A grace worth dying for

It is often said that if something seems too good to be true, it probably is.  The only exception to this rule is the mind-boggling gospel message: turn in your failing human life, and God will make you a new person in Jesus Christ so that you can spend eternity with him.  It is an equation that is grossly imbalanced but upon which humanity’s every hope depends. 

In a world where we are so accustomed to the natural, where we are trained to search out the tricky angle on any deal that seems too perfect, we often have a hard time accepting God’s free gift of grace.  And as a result, we see 2,000 years of Christianity full of attempts by sinful men to commend themselves to God rather than take him at his word.  This is the saddest picture in the world: sinful people who have nothing but yet refuse to loosen their empty fists to accept the undeserved mercy of Jesus Christ. 

Sometimes we make the gospel too hard.  But an equal danger is making it too easy, and in doing so we do create our own gospel which really is “too good to be true.”  In fact, accepting Christ’s offer of salvation is the easiest and the hardest decision of all.  Easiest, because it requires nothing of us; no application, no interview, no resume of good works before God will consider us for salvation.  Yet it is also the hardest, because the prerequisite for this kind of grace is death to our former selves.  Thus Christ asks nothing of us, and at the same time he asks us to give up everything.  The key is that the everything we have is really nothing compared to the everything of our God.  This kind of sacrifice is illustrated by Jesus’ parable of the hidden treasure, where a man sells all he has so he can buy a field where he has found a buried fortune that is worth infinitely more (Mt 13:44).  Jim Elliot was right, that “he is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”

Death to ourselves must take place before we can have new life in Christ, because we cannot carry our sinful flesh into the Body of our Lord.  There is no union between our old and new natures; they are absolutely, elementally different.  Paul says that we, “having been set free from sin, have become slaves to righteousness” (Rom 6:18).  We are Christ’s slaves!  Paul writes elsewhere that we are no longer our own; “you were bought with a price.  So glorify God in your body” (2 Cor 6:19b-20).

We must die?  A hard teaching!  Maybe its time that we realized that our user-friendly gospel, which allows us to keep everything about our former way of life while picking and choosing those elements of life in Christ that make us feel the best, really is too good to be the true message of Jesus.  And yet what else did we expect?  God gave his very son to die; would he throw away such a precious gift if it was not worthy of a great sacrifice in return?  I wholeheartedly believe that God’s grace would not be worth our commitment if it were not so costly.  We have been redeemed not by money or anything of this world, but with the blood of our Lord (1 Peter 1:19).  A job can ask me for my time and repay me with money, possessions can ask me for my money and deliver me temporary pleasure, but only the Lord can offer so great and surpassing a reward that he demands my very life.  This is the God that I want to serve; this is a grace worth dying for!

Why I'm starting to blog

Whenever I read blogs, my first question is always why someone thinks that their thoughts are worth my reading.  So, I want to put out my purpose for this up front.  It doesn't really matter to me whether or not anyone reads what I put here, because that's not my goal.  I'm really just looking for a way to write down my thoughts about my life and Christ to hopefully work some things out in my mind and to document my journey of discipleship.  Putting up a blog is a way to keep myself thinking and writing regularly and maybe even have a handful of people join me in my own exploration of the gospel.

The title is from Isaiah 50:7, where the servant says that he has set his "face like a flint" in the face of suffering.  The servant at least in part finds his future fulfillment in Christ, "who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at teh right hand of the throne of God" (Heb 12:2).  Likewise, Paul models himself after Christ, telling the Philippians that, "forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus" (Phil 3:13b-14). 

For me, this is one of the key pictures of the Christian life: the disciple running a marathon, exhausting the resources God gives him yet constantly pressing forward, yearning for a heavenly reward.  His face is the picture of determination, unflinching, its features unyielding in their comittment to the goal as if they were chiseled out of flint.  It is the picture of distance running legend Emil Zatopek, pictured on the background, who was known as the "human locomotive" for his extraordinary will to push past the limits of human performance.  That is my picture of discipleship, and I pray that when Jesus sees my life it looks spiritually like Zatopek did physically.  I hope that it reminds him of his own life of complete abandon for God.