God: You’re Saved by Works Not Grace

Charles Brammall

The Bible, tradition, experience, and our logic seem to be disquietingly clear- we are saved by works alone, and not by works. 

But then there’s Milano.

Ahh… Milano.

My wife’s aunt, a retired fashion model, lives in Milano. And when my wife was a design and architecture journalist, her magazine used to put her up at the Milan Design Week every few years. As part of the Corps, she coveted Design Week and would file stories home. I went with her once, and one day, when she was working, I went for an exhilarating bushwalk in the snow-covered mountains.

On my return I stopped at a sweet little family restaurant perched on the edge of a precipitous cliff. I ordered “Polenta Uncia”, having no idea what it may be. The waiter meekly delivered to my table a commodious bowl of steaming Beecroft -Biege coloured. As I swallowed my spoonful, cold, wet and trembling, Oh. My. Gosh. It was the most scrumptious thing I have ever tasted in my 58 years on this earth. I died and went to heaven. I was like a pig in mud. 

Ahh Milano…

Dear Friends of ours, Keith and Debbie Jones, are church-planting missionaries in Rozzano, down at heel Southern Milano. They are doing a splendid job, indoor God, and have just planted a small hind church at Lk Como, an hour’s drive away.

One of our pipe dreams is to retire to Rozzano, learn Italian, and buy a small unit. Apply for citizenship, help Keith preach God’s Word to elderly people in his two very different congregations and shepherd them, and live out the rest of our lives there. 

Ahh Milano…

Grace & Augustine. 

In 386, Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, North Africa, wept in a Milanese garden, torn between faith and his old life. A child’s voice has said, “Take up and read.” He opened Romans 13 and encountered God through Scripture. The story captures the larger question: HOW does God reveal himself, and how does he SAVE us?

Augustine’s garden is memorable because it joins revelation and response. The words he heard were not merely information added to his religious knowledge. They confronted him, interpreted his life and demanded a decision. Scripture became, for him, not an abstract religious document, but the means through which God addressed him personally.

Yet the story also raises a question that Christians have answered in different ways: was Augustine saved because he understood the right message, because he made a sufficiently sincere decision, or because grace overcame his resistance? Or was it because faith united him to Christ?

Christian tradition has usually insisted that these questions cannot be separated. Revelation tells us who God is, what God has done and what He requires. Salvation is not deliverance from an unknown danger by an unknown power. It is reconciliation with the God who makes himself known. The God who saves is alsothe God who speaks, and the God who speaks does so in order to summon people into trust, repentance, and worship. Into obedience.

God’s Revelation.

God reveals himself through creation, my experience of Him, and providence. But supremely in Christ, and authoritatively through Scripture. Sydney Anglican theology for example, does not mean that God can act only through the Bible.

Scripture is the canonical, authoritative Word and final norm by which claimed revelations are tested. But God may guide in a less direct way through preaching, circumstances, and other Christian, and by Christian literature, suffering, or dreams- but these are not additional Bibles.

Creation discloses something of God’s power, wisdom and generosity. The ordered world is not itself the gospel, but it is not religiously neutral either. Conscience also bears witness, though conscience is neither infallible nor equally formed in every person. 

Providence may be discerned and experienced in the ordinary events of life, in unexpected opportunities, and in God’s protection, correction, and suffering. Yet providence is often difficult to interpret while we are living through it. A fortunate event is not automatically a divine endorsement, and a painful event is not automatically a divine punishment.

Jesus’ Sufficiency.

For we Christians, the decisive revelation is Jesus Christ. God is not finally known merely by studying the universe or examining the moral law. He is known in the person, teaching, & death and resurrection of Christ.

Nor is He simply one revelation among many. He is the centre and fulfilment of God’s self-disclosure. The NT therefore presents him not merely as a messenger who brings information ABOUT God, but as GOD, the Son, who makes His Father KNOWN.

Scripture’s Sufficiency.

Scripture bears authoritative witness to Christ, and provides the church with its canonical rule. It tells the story of creation, covenant, and Israel. Of promise, incarnation, and the cross. Of resurrection, church and new creation. It gives the church the grammar by which all other claims to revelation are judged.

A dream therefore may be meaningful, a sermon may be powerful, and a personal experience may be spiritually significant. A providential circumstance may deserve prayerful reflection- but none of these can revise the gospel or establish a new foundation for faith.

This distinction matters, because we Christians can confuse immediacy with authority. A private experience may feel more vivid than a biblical passage, but vividness does not make it more reliable. A contemporary insight may seem more persuasive than an ancient command, but cultural familiarity does not make it more truthful. A claimed word from God must be tested by the Word already given.

New Revelations from God.

In fact, in one sense, even this is unnecessary. The Bible itself claims that God has revealed to us that in His Word EVERYTHING we NEED to know about Him, for ALL time. So even if He were, hypothetically, to reveal something new about Himself, we can ignore it, as EVERYTHING we need to know about Him is already IN His Word.  

For example, Revelation 22:18: “I warn everyone, If anyone adds ANYTHING to the prophecy of this scroll, God will add to that person the plagues described in this scroll.”

Proverbs 30:5–6: “Every word of God is flawless; Do NOT add to his words, or he will rebuke you and prove you a liar.”

Deuteronomy 4:2 & 12:32– “Do NOT add to what I command you, but keep the commands of the Lord your God that I give you.”

2 Timothy 3:16 – “All Scripture is inspired by God, & is profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, & training in righteousness, so that the person of God may be THOROUGHLY equipped for EVERY good work.”

That is, the church does not honour the Holy Spirit by treating every strong impression, or alleged new revelation, as divine speech.

UCA Theology.

In comparison to Sydney Diocese, strands of UCA theology may give greater weight to experience, reason, and culture, to history, and contemporary understandings of justice. But the UCA Basis of Union remains explicitly Christological, confessing Christ crucified and risen, and Scripture as the means by which God’s Word is heard.

John Macquarrie.

20th-century Anglo-Catholic Scottish theologian John Macquarrie represents a more existential Anglican approach. He understood revelation as “disclosure of Being”, rather than simply divinely given propositions. Thus the disagreement can be deeper than emphasis: who or what has final authority to interpret God?

This question is not a minor dispute about theological style. If Scripture is the final norm, then experience, reason and culture must be continually corrected by the biblical witness. If experience, reason or culture becomes the final norm, then Scripture may still be valued, but it is interpreted within a framework that can overrule its plainest claims.

The “Authority Quadrant”.

The issue is therefore not whether we Christians should use reason or attend to experience. We must. The issue is whether reason and experience serve revelation, or sit in judgment over it.

A Christian theology of revelation must also preserve humility. Evangelicals can speak as though every disputed interpretation is identical with the voice of God. Progressives can speak as though every inherited interpretation is merely a cultural construction. Both approaches can become forms of overconfidence. The church needs confidence in God’s revelation, and modesty about its own understanding. Scripture is authoritative; our interpretations remain accountable.

God’s Family’s Interpretation.

Revelation also has a communal dimension. Augustine read alone in a garden, but he did not become a Christian detached from the church’s worship, teaching and sacramental life. The Scriptures that addressed him were already the Scriptures received and proclaimed by the Christian community.

This does not mean that the church stands ABOVE the Word. But it DOES mean that individual interpretation is not the only form of interpretation, and that we Christians need the wisdom, correction and encouragement of other believers.

The church’s task is therefore both receptive and discerning. It receives the apostolic witness, listens for the voice of Christ, and tests every “spirit” (or person claiming to teach the truth about Scripture). It must resist the temptation to make novelty a sign of the Spirit’s presence.

At the same time, it must resist the temptation to confuse its own customs with divine commands. Faithfulness requires both continuity and reform: continuity with the gospel once delivered, and reform wherever the church has become disobedient to that gospel.

Next Time-

“The Grace Problem”

Image: Fra Angelico – Conversion St. Augustine. Image Credit: Musée Thomas Henry