Are We Living or Doing Our Salvation?

Did you ever notice that after Adam and Eve messed up that God didn’t come down and drop the hammer?  Nope.  His first words were “Where are you?”  It’s almost as if God, who obviously knew where they were, was saying “I miss you guys, and I wish you hadn’t run away from me, because I really want to be with you, where are you?  Why are you hiding from me?  I love you!”

God is like that.  Amazing as that is.  He gives.  And gives.  Freely.  He even gives us the faith to believe Him that leads to the gift of His salvation.  He clothed Adam and Eve after their rejection of Him.  He gave Abraham the faith that would be a blessing not only to Abraham, and made his name great, but he also made him a blessing unto all the Nations.  He gave him a land and a son of promise (and a Son of Promise).  He gave His only Son so that we might believe in Him and have eternal life.  He gave the Holy Spirit to comfort us.  He gave us spiritual gifts for edification of other believers and gives us the words to speak to others to lead them to an understanding of Him.  He is preparing a place for us for all eternity and will give us that.  Gifts!  Free!  Good news!  Praise God!

I sometimes wonder if part of our struggles with faith, whether Christian or not, is that we are so bought into the world’s system, the system Satan loves to use to distract us from the Truth.  In the world things that are free are often those things that have little to no value and, if free to take, they simply aren’t valued.  People believe that something that can’t hold any value must be worthless, rather than understanding that it may simply be priceless. 

As a result of this money- and value-based thinking, many are duped into believing they can’t truly be saved unless they get busy doing a lot of things.  Believing the right things, doing holiness, reading the Word, going to church, living the right life.  Some non-Christians say that they will get right with God as soon as they get their life straightened out.  Many religions require much work to receive anything from the god they worship.  Christians often live lives filled with guilt because they simply never can do enough or keep every single rule laid out for them by the denomination with which they are a part of (afflicted with?  ok, too strong.  …with which they choose to be a part for any number of reasons.).  How many teenage Christians go to sleep wondering if they have really been saved because they hit a few porn sites that day?  How many times, in aisle walking churches, do youth walk the aisle again and again to “rededicate their lives.” 

Is what we are doing by trying to earn or “do” our salvation the result of not being able to get our minds around the fact that in God’s system, in His kingdom, things are about giving and receiving, not buying and selling?  What about “free gift” escapes so many?  And, here is the real problem with all of the above doing and not living faith:  If we are busy doing our salvation out of fear, guilt, obligation, or any other motivation, then we can’t be busy about living our salvation out of love for the greatest Giver of all.

I probably read this in a John Piper book (because it sounds Piperesque as I am thinking it): if I gave my wife flowers on our anniversary and said, “here ya go, honey, it’s our anniversary, so i felt like I had to get you a lil’ sumpn,” it would be the proverbial kissing your sister kind of thing.  It wouldn’t be well given or well received.  It would not be very glorifying to my incredible wife just like trying to do my salvation isn’t glorifying to the One worthy of all glory.  Doing my salvation brings glory me if it brings glory to anyone.  In fact, I believe that when we do our salvation we worship only the great god of me, myself, and I, not the One True God Who Is and always Will Be, the I AM. 

These thoughts take me again to the world’s kingdom/system and its incredible hold on us.  Particularly the Western world.  It’s all about me in that system.  Our TVs trumpet it, marketing mandates it, commercials champion it, politicians promote it, and, sadly, many churches build their entire business on it. 

Unfortunately, God condemns worship of anything other than Himself. 

Now, given all of this good news and all of these gifts, they come with a responsibility.  Just like those men in the parable of the talents, we have a great responsibility to be good stewards of the gift of the good news of grace (and all of our myriads of personal gifts and talents).  We should be all about proclaiming the Kingdom and the freedom found in Christ alone against the prison that is the world system.  We must proclaim it in our churches if they are preaching something other than this gospel.  We must proclaim it in our neighborhoods as we live out our lives.  We must proclaim it in our jobs, in our marketplaces, throughout all the world.  Does this become the mandate, the obligation?  No, it simply flows naturally from the realization of the truth that we are both receiving and giving people in Christ.  Therefore, we must not do this because we are obliged to, we must do it out of the greatest freedom of all, the freedom to love God and to love others that comes through having Christ in us.  We must do this because we love receiving and giving the greatest gift of all:  Jesus!  This is why James could say, consistent with the doctrine of faith, grace, and the free gift of both, that faith without works is dead.  Faith based on love for God will overflow in an abundance of sharing the good news of Jesus. 

In what is your faith?  How have you invested of the many gifts/talents God has given you?