We humans believe in payment for services. If I do something good for you, you either pay me or do something good for me in return. It’s how we’ve done things for millennia.
The salvation exchange,
however, is different.
God gave humans the Law—a list of things to do and not do, ways to live that will cause a person to be holy and perfect enough to be in His presence.
That didn’t work. Mankind could not keep up, couldn’t behave, couldn’t do what needed to be done in order to experience a relationship with the Sovereign God.
Here’s the marvel: Before God said, “Let there be light!” He knew humans needed help doing what it takes to be with Him, so He developed a plan whereby Jesus (God) would live as a human and die as a human, then rise again… all to rescue humans from the consequences of their choices.
Before He stirred the dust around to create a human…
Before He breathed life into that first Adam…
Before He created the place for mankind to live…
He knew, and He rescued.
We in the 21st century still think we can do enough good things to buy or earn our way into Heaven. We think we can be nice enough, kind enough, fair enough, caring enough to be considered holy and righteous enough to be in God’s presence for all eternity.
We think having a task list we can check off each day is the answer. We think that as long as we can check off enough good and skip enough bad, we’re golden. We’re in. We’re on our way!
Not so.
Salvation is a gift revealing God’s unmerited favor to us. There’s nothing any one of us can do to deserve it or earn it. God did this so that no human can lord it over another. No one can claim they have entrance but another doesn’t.
And sometimes, some times, we who call ourselves Christians think that accomplishing things on that godly task list gains us points, so we keep a close watch on it and do all sorts of things to earn our way closer to the throne of God. Oh my!
If we are followers of The Way….
If we recognize what Jesus has rescued us from…
If we consider who we are without Jesus…
If we grasp just a snippet of how much He loves us…
We will love Him and our good works of obedience
to Him will be an overflow of that love.
Tasks won’t be done with the expectation of receiving anything.
They will be done with a grateful, loving heart that
only wants to please and glorify the Father.
If you’re trying to keep up with that task list, my friend, today is the day to lay it down. No more boxes to check. No more impossible expectations.
Today is the day to begin loving Jesus deeply and revealing that through obedience to Him.
Ready? Let’s do this!
Coffee, Bible, Journal.
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