Acts: Salvation is Wholeness

So we're continuing our way through the book of Acts, and nobody else would volunteer to read, so I made my wife read because it was so long.

There's a lot going on in that passage in Acts 4.

I'm a zero in on just a few verses this morning.

So when I graduated high school, my girlfriend at the time and myself, we ended up going to the same schools in the same town.

And from the very beginning, it was over.

Classic freshman breakup.

We were forming two different lives, going different ways.

We couldn't keep anything together.

I knew that.

I didn't want to admit it.

She knew that.

She was willing to admit it.

So one day she came over to my campus for a dreaded DTR to find the relationship talk, which we all love and how long they drag out.

And so we're there, we're going for a walk, we sit down at a bench in front of the campus chapel, and she broke up with me.

Alright, so here's what's interesting about that.

While I knew it was the right path forward, and I probably would have even chose it, it still hurt.

Right?

It's kind of like you want to make the tennis team, but then once you start trying out, you don't really want to make the tennis team.

And then you don't make the tennis team.

And it hurts.

But you're like, why does that hurt?

I didn't even want to be on the team.

But there's something about being rejected.

Right?

Like, why would this breakup hurt so much if I just really wasn't into it anymore, anyways?

Well, it's because it reminded me of something I desperately do not want to face.

And that is this question.

Is the rejection I feel within the truth about me?

And we've all felt rejection by a job that we had, we thought we were in, and then we were on the out, or a job we didn't get, or a sports team we didn't make, or we got kicked off of, or a friendship that went wrong, or a romance that didn't happen, or a romance that went wrong, or maybe a parent wounded you, or a church wounded you.

Maybe you're like Michael Scott on the office, always trying to get people to come over to your house.

You can't get anybody to come to your house.

And you can feel that rejection.

I mean, you order a pepperoni pizza, Papa John's won't even deliver to your house.

And you just feel it, rejected by the delivery boy, right?

I mean, you feel it, the rejection, and that rejection hurts.

It reveals something about us, the fact that we feel it so much.

And perhaps maybe we run from those feelings.

It's possible that you try to perform your way out of those feelings.

But we're all wondering: is there a saving for me as a person who feels such rejection?

And in a way, sometimes we even feel rejection from our own selves because we don't perform up to what we know we should.

We don't perform up to what we want to be, or and we also don't perform up to what God asks of us.

That's what makes us a sinner.

And so even that is a rejection.

I'm not who I want to be, my resume isn't that great, my body's weird, I'm weird.

She didn't want to be with me, he doesn't care for me, Papa John's doesn't like me, nobody likes me.

Can I be whole?

Can I be whole?

That's this word, salvation is the word means wholeness.

Now, I was taught early on in my spiritual journey that salvation was just about getting rid of God's anger toward me.

That's all it was.

That was the summation.

And just about avoiding an eternal place called hell, repenting and accepting Jesus, and suddenly my life would be better, or at least I needed to act like it was better.

And I'm probably oversimplifying what I actually heard, but it's definitely what I felt.

I would walk around saying things like, and maybe you grew up the way I did, and say, Well, well, I'm saved, or you say something like, Well, you know, Janet got saved at fifth quarter in the youth room Friday night, right?

And you're, oh, he's saved, or oh, they're not saved, right?

That was the language I grew up.

And the irony about this for me was I had no idea how profound salvation was.

I had limited it so greatly.

I never learned that salvation is about being whole forever into eternity, but also now.

See, salvation, I'll give you definition.

Salvation is awakening and resting in the beloved position you have in the Trinitarian God because of the work of Christ made applicable to your soul by the Spirit.

I'll say it again, that was a lot.

Salvation is awakening and resting in the Trinitarian God because of the work of Christ made applicable to your soul by the Spirit.

And you go, oh, that's a lot of theological talk.

How could that possibly help me?

Well, in Acts chapter 4, Peter and John are talking to a crowd of people, and they're talking about Jesus as being the Messiah, the salvation for their souls that they've been waiting for, the final sacrifice.

Acts 4 · chapter mention

These people have been sacrificing over and over and over again.

A lot of merit going on as they're producing, they're producing over and over and over again.

And they come and they say, hey, Jesus is the final sacrifice.

He did all the work.

And these religious folks who are in charge here in this passage we read about, they're called the Sadducees, and they were elitists and they were in charge.

They held power.

They held power over theological thought.

They held power over the police.

They held power over the courts.

And these guys, they didn't care what happened.

They didn't care what happened about Jesus on the cross and the resurrection, who saw Jesus after resurrection.

They didn't care about that miracle.

They didn't care about the fact that that miracle actually met up with all the teaching they actually believed for thousands of years.

Never mind any of that.

The only thing they cared about was to maintain a system that benefited them and their friends and their family.

See, this grace message that Jesus was enough by what he did for them, that was a threat to their system of people working for their salvation, trying to merit their way into absolution and righteousness, trying to make themselves whole by what they do.

And the grace of Jesus is a threat to that system because the grace of Jesus says, no, no, no, no, no, no.

You are whole, you are saved by what I did for you.

And so Peter and John are arrested for preaching Jesus being the salvation from God.

And we get this conversation in Acts chapter 4, 7 through 12.

Acts 4 · chapter mention

And here's how this conversation plays out.

By what power or by what name did you do this?

And either questioning them, and because Peter and John healed a guy, we talked about that last week.

Verse 8.

Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, rulers of the people and elders, if we are being examined today concerning a good deed done to a crippled man, by what means this man has been healed, let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead, by him this man is standing before you well.

This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone, and there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.

So the leaders hear all of this and they are amazed.

And they're partly amazed because they just can't believe these two hicks from up north in the countryside could come into the city and actually put together some intellectual thoughts.

This is like, this is like a handful of New Hampshire boarding school elitists, Yale grads living on the upper west side of Manhattan, being intellectually whooped by some Southerners who did not manage to graduate from Marietta High School.

That's what this scene is.

And so these guys are amazed, going like, look, listen to these guys.

They actually are putting thoughts together.

This is amazing.

They don't agree with them, but they're amazed at this.

And Peter was quoting Psalm 118, verse 22, which these guys knew this.

Psalms 118:22

Open to me the gates of righteousness that I may enter through them and give thanks to the Lord.

This is the gate of the Lord.

The righteous shall enter through it.

I thank you that you have answered me and have become my salvation.

The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.

So we get this imagery going on here.

Peter's alluding to it back from Psalm 118.

Peter views Christ, just as King David talked about him in Psalm 118, as the building stone, the cornerstone.

And that means by which all wholeness and goodness is built.

Christ is that which created all, sustains all, and redeems all.

And Peter says, Y'all rejected him.

Y'all rejected the source by which all things are created and sustained and redeemed.

And God chose to know that humiliation and rejection.

Because that's what love does.

I mean, have you ever loved?

Pretty much it's all humiliation.

Right?

It's a constantly, it's a constant humbling yourself before the person you love is what love is.

That's what the cross is.

The crowd said, kill that guy, and they rejected him.

He goes to the cross, and there in the rejection is the source of our salvation where our sin is put upon him and his righteousness is put upon us.

So we get two points.

Point number one, rejection is always a part of salvation.

Rejection is always a part of salvation.

Priest and author Robert Capin says this as long as the most important thing in your life is to keep finding your way, you're going to live in mortal terror of losing it.

Once you're willing to be lost, though, you'll be home free.

Your lostness is one thing no one will ever be able to take away from you.

The only ticket anybody needs is the one ticket everybody already has.

So what's he talking about here?

Well, he's saying fighting your entire life to act like you don't know failure, you don't know rejection, will never lead you to wholeness.

You'll just be delusional and really busy.

But if you recognize that the entire time you are in fact not perfect and you do know rejection, then you become awakened to your need of a savior outside of yourself.

And there we see that honesty and confession of the rejection is the birthplace of salvation for us.

See, it's in facing what's going on inside of us that we finally see that saving, wholeness, will only come when we're done trying to fix ourselves.

That you aren't perfect, I'm not perfect, we're never going to be perfect, and God absolutely loves and accepts us in Christ.

This very radical message was a threat, was a threat to the system back then, and it's a threat to a lot of thought today.

But Jesus really is enough for the absolution of your sins, the redemption of your beings, the shame you feel, security of your belovedness now and forever into eternity.

And that great unending love has the power to transform not just behavior, but from within.

Point number two, salvation is God's work in Christ of making us and this world whole.

Salvation is God's work in Christ of making us and this world whole.

Maybe you've heard this text in Acts chapter 4 used to create teams, kind of like us and them, like you're in and you're out, you know, you're saved, or I'm saved and you're not.

Acts 4 · chapter mention

Usually that's what it is, not usually like you're saved and I'm not.

Usually it's I'm saved and you're not.

Like, oh, Janet, she didn't really get saved Friday night at fifth quarter.

I know she said she got saved, but she really didn't.

And I'm not sure how anybody could actually know something like that about somebody else.

But that's what we tend to do.

But this point of this text is not a judgment lens for us to put on other people.

They're saved, they're not, they're in, they're not.

That's not what this text, this text is not about that.

This text is about pointing us to Christ as the cornerstone, the source of all wholeness and goodness.

One of my favorite passages is Ephesians 1, verses 7 through 10.

Ephesians 1:7–10

In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight, making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.

So that last phrase, God set forth in Christ to unite all things in him.

That phrase, to unite all things in him.

That's a phrase used in the scriptures just one time, and it comes from the world of math.

Or at least it's used in the world of math.

And it's saying to take two fractures and add them together to get a whole.

One half and one half, and you put them together to get one.

It means that in Christ, God is bringing together all fragmented things under one head.

This past year, my brother-in-law moved to Nashville to take a large hurting church.

And the church was on the men, the church was healing up after about a year of hurt and woundedness from a leadership disappointment.

And they were on the good side of being healed.

But his first sermon to them, I went back this week to look at the titles of the first two sermons.

I was curious, what did he preach on the first two sermons of walking into a hurting church?

And the first sermons he preached was about telling them they are never too far.

They've never gone too far away, no matter how many turns or disappointments they've had.

That was number one.

Second week, he told them their heavenly father has not left them.

Now, why would he begin with this?

Because they needed to be regathered under one story.

One half and one half to make one all the fragments under one head.

See we're fragmented.

You're fragmented, I'm fragmented.

We're not whole on our own.

We need to be brought under one head.

And it's only there in the place of our death, dying to ourselves, under Christ's authority, can we have peace where we're not our own saviors.

Another way to think about this same word here in the end of this Ephesians 1, verse 10, is that Christ is retelling your story.

Ephesians 1:10

So let's say this.

Just imagine you and your family, or maybe your imaginary family, you can play along with me.

You decide to take a Saturday and go into Atlanta.

So you load the car up, all the kids are in the car, you and the spouse are in the car, and you're in the driveway, and right away, first thing, there's a disagreement.

Are you gonna watch a video?

Are you gonna listen to the radio?

And you go, let's listen to the radio.

We've been watching too much screens.

Okay.

So you go, what's what are we gonna listen to on the radio?

So there's a disagreement about that.

Finally, you get going and you have a reasonably peaceful ride down the interstate to Atlanta, and you stop at the varsity first to eat there at the varsity, but you forgot.

There is a Georgia Tech home football game.

And you walk in, you have nothing against Georgia Tech, except at the bottom of those stairs, there is a massive crowd in front of that counter.

And you got these little kids, and your kids are hungry, and you're hungry, and you're worried you're gonna lose them in that crowd down there in front of that counter, and you're smooshed up against that by you can't even tell if there's lines or not, and you're frustrated.

Eventually, you make your order and they put your family of four, that food on about seven trays for you to attempt to carry back to your table.

And finally, you get back to your table, and you you you really did enjoy those chili slaw dogs.

I mean, that was a good moment of the day.

So you load the car back up.

Another little disagreement, you get back into the car about what you're gonna listen to, of course, and you get over that, and then you get to the aquarium because that's what you're aiming to get at all day.

And so you get to the aquarium, but when you get to the aquarium, your kids have to have a 10-minute uh timeout because they poured their varsity orange in your purse in the back seat.

And so there's another little wait along your journey here to get to the aquarium, 10 minutes.

You're just sitting in the car, you make them sit on the sidewalk out there, hoping somebody will just take them away.

It'll be fine with you at this point of the day.

And then you wait in line for tickets to get in the aquarium, and then you wait another line to enter into the aquarium, and then another line to go through the exhibits of the aquarium, and then you see those tanks and those fish and the dolphins and the whales, and it is amazing.

It's amazing.

And you see all of that, and then you're walking back to your car after all of this, and you're tired, and your kids are tired, you get in your car, you're gonna head home, and so you buckle up, and everybody's tired.

And you Instagram a picture that y'all got taken by a stranger in front of that big tank, and it's the four of you, and there's a whale swimming in the back.

It's a perfect picture.

And you post it and you write, a perfect family day in Atlanta.

Love these little ones.

Hashtag live in the dream.

What are you doing?

Flying.

Flying.

Well, if you work with me a little bit here, you're taking broken pieces and proclaiming it as whole.

Now you are lying because you don't really have the power to redefine something in reality.

You have the power to redefine it on Instagram, which we love to do, but not in reality.

But the fact that we want to do this even shows that our hearts desire it.

Our hearts are waiting to know a power that can actually take one half and one half and declare it as one.

To heal, to make whole, to be saved.

See, in Christ, God takes you fragmented as you are, not perfect, a sinner.

And in Christ, He rightfully, in grace, declares over you a new you.

Not a fragmented one, but a new one.

And it's who you fully are.

And you still have to learn to be it.

But you've been retold.

You have been gathered under one head in Christ, and you're saved.

So, my brothers and sisters, God is retelling a story about you in Christ.

You are the forever beloved.

Let's pray together.

God, thank you for your goodness to us.

That is by no other name that we are saved, we are made whole for into eternity and for today.

Help us to learn that which is already true about us.

That we are righteous, absolved of our sin, fully yours and beloved, by what you did for us, not what we do for ourselves.

And that the work of Christ on the cross, that great act of love, is enough for our righteousness and forgiveness and value.

Help us to know you in a greater way and forgive us for all the ways we try to continue to save ourselves rather than rest in that which has been always true about us in Jesus.

For those of us here that do not know salvation in you or continue to struggle with how we are made whole.

Give them eyes to see this morning the greatness and the amazing work of Jesus for them.

In Christ's name we pray.

Amen.