Month: May 2017

A first cousin to the grace/effort tension is the grace/conditions tension.  This tension is exposed by the question, “Are God’s promises unconditional?”  You could substitute any number of spiritual concepts for the underlined word “promises” and create the same tension.

Grace is usually understood as the unmerited favor of God expressed to us out of his loving nature.  Vines NT dictionary defines grace (charis) as:  that which bestows or occasions pleasure, delight, or causes favorable regard…  In the Old Testament the concept is expressed by the word “lovingkindness”.

To this basic understanding of the word grace we often add the concept “unconditional”, but when we read the promises in Scripture, most often they do contain a condition…an “if-then” connection.  This creates a tension because in our minds, fulfilling conditions is the same as trying to earn or merit God’s favor.  A merit based life contradicts a grace based life.  We handle such tension by polarizing what we cannot harmonize and the result is we often claim the promises but disregard the uncomfortable (even unwanted) conditions.

For example:

(6) Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.  (7) And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus (Phil 4:6-7).

The promise is for the peace of God to guard our hearts and minds.  It is clearly a gracious offer by God for our benefit.  Who wouldn’t want to trade anxiety for peace?  But the gracious offer is prefaced by unmistakable conditions:  prayer, supplication, and thanksgiving!

So when we try to live by grace and the “conditions” create angst in our spirit, I suggest we not ignore the conditions but rather decouple conditions from the concept of merit.  It is an unnecessary and detrimental alliance.

Recently some friends of ours called to offer us tickets to the Kansas City Symphony at the Kaufman Center.  They said they were a gift if we wanted them.  When we replied in the affirmative, they said we could pick them up at the “will call” window before the performance.

Arriving a little early to the concert, I stood in line at the will call window to receive the tickets.  Once in hand we eagerly (and gratefully) took our seats in the auditorium.

Nowhere along that process did I think that by standing in line and asking for my tickets I had somehow merited them.  However, had I failed to do just that, the tickets would still be on the shelf and we would not have heard the concert.  The tickets offered without merit required an action on my part for the gift to be experienced.  The action was actually quite trivial compared to the gift itself.  The gift was free but experiencing the gift was not automatic.  It required action, a response on my part.

In the same way the gracious gift of reconciliation with God is freely offered without merit (other than Christ’s,) but it is not unconditional.  Although we need to comply with the conditions, we should not think that by fulfilling them we are somehow meriting the gift.  To do so would be arrogant, foolish, or just naïve.

But conversely we should not expect the gracious gifts of God without respect for the conditions he connects to them.  The conditions are never arbitrary but wisely given as a further expression of his grace.

When our youngest son was about six years old he come to me one day and asked if he could have his own “boys” bike.  I asked him what was wrong with the bike his sister learned on.

He said, “It is pink and has Smurfs on it”.

So, I asked, “What kind would you like?”

“I want a black one with knobby tires!”

That day I made him a promise.  If he learned to ride his sister’s bike without the training wheels, I would get him his own “boys” bike – black with knobby tires.

The condition was not a merit system in which he would earn enough money to buy the bike.  They were given to encourage the development of a helpful life-skill (bike riding) that I knew would help him in life beyond the current desire for a shiny new bike.

A few months later he came to me to claim what I promised.  After riding the pink Smurf bike down the driveway without training wheels, we went to the store and picked out the coolest, black bike with knobby tires.

In a much more significant way, God graciously offers us promises to live by along our journey of discipleship.  We must not ignore the conditions for those promises nor think of them as a form of merit.  Rather they are God’s gracious provision for our walk of faith.

Question for reflection:

What promises/conditions do you find in the following:  John 3:16, Hebrews 4:16, Joshua 1:8?

There are aspects of the Christian life that are paradoxical, causing tension when we can’t resolve them.  As a rule we tend to polarize what we cannot harmonize, emphasizing one over the other, or promoting one and minimizing the other.  Whole denominations have been built around this type of tension.  Although some tension is unavoidable, we can also create tension by unnecessary polarization.

Remember the old question, “Did you walk to school or carry your lunch?”  It’s humorous because it proposes a choice that is unnecessary.  You may need to choose between walking to school and riding your bike, but you don’t need to choose between how you travel to school and what you have for lunch.  You can easily do both.  The tension is unnecessary.

An example of this kind of created tension in discipleship is the polarization of the concepts of grace and effort.  Somewhere along our Christian journey we heard the question, “Are you going to live by grace or effort?”  Rather than considering it a humorous, irrelevant question, we think the two concepts are incompatible and mutually exclusive.  We take it seriously and think we have to choose between them.  When we polarize two different concepts (e.g. belief and action), the tension is unnecessary and ultimately detrimental since both are biblical and essential to our journey of discipleship.

Grace vs. effort is a polarization of attitudes (motives) vs. action (behavior).  In our relationship with Christ, we need to understand that these two are not mutually exclusive.  We certainly must choose whether we are going to base our acceptance with God on his grace or our merit.  We cannot do both simultaneously.   However, effort is an action not an attitude.  If our effort (behavior) comes from an attitude of earning God’s acceptance, then we need to change our attitude not necessarily our actions.

A friend of mine was recently diagnosed with type 2 diabetes.  He told me that it was a wake-up call as to how and why he ate. Before the diagnosis he lived to eat.  Now he eats to live.  The solution for diabetes was not to stop eating but to change his motivation behind eating.  In our culture we eat primarily as entertainment and comfort – not real healthy motivations.  The solution to a healthy body is not to quit eating but to reprogram our minds as to why and what we eat.

Effort is a major theme in discipleship on the resurrection side of the cross.  We are told to work, train, do, put off, put on, etc.  These actions are not competing with grace but are complementary to it.  When we polarize them, we create unnecessary tension and destroy the dynamic partnership captured in Phil 2:12-13.

So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation [effort]with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you [grace], both to will and to work for His good pleasure.

If we don’t start with grace as the foundation for our acceptance with God, our effort (or work) can become a source of merit.  We need to understand at a heart level that we are accepted by God on the merits of Christ and not our own.  This is a counter-cultural reality that constantly needs to be affirmed if we are to follow Christ on the resurrection side of the cross.  But having accepted the grace foundation, we need to work hard because our effort now serves a whole new purpose.

If we are doing what Scripture commands, but from an attitude of earning, then we need to change our attitude not the actions.  Grace is in tension with earning, but not with effort.  Discipleship, based on grace, is described as a walk, run, race, even warfare, requiring diligence, discipline, and perseverance all of which are sustained by the Holy Spirit.

Along your discipleship journey, you may slip back into the default thinking of doing what is right in order to gain God’s acceptance.  It is a pattern that is not easy to break.  At times you may think, for example, that by serving or memorizing Scripture, or obeying a command that God now owes you some answers to prayer or maybe a little credit next time you slip up.  When this happens, review your grace foundation.  Remind yourself of who you are in Christ and why.  Then reengage in working out your salvation from a different motivation. (I will discuss maturity and motivations in later blogs).

For reflection:

Are there spiritual truths you find difficult to harmonize?  To what extent do you polarize them?  Is the polarization necessary?