Skip to main content

A Gift from God


This post is taken from the booklet An Invitation, Not a Challenge, by Everett Wilson, brother of Jim Wilson.

A Gift from God

One reason why people have such a hard time accepting salvation as a gift is that they have been trained to think of work as the way to reward. Then, when we become rich or are otherwise rewarded, we comfort ourselves that "we worked hard for it." Who wants the teacher to give the class goof-off an A, when the class grind had to work so hard to earn it? Who wants to see thieves and cheats rewarded with the spoils of their crimes? The goof-off doesn't deserve an A, so he should not get one. The thief has no right to another person's property, so should not be allowed to keep it.

The trouble with these comparisons is that they have nothing to do with the gift of eternal life. Law is useful when it measures distinctions between right and wrong, good and bad. The justice system may straighten out a car theft by returning the car to its owner and punishing the thief. A fair grading system may distinguish between good work and poor, so that an A may indicate to future teachers and employers what a student can do. These are just two of the works of the law, and they are very good.

But when it comes to giving eternal life to sinners, we're in a situation where nobody is getting a passing grade. Nobody deserves anything. The reward is too expensive for anyone to earn. Nothing could be more hopeless than to think you could ever obey enough laws, behave enough better, to get to heaven. We're Wal-Mart shoppers thinking our twenty bucks ought to be enough for a diamond tiara from Tiffany's! If there are some things in this world that we cannot have except by gift, you may be sure that heaven is in an even more expensive category. We can’t afford it, and we’ll never be able to earn enough to afford it.

Not only haven't we earned it; we deserve the opposite. The law has revealed our failures. We are part of a world held accountable to God. We have no excuse for who we are and what we have done. Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God. The law puts us in the wrong, and never sets us right. Therefore no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin.


To be continued on Friday.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why Is Obedience So Hard?

There are several reasons why obedience seems hard. I will comment on some of them and then speak positively on how obedience is easy. We think: 1) Obedience is an infringement on freedom. Since we are free in Christ, and obedience is somehow contrary to that freedom, we conclude that obedience is not good. Yet we know it is good. Thus, we become confused about obedience and are not single-minded. 2) Obedience is works. We who have been justified by grace through faith are opposed to works; therefore, we are opposed to obedience. 3) We have tried to obey and have failed—frequently. Therefore, the only solution is to disobey and later confess to receive forgiveness. It is easier to be forgiven by grace than to obey by effort. 4) We confuse obedience to men with obedience to God. Although these are sometimes one and the same (see Romans 13, 1 Peter 2-3, Ephesians 5-6, Colossians 3, and Titus 2), sometimes they are not the same (see Colossians 2:20-23, Mark 7, 1 Timothy 4:1-5, a...
6 comments
Read more

Ripe for Harvest: Prepared to Give an Answer

As you read through the book of Acts, look at every conversion, and see what happened right before it: what was said, who said it. The situations are the same today.     A long time ago, my duty in the Officer’s Christian Fellowship was the east coast of the United States. I went to an officer’s office at Fort Lee, VA, and stayed overnight, then I went on to Norfolk and Fort Bragg.    Forty years later, I was no longer on the staff of OCF, but I had to go to Denver. While I was in Denver, I checked in at the OCF offices. There was the same Air Force officer I had met in Fort Lee, retired now, a colonel. I had stayed in his house when he was a first lieutenant. He asked me, “Do you know what happened when you stayed overnight?” I said, “No, I just remember staying in your home.” He said, “You led the next-door neighbor to Christ.” I had no memory of it.    Ten years after that, I was speaking at a banquet at the Hotel Salisbury, and who was th...
Post a Comment
Read more

Lifted Up

In the first thirteen verses of John 3, Nicodemus did not understand what Jesus was talking about. It was nonsense to him. When Jesus said verse fourteen to him, Nicodemus finally understood Jesus. Here it is: “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up…” (John 3:14). The reason it made sense to Nicodemus was because he knew of the event that Jesus spoke of. People who had been bitten by a serpent could look at the bronze snake and did not die. Nicodemus knew the Bible story.   Here it is: “Then the LORD sent venomous snakes among them; they bit the people and many Israelites died. The people came to Moses and said, ‘We sinned when we spoke against the LORD and against you. Pray that the LORD will take the snakes away from us.’ So Moses prayed for the people. The LORD said to Moses, ‘Make a snake and put it up on a pole; anyone who is bitten can look at it and live.’ So Moses made a bronze snake and put it up on a pole. Then ...
Post a Comment
Read more