I'm sometimes asked, when I write about sacrificial living, obedience, or the "cost of discipleship," "where has grace gone?" The questioner usually equates God's grace with some sort of "reprieve" from God's calling His people to holiness, and usually equates things like surrender, obedience, faithful living, and the teaching of the clear instructions of scripture as some form of legalism or "faith AND works salvation."
And if all those things were given as a means to please God enough to be saved, then the grace-aholics would be absolutely correct: Shame on us for muddying the pure, amazing, and wonderful salvation that was wrought by Christ's beautiful work on His Cross. Shame on us for doubting the gospel and for mixing faith in Christ's finished work with our own pathetic obediences, services, and works in order to make us good enough to be saved.
But the New Testament call of faithfulness, obedience, and surrender is not a mixing of faith and works. It's a merging of faith and works into an amazing, indeed impossible pair. The N.T. call to obedience is clearly rooted in a salvation that had been received by faith. The "works" of obedience are to be the fruit of faith, not its precursor. There is no better passage to see this in than Romans 12. Next TG, I want to demonstrate from that chapter what I mean.
For now, I'd like to share a song that I learned back in the learning days of my youth as a believer. I don't hear it sung or played much today, but I still hear it playing in my heart, as a prayer that underlies much of what I do and much of what I write here on TG. I believe that the song points to a simple truth about obedience. We will obey when we see things as God sees them. The link below is a YouTube vid of someone singing the song. May you be blessed as you listen and read along.
"Let me see this world, dear Lord, as though I were looking through your eyes,
A world of men who don't want you Lord, yet a world for which you died.
Let me kneel with you in the garden, blur my eyes with tears of agony.
"For if once I could see this world the way you see,
I just know I'd serve you more faithfully.
Let me see this world, dear Lord, through your eyes when men mocked your holy name,
When they beat you and spat upon you dear Lord.
Let me love them as you loved them, just the same.
Let me rise high above my petty problems, and grieve for men, hell bound eternally,
For if once I could see this world the way you see,
I just know I'd serve you more faithfully.
For if once I could see this world the way you see,
I just know I'd serve you more faithfully.
Posted via email from We've Encountered a Terrifying Grace
Recent Comments