Thought for Today
Psalm 8:3 When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; 4 what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them? 5 Yet you have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honor.
Micah 6:8 He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?
Luke 10:27 "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself."
Ephesians 2:8 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God--
Why? Can it really be that easy? God has made humans ‘a little lower’ than God and all we have to do is justice, kindness and humility? Is our salvation, our assured place in eternity as simple as accepting God’s gracious gift, loving God and loving each other? At first glance, that seems far too easy, far too simple. There must be a catch!
Of course, the Better Business Bureau is right, “If is seems too good to be true, it is.” I’m not suggesting that God has some hidden ‘gotcha’ in his sleeve. I’m not sure God wears sleeves. However, our Creator God does have an agenda. It’s not a hidden agenda. God has laid it all out for every one of us to see.
Our human proclivity is to assume that simple and easy are synonymous. They are not. We also seem to assume that the more difficult to obtain, the greater the prize. In all aspects of life, we look for hidden agendas, for tricks, for perfidy.
Sometimes, things are really as simple and easy as they seem. The psalmist understood, “121:1 I lift up my eyes to the hills-- from where will my help come? 2 My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth.” The author of the Gospel of John understood, “3:16 For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”
We can see in our entertainment venues on television our inclination to refuse to accept the simplicity of God’s proffered gift. Our ‘reality’ shows present arduous, seemingly dangerous contests to win some prize. Teams are stranded on desert islands, individuals compete in contests of physical skill and prowess, all to win some temporal prize.
When it comes to the eternal prize, our own place in God’s house (John 14:2), it is hard for us to deal with the truth that there is nothing we can do to ‘earn’ that prize other than to do justice, love kindness, be humble, love God, and love each other. The history of our faith, from our earliest ancestors-in-the-faith up to today, tells us that we keep looking for ways to ‘earn’ salvation. We look for rituals, salvific acts or deeds we can perform as though we were accumulating frequent flyer points or competing in a ‘reality’ television program. We act as though we are being tasked with surviving in a wilderness after being stranded ‘naked and alive.’
Some have attempted to find salvation through “doing certain moral or meritorious actions that gain favor from God.” (Westminster Dictionary of Theological Terms, salvation by works, pg. 247) Some have contrasted works and faith as though they are competing systems for attaining salvation. I find guidance on this issue from the Epistle of James, especially, “2:18 But someone will say, "You have faith and I have works." Show me your faith apart from your works, and I by my works will show you my faith. . . . 26 For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is also dead.“
The difficult truth we need to accept is that all God asks us to do is believe. God wants us to accept God’s gift. Of course, the real truth of the matter is that if we do have the requite faith, if we do accept God’s gracious gift of salvation, we will find ourselves so transformed by our faith that we are unable not to do moral and meritorious actions. If we truly believe, we will do justice, love kindness, love God and love each other.
God has even provided us a living example in God’s Son and guidance in the Holy Spirit. The psalmist knew from where our help does come, it “comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth.”
Believe, live out your faith in your life, trust God,
Pastor Ray