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!
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