[Why faith...] Put yourself in Gods shoes for a moment. You, the Infinite One, are going to offer a magnificent salvation to humans, the fallen and finite ones. You have determined that this salvation will come to mankind as a gift. Among other purposes, you wish to show forth your grace for all the ages to come. So you design a pure, free, unmerited, unearned, un-recompensed gift of unmixed charity. You will not tally merit badges before bestowing this gift. You will factor in no calculation of human worthiness whatsoever. No works. No rituals. Nothing. In your sovereign counsels, you determine not to force anyone into this salvation. They must respond to your gracious offer in order to seal the deal. What response will you require? Immediately you rule out good works, or else grace is no longer grace. With the good works, goes religious observance, for the same reason. No human fingerprints can mar this testament of grace. Not one molecule of boasting can be admitted. What human response suits this situation? What one act can a person do in which all the merit rests in the giver and none the receiver? Faith. I cant tell you how many times Ive dealt with the objection that faith is doing something to be saved. Thats not exactly true. Faith is undoing something. Its giving up self-effort, self-performance, and self-salvation. Faith turns from self to Christ and says, Youre the man. This makes faith an unwork. In faith, you acknowledge your own absence of merit that you might rely upon the merit of another.... When God chose to require faith, he chose the only response a human can do that points away from self to another. He chose the one human response that leaves grace intact, un-smudged by our self-promoting fingerprints. He chose the one and only healing balm for the miseries of Grace Deficit Disorder. [Sharing and prayers appreciated.] ~from GRACE INTERVENTION, on Amazon now, and available widely on Jan 1. Heres the link: ow.ly/GxRPu
Posted on: Tue, 30 Dec 2014 12:47:37 +0000
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