This month my bible study has been going through Galatians. We've talked about living for God rather than man, not letting things distract us from the gospel, and being set free from the law. One of the things we discussed tonight was the way people often try to "tack on" requirements for faith. The Galatians had fallen into what was not the pure gospel of grace through faith alone, which got me wondering why.
I suppose a basic answer is that Satan will use any method possible to keep us from connecting with Christ. What better way than to make people think they are headed down the right road already? Or, better yet, why not convince people that faith comes with certain stipulations? That way, when we can't meet the expectations we think we are supposed to live up to, discouragement will eat away at us, we'll think we aren't good enough for God and turn away on our own.
But isn't that the point of Christianity? That we are not, and never can be, good enough or pious enough to earn God's favor? Isn't that the whole reason Christ had to die in the first place, to save us because we could not save ourselves? So why then is it so easy for us (and I admit to having had my own struggles with legalism) to fall into following a doctrine of salvation by works? I mean, why do we insist on working for something that is free? Maybe it's my own lazy nature at war with the idea of doing more work than we have to, but still...
I think maybe we just can't quite get our heads around who God is, we can't understand how anyone could love so indiscriminately. Our problem is that we forger how much bigger God is. We have been so stained by the actions of man that we have a hard time realizing how different the actions of God are. No man could love so much. We aren't comfortable with such awesomeness, we like control too much to completely let go to something we don't fully understand, our faith is small. We find comfort in thinking we have something to add to the equation. We like concrete 1+1=2. But grace + works is no longer the pure grace of God.
Maybe there is something to the whole childlike faith thing after all (go figure!). If you give a child a present for no reason, they don't question, they don't try to argue. If you do the same with an adult, they want to know why, they want to know if there is something they can give you in return, they try to make things up to you, they feel indebted to you. Our world relies on reciprocity. But the things of this world are far different than the things of God. "For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 6:23) That's it. Free. Whether we like it or not, there is nothing we can do to earn it. Now why can't we get that through our thick skulls?
Grace alone delivers us from slavery to law, slavery to sin. We have been slaves for so long, we don't know how to adjust to freedom. Instead of embracing freedom, we look for a new master. We try to make God into one, adding tasks that we must complete to find His favor. God makes it clear that while He wants to be Lord, he doesn't want to be master and there is a difference. The way I see it, serving God as Lord means willingly turning our lives over to His will, being a "living and holy sacrifice" (Romans 12:1) whereas slavery doesn't include choice but rather hoops to jump through.
Again, God is more than we could ever understand. Christ calls us friends rather than slaves (John 15:14-15). If that isn't close enough a connection, God completely blows me away with Hosea 2:16:
"And it will come about in that day," declares the Lord,
"That you will call Me Ishi [my husband] and will no longer call Me Baali [my master]."
It doesn't get much more intimate than that.
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