Grace Me Please

Egh, sorry e-fellas, I've been on the e-fellowship DL here lately....my bad, my bad. But here we go.

Just like most Christians I tend to base my personal relationship with God on performance rather than grace. So much of this world is performance based, but once I sit down and think about it, I realize that God is not keeping score. He is not giving me or keeping me from blessings based on my performance. The score has already been settled.

I will be pulling some of this from a book by Jerry Bridges entitled "Transforming Grace". It is so easy to get caught up in believing that God's grace only makes up what our good works lack. I mean, God's blessings are at least partially earned by obedience right? We know we are saved by grace but we have to live by spiritual sweat so to speak? I need a constant reminder that my demerits do not compel God to withdraw His grace, but rather, He treats me without regard to them. And honestly, I'd rather stake my hope of His blessing on His infinite goodness than on my good works. Bridges says, "To the extent you are clinging to any vestiges of self-righteousness or are putting any confidence in your own spiritual attainments, to that degree you are not living by the grace of God in your life." That's heavy, I had to read it a couple times.

Psalm 103:12 states, "As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us." This may be elementary to some but have you ever wondered how far the east was from the west. I mean, you can go north all you want until you reach the north pole, then you are heading south. But if you start heading west, you will always be heading west. East and west never meet. So God is metaphorically saying that he removes our transgressions and infinite distance from us. He saying that forgiveness is total, complete, and unconditional. So no score keeping? "He does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities" (Psalm 103:10). Yea, God actually says that! Almost seems too good to be true because that is so foreign to our innate concepts of reward and punishment.

Just as you cannot earn salvation but must receive it as a gift, so you cannot earn the blessings of God but must receive them also as gifts given through Christ. I mean, grace would no longer be grace if God is compelled to withdraw it in the presence of our faults.

I know I am leaving much of this open ended, but I will continue with this topic in the weeks ahead, but I'll finish this week with this. Theologian R.C. Sproul wrote, "Perhaps the most difficult task for us to perform is to rely on God's grace and God's grace alone for our salvation. It is difficult for our pride to rest of grace. Grace is for other people - for beggars. We don't want to live by a heavenly welfare system. We want to earn our way and atone for our own sins. We like to think that we will go to heaven because we deserve to be there." Although Dr. Sproul was writing on the subject of the grace of God in salvation, the problem of pride he described is applicable to living the Christian life. Not only do we think we must pay our own way, at least to some degree, we subtly insist on paying our own way. That's me, is it you?

trying to die to myself,

-tmart