THE THREAT OF GRACE
Ephesians 2:4-5
Because
of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ
even when we were dead in transgressions --it is by grace you have been saved.
When
many first hear the distinction between religion and the gospel, they think
that it just sounds too easy. “Nice deal!” they may say. “If that is
Christianity, all I have to do is get a personal relationship to God and then
do anything I want!” Those words, however, can only be spoken on the outside of
an experience of radical grace. No one from the inside speaks like that. In
fact, grace can be quite threatening.
[A woman] …said that she had gone to
church growing up and had never before heard a distinction drawn between the
gospel and religion. She had always heard that God accepts us only if we are
good enough. She said that the new message was scary…and she replied: “If I was
saved by my good works then there would be a limit to what God could ask of me
or put me through. I would be like a taxpayer with ‘rights’—I would have done
my duty and now I would deserve a certain quality of life. But if I am a sinner
saved by sheer grace – then there’s nothing he cannot ask of me.”
She
understood the dynamic of grace and gratitude. If when you have lost all fear
of punishment you also lose all incentive to live a good, unselfish life, then
the only incentive you ever had to live a decent life was fear. This woman
could see immediately that the wonderful-beyond-belief teaching of salvation by
sheer grace had an edge to it. She knew that if she was a sinner saved by
grace, she was…more subject to the sovereign Lordship of God. She knew that if
Jesus really had done all this for her, she would not be her own. She would
joyfully, gratefully belong to Jesus, who provide all this for her at infinite
cost to himself.
From
the outside that might sound coercive, like a grinding obligation. From the
inside the motivation is all joy.
The Reason For
God by Timothy Keller,
pg.182-183.