The Plan of Salvation

W. Carl Ketcherside

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     "We're all so clogged with dead ideas passed from generation, to generation that even the best of us don't know the way out."--Peter Weiss, Marat/Sade.

     One who challenges the traditions of a people must always be prepared to face their hostility. When opinions have become crystallized by constant repetition men are frightened at the thought of divesting themselves of them. Without them they feel helpless and insecure. They regard the surrender of them as being an unfair reflection upon their fathers, and fear that a denial of them will weaken the truth which they have sought to buttress with them.

     It was Thomas Carlyle, the Scottish essayist and historian, who wrote, "What an enormous magnifier is tradition! How a thing grows in the human memory and in the human imagination, when love, worship, and all that is in the human heart, is there to encourage it."

     I am not by nature an inconoclast, an idol-smasher. I think a lot of traditions are harmless and insignificant and I have no ambition to go around slashing at them for the mere satisfaction of revealing them for what they are. But others are detrimental to the revealed truth of heaven, because they parade as truth, and may contribute to the destruction of the one body, and the ultimate destruction of souls. I am an avowed enemy of anything which obstructs the eternal purpose.

     In the Hall of Fame for Great Americans at New York University is a bust of Mark Twain. Beneath it are the words, "Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul." I am resolved, with the help of God, to stand by, with, and for the truth of heaven, but I feel no compulsion to defend with equal fervor those traditions which are "ours." I say this despite the fact that Thomas Babington Macaulay wrote, "To almost all men the state of things under which they have been used to live seems to be the necessary state of things."

     Perhaps I can help you understand my personal reaction to some areas of thought by reproducing for you a little of the dialogue which took place one morning in a question period in which I fielded queries from a good-natured group whose members were not all in agreement with my views.

     1. Is it true that you hold that there is no plan of salvation?

     I think it would be a little silly to say there is no plan of salvation. It is obvious that God had a design by which the chasm eroded by sin was to be bridged. There certainly is a response to the good news which must be made by the lost. The heart must reach out in love to grasp the infinite and to tune in to eternal life.

     What I have said is that the so-called "five steps of salvation" advocated by my

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brethren as the plan conveys a wrong impression. One does not come into the vital, life-giving interpersonal relationship by a hop, skip and jump method. The kingdom of heaven is not attained by scampering up five steps at the urging of a preacher, as if the house of God was a split-level domicile. The tragic thing about reducing the divine response to grace to such a simplistic sequence is that it leaves many people as empty, lonely, and forlorn afterwards as they were before.

     When I was a very young preacher conducting meetings in a rural area, I would go to the plain meetinghouse every afternoon and put a chart on the blackboard. Some of these drawings were quite elaborate and designed to elicit complimentary remarks from those who remained awake long enough to see them. An invariable ingredient of every one of them was a circle bearing the label, "kingdom of heaven," with a little kitchen stepladder leading into it. The five rungs were designated h, f, r, c, b. It was not necessary to spell out the words. Any "Church of Christ" audience on earth knew the initials stood for hearing, faith, repentance, confession and baptism.

     But there are several things wrong with this clever little arrangement. For one thing, God overlooked it in his revelation, and nowhere delivered it in the neat package in which our brethren tie it up and pass it across the counter to aliens. They must search around and dig about in the scriptures to find the verses that fit, and the pile of passages they reject in the process is a lot larger than the little one which validates the steps. It might be all right to pick out the kernels and discard the shells, except for one thing. No part of God's revelation is husk or shell and the word of God is not nuts! Why not read that last sentence again?

     The "plan of salvation" has been contrived by human ingenuity and nailed together by men. They have lifted a passage from Matthew, another from Luke, a few from Acts, and a goodly assortment from the epistles, and out of these have constructed the stairs to the stars which men must climb, leaving each in turn, until the last one leads smack into the new creation. But the new creation is the work of God and not of men. We can no more create ourselves the second time than we could the first. And we are not created by someone lowering a little ladder for us to climb.

     That is why some of the most frustrated, unhappy, grumbling individuals on earth are "in the church." They are frightened and insecure. They have done all they were told to do, by a preacher who is as perplexed about how to order his life as they are theirs, and yet they are uncertain and bewildered. Instead of coming into a glorious life of light and love they took the last step and were left dangling and kicking with their suspenders caught on the leg of the ladder. They are afraid to let go and let God, so they remain close to the water, trusting in their baptism rather than in the grace of our God. And when they find the same desires and lusts welling up in them as before they begin to wonder about their baptism. They can't understand why it did not "take." Perhaps the preacher was awkward and did not get them all the way under and left something sticking out of the water! It is a traumatic experience when you are twenty years old and are still wondering if you were ever born.

     There is a tremendous difference between knowing that baptism is required and in experiencing eternal life. You could train a parrot to repeat the five steps, and if he was a particularly smart bird, he might even learn where the scriptures are found for each, but he would still be caged. And many of my brethren, instead of finding release, think they have stumbled into prison where they must work arduously or toil endlessly under the watchful eyes of the wardens, or the angels will heave them into Gehenna. Life is one continuous round of fire-fighting and it is hard for a fire-fighter on the job around the clock to take time out to be very loving!

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     There is another thing wrong with the staircase to salvation. It creates the impression that you hear the word of God awhile and then leave that step and move on up to faith, and then leave faith and move on up another notch to repentance. The fact is that we can never get high enough that we can quit hearing the word, and we can never leave faith for anything else.

     We need to change the illustration from a ladder to an escalator. On an escalator you take one step and that places you in a position where an unseen power can lift you up to your destination. The step you take is faith, and wherever else you go, or whatever else you do, it must be done while standing on faith. It is in faith that we repent, and in faith that we are baptized. Indeed these are the responses of faith. They are faith expressing itself, faith demonstrating that it is alive and active. By grace are you saved through faith. Grace is the escalator which draws us unto God and faith is the step we take to enter grace.

     Walter Scott, known as "the voice of the golden oracle," truly felt that he discovered and restored the plan of salvation. Legend has it that, in an attempt to make the message clear, he appeared at a schoolhouse to announce that he would preach that night and to urge the children to carry his invitation to attend to their parents. Upon impulse he asked them to hold up the fingers of one hand, and beginning with the thumb he designated each finger by a word or phrase, and had the children memorize these.

     Unfortunately for our current crop of traditionalists, Scott's "five-finger exercise" was different than the more modern variety. He labeled the fingers faith, repentance, baptism, remission and the gift of the Holy Spirit. He contended that faith destroyed the love of sin, repentance the practice of sin, baptism the power of sin, remission the guilt of sin, and the gift of the Spirit the punishment of sin.

     A corollary to this was that death, the sting of sin, would also be destroyed and the believer made free. The simplicity of it all caught fire among the humble frontier dwellers and they sometimes reduced it to a jingle which they recited or hummed to themselves at work in field or forest. This aggravated the sectarian clergy. A Methodist preacher who lost a number of members passed out word that Scott had strangled a number of them and actually drowned several of them while immersing them. Rowdy Methodists and Presbyterians gathered at the river to jeer at and ridicule those who were baptized. Frequently Scotts' horse was loosed and driven off while he was in the water, and once when he had tracked it for several miles he found it with its tail cut off.

     The change in "the plan to salvation" as it is now proclaimed is very significant. We dropped a couple of items in the plan as announced by Scott and inserted a couple of others of our own choosing. In doing so we merely signalled the fact that we had lost a sense of the nature, power and consequences of sin, and the purpose and design of God in the conquest of this usurper of man's heart. In devising our "steps" we encouraged men to take them as a kind of ritualistic dance without any thought as to their relationship to the divine intention.

     More and more we concentrated upon baptism as the culmination of the whole purpose of God, and while emphasizing it as the key to forgiveness, we played down that forgiveness as a free act of grace, motivated by divine love and extended in mercy as deep and boundless as the ocean. The result is that, in spite of all we said, the guilt-consciousness lingered on, and some have been baptized three or four times, not to fulfill all righteousness but to try and remove the gnawing doubt in their insecure hearts.

     And the gift of the Spirit as the divine seal of promise and the guarantee of the inheritance was forgotten, and was no longer part of "the plan of salvation."

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There wasn't even a rung of the remodeled ladder reserved for the Spirit, and as our developing sectarianism flowered into full-blown partisan provincialism we heard less and less of the Spirit, and men began to equate Him with the word which they read, believed and sought to understand.

     To directly face up to your question it is true that Walter Scott deduced the "plan of salvation" from the scriptures, but it is not "the plan of salvation" you hear proclaimed in our revivals, which we call "gospel meetings" and which some of our more immediate progenitors called "protracted efforts." It is hard to think of three or four night sessions as "protracted." It is equally difficult for me to think of five nights of haranguing on the evils of orphan homes, Bible classes, individual cups, instrumental music, or the danger of world communism as a gospel meeting. Apparently we have not only changed the "plan of salvation" from the time of Walter Scott, but we have changed the content of the gospel since the days of Paul.

     I do not think of myself as a spiritual daredevil, and I doubt that one needs to be a "Fearless Fosdick" to point out an error. Perhaps you imply that our brethren are so entrenched in their opinions that one who questions them puts his neck in the noose. But I never forget what happened to Haman who contrived a gallows to get rid of one of God's servants only to end up with his feet dangling and his body slowly gyrating at the end of the hemp. So I will risk naming "one of the items." In doing so I must first issue a word of caution. A lot of brethren who are always poised to jump at any statement made by one whom they would like to see removed from the scene allow their ambition to outdistance their judgment. They assume that when one says a thing is not essential he implies that it is wrong or sinful. This does not follow at all. A thing may be innocent in itself, and devoid of evil, but when it is bound as part of a dogmatic system or divine requirement to salvation, it is clearly out of place.

     This certainly applies to "the good confession" which has been hammered into place as one of the steps on the same basis as faith and repentance. I do not think God ever demanded this of an alien sinner as a condition for remission of sins in the form that it is now taught and required. I am constantly receiving tracts purporting to answer the question of what one must do to be saved. Almost invariably the answer is given, "Five things are required of the sinner," and then they are ticked off with oral confession as the fourth in line.

     Of course what our brethren have done is to construct the ladder and then look at the "blueprint" to see how they can justify it. And they have come up with some quotations which satisfy them a lot better than they do reason or scripture. One of the most familiar is Matthew 10:32. "Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father which is in heaven." To apply this to people as a prelude to coming to Christ is a wee bit ridiculous in the light of the context.

     The passage occurs in conjunction with the calling and commissioning of the apostles. They were to be sent as sheep among wolves and must beware of men. They would be delivered up to councils, scourged in synagogues and brought before governors and kings for public trial.

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They would be persecuted from city to city, but were not to fear those who could only kill the body. In such periods of trial those who stood firm against pressure and openly confessed their allegiance to Christ would be confessed by him before his Father. Those who weakened and recanted the faith would be denied.

     It was not even necessary for one to speak in order to confess Christ under such circumstances. He might do it by his attitude or action. I have never known of a congregation asking one to "come forward" in order to "deny Christ before men." But if it is not necessary to come forward to deny him before men it is not necessary to do so to confess him before men. If you can deny him before men by conduct and deed, you certainly can confess him thus. Our brethren are hard put when they must take a scripture like this out of context and warp it in order to get one of "the five steps of salvation." I say this in full recognition that, in my ignorance I used to do the same thing. This passage has no reference to one who is coming to Christ. It refers to those who are in Christ and under pressure of the authorities for that very reason.

     But I suspect that all of you know that the textual "trump card" for such maneuvering is Romans 10:9, 10. "If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation."

     I think a careful study will show that the apostle is not talking of a one-time pre-baptismal confession, but of the entire course of Christian conduct or life. He begins the chapter with a statement of his concern for the Jews who had a zeal for God but lacked knowledge. In their ignorance of God's basis of justification or righteousness, which is by faith, they presumed to contrive their own method, which was by law.

     The apostle then declares that Christ is the end of the law for justification unto all who believe. By his death on the cross Jesus forever banished any attempt at justification by law. Righteousness does not come by law, but by faith. Those who trust in law as the basis of righteousness are like the Jews. They are ignorant of God's system of justification. There are but two foundations for justification-- law and faith. The first is impossible, not because of the nature of law, but because of the nature of man.

     Moses describes righteousness based upon law-keeping by saying, "He that doeth these things shall live by them." This simply means that life based upon law demands perfect conformity and absolute obedience. The least infraction brings death. Any failure to comply ends life at that point. Law revives sin and man dies. It is silly to talk about being justified by faith and law at the same time, or by believing in law as the basis of justification. If you are justified by faith it cannot be by law, and vice versa.

     Contrary to the justification which Moses described, the righteousness of faith is not based upon human effort or accomplishment. One does not need to go anywhere or see anything in order to believe. He does not need to ascend into heaven and bring Christ down from above. He does not need to go down into the abyss to raise up Christ from the dead. He has the testimony at hand. It is near to him and available unto him. It requires no further miracle to confirm it but is already in his mouth and in his heart, internal and external, a subject of conviction and communication.

     The word of faith which has been proclaimed is sufficient to cause one to believe in his heart that God raised Jesus from the dead. It is sufficient also to prompt him to confess that Jesus is Lord. No further ascension or descension of Jesus is required. It is not essential to faith that we produce Jesus, either by going up after him, or by going down after him. It is only necessary that we proclaim him, impelled by our inner faith.

     The word for confess is homologeo. It means to assent to, or verbally endorse

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what another has said. Literally, it is to speak that which agrees with what another affirms or maintains. In this instance it is the expression of agreement with what God declares is true. Thus, it does not contemplate here a formal repetition of a statement or sentence, but of a constant testimony of acquiescence with God's wonderful revelation concerning Jesus.

     It is helpful to remember that the word for confession is the same as the word for profession. A man's profession is not his oath of office but his vocation. It is used of Timothy who "professed a good profession before many witnesses," and of Jesus, "who before Pontius Pilate witnessed a good confession" (1 Timothy 6:12, 13). Certainly, neither of these were alien sinners as our brethren designate those who have not made "the good confession." The word is found in Hebrews 3:1, where Christ is designated "the Apostle and High Priest of our profession." Whatever is involved in our profession as Christians is included in our confession. It is not what we say or do to become Christians but what we say and do as Christians.

     Albert Barnes, in commenting upon Romans 10:9, says, "A profession of religion then denotes a public declaration of our agreement with what God has declared, and extends to all his declarations about our lost estate, our sin, and need of a Savior; to his doctrines about his own nature, holiness and law; about the Savior and Holy Spirit; about the necessity of a change of heart and holiness of life; and about the grave and the judgment; about heaven and hell."

     There is nothing in the scriptures about a ritualistic or formal "confession" as a step into the fellowship of God's Son. I have known preachers who would privately convince a man that Jesus was the Son of God and when the man testified to his desire to be immersed because of his acceptance of that fact, they would still have him "come down the aisle" and taking him by the hand, would ask him a question which he had already answered in their presence, "Do you believe with all your heart that Jesus is the Christ the Son of God?" And they thought this was essential as a preliminary to baptism.

     Once, a man who by virtue of his study and meditation, reached the conclusion that he should be immersed, wrote to a preacher and asked if he would meet him at the church building at 9:00 a.m. on Monday and baptize him. The man wrote, "I am so thoroughly convinced that Jesus is the Son of God that I simply must obey him as Lord of my life." The two of them met at the appointed time and the preacher suggested prayer. After they had prayed he said to the lone individual, "Will you please stand?" Taking him by the hand, he fastened his eyes upon him and said, "Do you believe with all of your heart that Jesus is the Christ the Son of God"? Puzzled, the man replied, "Why, didn't you get my letter?"

     It will be hard for you to believe that I have actually heard people argue that before you can "take the confession" you must have more than one witness present because the book says, "Whosoever shall confess me before men" and men is a plural word. In the light of the context which shows that Jesus is talking about the testimony of his apostles this is ridiculous and absurd.

     Certainly not! You are reading back into the account a procedure which we have devised. Do not let that throw you. It is a common practice among the brethren who must validate what they do by "the pattern" even if they have to invent the pattern.

     In the first place the verse to which you refer is not found in the majority of the Greek manuscripts. It is omitted in the oldest extant copies. It is wanting in the Ethiopian and Syrian versions and is rejected by the ablest critical scholars. This does not mean that what it states is not valid but it certainly means that one

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cannot honestly base a requirement or practice upon it and make it "a condition of salvation."

     But even if the passage was written by Luke it still does not bear out the use to which we have often put it. Philip did not require, request or demand "a confession" of the treasurer. When the man pointed to the water which they were approaching and asked what hindrance there might be to his immersion, Philip simply stated that the only requisite condition was a firm conviction of heart in the Jesus whom he had proclaimed.

     If the verse, the insertion of which is questionable, was recorded by Luke, the man merely replied with a statement that he believed that Jesus was the Son of God. If the verse was not written by Luke, the man just stopped the horses and went down into the water with Philip. In either event, the idea of a formal confession as a step in a "plan of salvation" is not in the account and nothing would have surprised Luke or Philip more than to learn that we thought it was. One of our tracts would have really confused them when they learned that we were crediting our traditional position to what they said and did.

     We are only instructed to immerse believers, and if one presents himself to us for baptism and we are not sure if he believes we ought to enquire of him about the matter. His statement of faith is not for the benefit of God who can read his heart, nor for the benefit of the candidate who knows his own feeling in the matter. It is only for the information of the immerser. Certainly if, through long association and counselling, I am aware of the deep conviction of a person, it is not necessary for me to solemnly intone a question and elicit a stereotyped reply, designated "the good confession."

     This is not saying there is anything wrong or sinful about asking one to affirm his faith in the presence of others. All of us ought to do that every time an appropriate season is presented for so doing. But we need to keep this in proper perspective and not make of it a stilted and precisian performance for candidates for baptism. Surely we need to quit twisting the scriptures to conform to our practice and then labeling the procedure "the divine plan of salvation."

     I will because you have asked me to do it, but I am not overly anxious to do so. It is so much a part of our hallowed tradition that to say anything derogatory about the practice is about the same as talking against motherhood and apple pie. I will never forget a good brother and sister in Arkansas who walked out on the congregation and refused to have anything further to do with the brethren. He explained their action to me. "They brought in one of these young preachers from college who was too big for his breeches and had no respect for God's word. We didn't like him from the first, but the last straw was when he omitted the invitation song one Sunday morning because there was no outsiders present. We just couldn't stand such disrespect for the teaching of the Book, so we up and quit."

     Of course, the practice of singing an invitation song addressed to any sinners who may be "within the sound of our voice" is wholly without scriptural foundation. As our brethren fondly recite about other things, "It has neither command, apostolic precedent, nor logical inference to justify it." Fortunately no one has jumped on it as a ground for division and we are not troubled by radio attacks on the matter.

     The practice is cultural, or was! I suspect the culture has outgrown it, but it frequently happens that the culture changes while the brethren do not. We still had a hitching-rail around the meetinghouse where I attended as a lad for years after everyone had quit driving horses. Fortunately for us, but unfortunately for her, a nervous sister backed their new Buick into it one Sunday and knocked down a couple of rods of it, and no one ever put it back again, so we

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didn't have to crawl under it to get to "the place of worship." It just occurred to me now that a lot of older brethren pronounced it "warship" which was a more appropriate designation when we had an occasional business meeting.

     The invitation hymn is an outgrowth of the great revival on the American frontier, and was popularized by Moody and Sankey. "Coming down the aisle" is the restoration movement substitute for heading for the mourner's bench, or "penitent form" as our British brethren refer to it. In tabernacle meetings held by others it was called "hitting the sawdust trail." We are trying to do what Billy Graham does when he has the audience stand and sing, "Just As I Am" and pleads with people to "Get up, come down and stand here in front as a testimony of your faith." We are not getting as many to leave their seats as he does, but then he preaches about Jesus, while we proclaim the Good News that it is wrong to have Bible Classes or to support Herald of Truth.

     I've often wondered how Paul and Silas would react if they dropped in on us some Sunday morning. They would not recognize what takes place as having any relationship on earth to anything they had ever seen before. For one thing they would not be called upon to participate. The elders who "guard the flock" and "watch for our souls as they that must give account," could not afford to allow a man to speak who circumcised a young man so he could have influence with Jews, much less one who said he spoke in tongues more than anyone else who claimed the gift. Someone would be sure to ask them if they "fellowshipped" Pat Boone.

     I suspect one thing that would really surprise them would be to see the whole audience interrupt their praise rendered to God to jump up and start singing to sinners in broad daylight, "Why Not Tonight?" What a sight it would be for the apostles to attend one of those meetings where the preacher wiped sweat and paced back and forth pleading, cajoling and exhorting, running down the aisle, putting on the emotional pressure, pausing after every verse to beg those who were present to come now.

     It hardly seems necessary for an obstetrician to beg and exhort a baby to be born and to come on into the world, when he is in the delivery room. It would appear that when one has come to the birth that he will arrive even if the doctor himself is not ready! Apparently those that are begotten of the Spirit are only delivered after hard labor, but the labor is not on the part of the baby or Jerusalem from above, the mother of us all, but upon the part of the doctor called in as a specialist to induce birth.

     I do not entertain any great hope that our practice will be changed. We have made "conversion" an institutional project and an assembly-line production with plans drawn up in a lovely office complex. We have reversed the Savior's directive for us to "go into all the world," until we now invite the world to "come to church." What we designate "personal work" is more an attempt to get men and women to attend meetings than to know the Lord. We spend our time telling those who look out of a crack in the door about the qualifications of the preacher rather than about the Lord of glory. I doubt we will change! Tradition is not easily overcome.