John Alexander — Box 103
Preaching 1: Dr. Miller
Sermon Manuscript:
The Cost of Salvation
24 October 2003

Text: Mark 10:17-27: 17 And as he was setting out on his journey, a man ran up and knelt before him and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” 18 And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. 19 You know the commandments: ‘Do not murder, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honor your father and mother.’” 20 And he said to him, “Teacher, all these I have kept from my youth.” 21 And Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, “You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” 22 Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions. 23 And Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How difficult it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” 24 And the disciples were amazed at his words. But Jesus said to them again, “Children, how difficult it is to enter the kingdom of God! 25 It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.” 26 And they were exceedingly astonished, and said to him, “Then who can be saved?” 27 Jesus looked at them and said, “With man it is impossible, but not with God. For all things are possible with God.”

“Sell all you have, give the money to the poor, and you shall have treasure in heaven. Follow me.” In the 12th century, a young man took Jesus at His word. While worshipping in a run-down chapel in Italy, the man heard the Spirit speak to him, saying, “Francis, repair my falling house.” Francis took the words literally, and sold a bale of silk from his father's warehouse to pay for repairs to the church of San Damiano. His father was outraged, and there was a public confrontation at which his father disinherited and disowned him, and he in turn renounced his father's wealth — one account says that he not only handed his father his purse, but also took off his expensive clothes, laid them at his father's feet, and walked away naked.
This man was Saint Francis of Assisi. St. Francis spent the rest of his life ministering to the poor and the lepers of his time. The call of Christ literally cost him everything.

“Sell all you have, give the money to the poor, and you shall have treasure in heaven. Follow me.” These words trouble us. The young man came to Jesus asking for eternal life later, not a change in his temporal lifestyle now. Wouldn’t we rather hear Jesus say, “You must be born again?” After all, that’s what we would have said. “Be born again. Be baptized into the Church. Attend every Sunday, behave yourself Monday through Saturday, and all will be well.”

I fear that, too often, those are exactly the words we use when the well-off seekers come to us looking for that which their possessions cannot provide.

Mark focuses on two people in this story, both of whom represent those involved in salvation. First, we see this man and those like him. We see them a thousand different times in our lives: at the Galleria, at the Summit, here on campus. I see them in Tuscaloosa. Tuscaloosa is wealthy; it is the home to the first Mercedes plant outside Germany. If salvation could be bought, these people would buy it – but it can’t.

The fact salvation is priceless doesn’t keep people from trying to buy it, though. Control is the name of the game. When you look at the text in Greek, you see this man is in a hurry. He runs to Jesus. Like people today, he is, in effect, asking “what can I do now to inherit eternal life?” Notice Jesus’ response will take time. It would have taken time to sell everything this man had; it would have taken time to divvy up the spoils. And following Jesus would have taken time. Jesus realized this when He entered the conversation.

I have come to realize that salvation, contrary to our popular belief, is not an instantaneous process. Conversion takes but a moment; sanctification — the cleansing of our ways — takes far longer. C.S. Lewis says that sanctification “means unlearning all the self-conceit and self-will that we have been training ourselves into for thousands of years.” Sanctification costs us everything in the process: our selfishness, our pride, our biases, our bigotry. Jesus does nothing halfway. With salvation, it is either Jesus’ way or no way at all.

There is another issue for these people: fear. First-century Jewish society equated wealth with the blessing of God and the security implied. Sound familiar? Jesus’ followers were astounded when, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus encouraged them instead to “lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven (Matthew 6:20).” In a materialistic society, asking people to surrender their attachment to possessions is akin to asking Linus to surrender his security blanket. It will not happen easily.

Jesus’ lesson to this man still holds: Salvation that costs nothing is worthless. There is a temporal, material facet to salvation. We must surrender everything to God and take what He returns to us.

“Count the cost,” Jesus said in Luke 14. Bonhoeffer warns us of “cheap grace:” “Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without cost, grace without Jesus Christ.” Cheap grace costs Jesus everything but the recipient nothing at all. Yes, Jesus paid it all, as the song says, but salvation requires us to pay everything as well. There is a temporal, material facet to salvation. We must surrender everything to God and take what He returns to us. Salvation that costs less than everything we have is worthless.

Frankly, I believe we must re-introduce this concept — total sacrifice — back into the Church today. We do a disservice to those coming for salvation by glossing over the sacrifice involved. Those who come thinking nothing is required except a short trip to the altar and a dunking in the baptistry face a rude awakening when later confronted with the demand for total obedience.

We also do a disservice to the Church by neglecting the sacrifice of salvation. “Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church,” says Bonhoeffer. People who believe God has no say over them beyond what they’re willing to give Him are practically worthless to the congregation they join. I’m not surprised that so many congregations face the “20-80” rule: 20% of the people do 80% of the work. Few in the Church today know the cost of salvation; the rest are surprised when the pastor asks them to assist in the ministry of the congregation. They have never heard of the cost of salvation. “Who is he to ask me to sacrifice a night a week for visitation?” “Who is he to expect me at church every Sunday?”

This leads us to the other person in this lesson. I can imagine this young man walking away thinking, “that’s easy for him to say. He never had anything to begin with. His life didn’t cost him anything.”

If only he knew.

Jesus could ask this man to leave everything because He had left everything in heaven. Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 8 that “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.” Paul reminds the Philippians that “He humbled Himself, taking the form of a servant.” I’m reminded of the song I Gave My Life for Thee:

I gave My life for thee, My precious blood I shed,
That thou might ransomed be, and raised up from the dead
I gave, I gave My life for thee, what hast thou given for Me?
I gave, I gave My life for thee, what hast thou given for Me?

My Father’s house of light, My glory circled throne
I left for earthly night, for wanderings sad and lone;
I left, I left it all for thee, hast thou left aught for Me?
I left, I left it all for thee, hast thou left aught for Me?

I see a word of wisdom for us. We cannot ask our congregants to sacrifice everything to Christ if we have never sacrificed ourselves. We cannot ask our congregants to surrender wholly to God and His lifestyle if we have never surrendered ourselves.

But we, too, seek to control our lives, planning our careers and expressing dismay when God changes our plans with His calling on our lives. We, too, fear for the future, resenting God’s imposition of His plan upon us. We, too, must learn to cast aside everything and answer the call to “follow me.” We want to say, with Peter, “See, we have left everything and followed you.” I remind you that Peter learned to his sorrow that he had not left everything when fear caused him to deny his Lord.

I hope that your time at Beeson has cost you something. I hope it has cost you everything. Some of you will have sacrificed less than others of us, some more. I quipped once in my secular job that only “death, retirement, or a call from God” would pull me away. Luckily for me, the latter came first, but the sacrifice of a successful career at a job I loved was painful for me. We must recognize two crucial facts: We are asking people to sacrifice everything they are now, and you must be a living demonstration of sacrifice to them if you expect them to sacrifice for salvation. Just as salvation that costs nothing is worthless, a ministry that has cost nothing can never provide leadership or comfort to those asking, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?

Sources:

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 57.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (New York: Touchstone, 1995), 45.