"If anybody deserves to go to heaven, it's Bob." Such an American sentiment - and so contrary to the Bible! We do not "deserve" our place with God; we have no "entitlement" to God's favor. We are saved 100% by grace, God's free, unmerited, unearnable love. Tall mountains of good deeds are irrelevant to salvation. "For by grace you have been saved through faith, not works" (Ephesians 2:8).
Faith is the way we receive grace, it is letting ourselves be enveloped by grace. Faith is not scrunching up your eyes and saying "Yes, I do believe there is a God." Faith is a relationship, placing your very life, your time, stuff, and passion into God's hands. Faith is not a surge of feeling. Faith is commitment, courage. Faith is love, and love knows you can't earn love, you can't control love: you are stunningly lucky to be loved. And when you love, you love quite apart from the merit of the one you love: each of us loves someone deeply who has no resumé of points earned, who has done plenty to push us away. And no matter how stalwart or noble you are, don't you crave mercy? the total love that loves you just because?
So we need not worry "Am I good enough?" We need not bother thinking "If God grades on the curve I'll pass." We are loved, we are cradled in God's grace - and it's totally, irrevocably free. And yet, isn't this realization our most scintillating, daunting challenge? "Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all" (Isaac Watts). If my wife loves me unconditionally, that is not a permission slip to an irresponsible life, but an engraved invitation to be good, noble, a champion of good deeds. The love of Jesus makes me want to be better, to be holy. Faith never says "I can only go so far." Faith is a "willingness for whatever" (Maggie Ross). God loves me freely, totally, and so I respond in kind.
Recipients of grace have a responsibility - "response-ability." Grace enables us to respond to God. If I glibly presume "God will forgive me," if I live any old way because I'm saved by grace so it doesn't matter, then I prove I don't "get it." I have totally misconstrued the nature of love, and I have no faith. "Faith without works is dead" (James 2:17). Even the devil has a kind of faith, but his deeds are evil! Faith without works is as hollow as a packed stadium with no game on the field, as a lover with no one to embrace, as a child who refuses to get out of bed to see what's under the tree on Christmas morning. Grace transforms. Faith generates a new life.
Notice the irony: "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for God is at work in you" (Philippians 2:12). The closer we are to God, the more it feels like that: I am working, striving my hardest - and then I step back and realize it is the grace of God working in me, through me, in spite of me. If I think I am good enough, if I think I earn God's favor, then the good I do becomes demonic; I belittle others. But if I see it all as the working of God's unmerited grace, any good I do is "Not I, but Christ in me" (Galatians 2:21).
James
james@mpumc.org
Coming up:
eBibleQuestions33 - Are the Jews saved?
eBible Questions34 - When will Jesus return?
The full eBibleQuestions series may be viewed online by clicking here.
