John writes, “And His commands are not burdensome, for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world? Only he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.” What is this triumph like? Let me begin to answer that with a story.
It is a true story about two college friends who went out one Saturday night to a party with friends. They had promised their parents there would be no drinking there, but that's not the way it turned out. In the middle of the night the friends jumped into a jeep. The driver lost control and crashed. One friend recovered from the crash; the other didn't. He died from his injuries.
At the funeral the friend who drove stood by the casket in sorrowful silence. The mother of the boy who didn't make it embraced him and whispered, “I forgive you. My boy loved you and I love you too.” That young man said when his friend's mother said that it was as if she had put air back into his lungs.
How could she forgive so easily? She explained, “I'm, a sinner whom God sent His Son to save and forgive, too. I'm not worthy of such salvation. Yet, Christ Jesus triumphed for me. If He could so easily share that triumph with me, why wouldn't I share that forgiveness?” As a Christian that mother knew what it meant to live victoriously – what it meant to overcome the world.
God saved us to believe it so that He might share His triumph with us in similar ways. In faith those who look to the risen Savior live victoriously. The world and its sorrows and pain do not overcome them, for Christ has overcome the world for them. They know it, they believe it, and so they approach life with a new kind of attitude. It's a perspective that influences how they think and talk. It affects how they interact with others. Because Christ has forgiven us, we know how to forgive others, and how to endure pain and hardship without despairing or becoming bitter. But doubt Christ and His victory for you, and there a hindrance to confident, positive action in life will prevail. It will eat away at you and unchecked will destroy you, for doubt in the power of the risen Savior is to faith as rust is to steel.
God grant us all such an Easter faith in the victory Christ won for us over sin, death, and the devil. For God saved us to believe it so that He might transform us and might share His triumph with us. God grant it to us in faith for Jesus' sake. Amen.