Is being saved about entering a ‘wide open space’?
I accept often heard it said that when God delivers usa, he leads us from a sense of being trapped, hemmed in and confined to a sense of being in a 'wide open space.' I recall I have probably said this myself in a talk or sermon on more than one occasion. I remember, many years ago, reading about it in relation to the story of Jacob and his meeting with Esau in Genesis 33; Jacob, who has relied on his wits all his life to go his own way—with other people and with God—finds himself at his wit's end as he finally meets Esau again. Merely instead of judgement, he finds graciousness, and the graciousness of Esau he takes to be the graciousness of God, and he moves from the sense of being hemmed in by fear and dread to the open space of grace and peace.
This notion, of being in a tight spot or hemmed in and so experiencing God's deliverance every bit a wide space, is evident at several points in the psalms. A expert example is Ps xviii:
iii I chosen to the Lord, who is worthy of praise,
and I have been saved from my enemies.
4 The cords of expiry entangled me;
the torrents of devastation overwhelmed me.
five The cords of the grave coiled effectually me;
the snares of death confronted me.
17 He rescued me from my powerful enemy,
from my foes, who were too strong for me.
19 He brought me out into a spacious place;
he rescued me considering he delighted in me.
It is quite striking how many of the psalms are written effectually the theme of conflict with the writer'due south enemies, how oppressed he has been, and how (usually) God has delivered him, either by an act of rescue or an act of judgement on the writer's enemies.
Another explicit example of this metaphor comes in Ps 118.5:
When hard pressed, I cried to the Lord;
he brought me into a spacious place.
(Ps 118 is specially important in the NT, vv 25 and 26 forming the background to the accounts of Palm Sunday, and v 22 existence understood by Jesus and Peter equally anticipation of Jesus' rejection by the Jewish leaders.)
It is worth noting that salvation in these contexts is very tangible, and not very far removed from mutual uses of the term in everyday speech today—it is virtually deliverance from bodily enemies who oppress us. It is used in this sense in Zechariah's prophetic song of praise we telephone call the Benedictus in Luke 1.68–79:
69 He has raised up a horn of salvation [or 'mighty saviour'] for us
in the house of his servant David…
71 salvation from our enemies
and from the manus of all who hate us— …
74 to rescue the states from the hand of our enemies,
and to enable united states to serve him without fear
75 in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.
It but becomes a 'religious' term once we recognise that our true enemies are not the people that oppose us, but the threat of sin (ours as well as theirs) and death (i Cor 15.26). Thus the angel commands Joseph to 'give him the proper noun Jesus [Yeshua, 'God saves'] because he will salvage his people from their sins.'
This idea of conservancy as a wide open infinite is appealing not but because of these examples in the OT, merely because (like so many of the Bible's metaphors) is engages us psychologically with such power. When nosotros feel people or things are confronting us, we practise have this sense of existence strangled, or hemmed in, or in a tight space. We might even apply these metaphors ourselves. And when the state of affairs changes, we feel we can exhale over again, that nosotros are no longer constrained—we are free to roam the broad open up spaces of God's deliverance and grace.
The example I have used in the past comes from a journey that, at i indicate, I made quite often. On the M40, travelling from High Wycombe towards Oxford, after travelling on a plateau, you come through a final cutting as the road bears gently to the right. The bend hides the view that opens upwards before yous (I call back somewhere near Princes Risborough) of a wide open plain—and it offers a very striking dissimilarity to the narrowness of the cutting as yous emerge from it. No wonder this idea features in so many sermons.
But we need to pause a little, since I remember there are three issues with this metaphor which might qualify its use.
The first is with language. Information technology is oftentimes claimed that 'The Hebrew for conservancy is yasha, which ways "to bring into a broad open space."' (Forgive, for a moment, the move from noun to verb). From Hebrew lexicons it is not very obvious that this is in fact the case. Take the abridged version of Brownish, Driver and Briggs (BDB), a standard dictionary:
There are some hints that it used in this way from the boosted comments:
(prop. placed in freedom) (prop. give width and breadth to, liberate),
but I would demand to see some more than convincing evidence before going with this as 'the' significant of the word. The straightforward sense is to exist rescued from (oppressive) enemies; this tin certainly experience like we have moved into a wide open space, but that is non the word's 'meaning'. Perchance information technology would be better to talk of salvation 'sometimes being equated with…' rather than 'meaning…' something.
Secondly, information technology has frequently not been the experience of Christians that God has brought them into this sense of a 'broad open up infinite' even though they take been 'saved.' A couple of years ago at New Wine, John Coles told the story of Horatio Spafford, who wrote the hymn 'It is well with my soul'.
This hymn was written after traumatic events in Spafford's life. The beginning was the expiry of his son at the historic period of ii and the 1871 Great Chicago Burn down, which ruined him financially (he had been a successful lawyer and had invested significantly in holding in the area of Chicago that was extensively damaged past the bully fire). His business interests were further hit by the economic downturn of 1873, at which time he had planned to travel to Europe with his family on theSS Ville du Havre. In a tardily modify of plan, he sent the family ahead while he was delayed on business concern concerning zoning problems post-obit the Corking Chicago Fire. While crossing the Atlantic, the ship sank rapidly after a standoff with a sea vessel, theLoch Earn, and all four of Spafford'southward daughters died. His wife Anna survived and sent him the now famous telegram, "Saved alone …". Soon afterwards, as Spafford traveled to meet his grieving wife, he was inspired to write these words as his ship passed near where his daughters had died.
This is hardly a 'wide open space', and it is interesting that the words of the hymn avoid this kind of imagery, and instead clear hope in eschatological terms—anticipating 'the day when my faith shall be sight, The clouds exist rolled back as a gyre; The trump shall resound, and the Lord shall descend.'
Thirdly, I was quite interested to find this idea of 'salvation as a wide open infinite' in a sermon online drawing on the piece of work of the liberal theologian Marcus Borg. Salvation was non about waiting for some future event; it did non depend on our ain lives or what we did; no, it was about enjoying the 'broad open spaces' of healing and life that God gives us now in Jesus. In that location was quite a potent sense that this 'broad open infinite' is one which is gratuitous from (mayhap petty, even 'Pharisaic') business organisation with regulations about holiness.
This is a rather stark contrast non only to all the language almost time to come hope in the gospels and in Paul, but also to Jesus' own delineation of what the 'saved' life looks similar:
Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the route that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. Merely small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it. (Matt seven.thirteen–14)
Echoes here of eyes of needles rather than broad open spaces. And it is fascinating to notation that this is exactly the same dynamic we discover in Ps xviii—if we read to the end of the psalm. David is delivered into the broad open space, he says, because he has been walking the narrow path of obedience to God'south police force. He does not discover is constricting, but the path of life and freedom. We detect similar paradoxes in Paul: he is 'constrained by the beloved of Christ' (2 Cor 5.14) and celebrates the 'liberty for which Christ has ready u.s.a. costless' but longs we should use that freedom to walk only where the Spirit leads usa (Gal 5.1, sixteen).
The moral hither is that, when nosotros use a metaphor from Scripture, and particularly such a compelling one, we need to attend carefully to thewaythat these metaphors are deployed—and whether they sit down in tension with other images and ideas that hold them in tension.
Just information technology likewise touches on a wider trouble that we have in many parts of the church of the tension between grace and obligation. In that location is no limit to the kind of person to whom God offers his gracious invitation. Invitation is to forget self, take up the cross and follow him. The wide infinite of freedom ways nosotros tin can choose to walk the narrow path of obedience that Jesus walked and in which nosotros follow.
(First published in a revised form in August 2016).
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