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First I would like to apologize for my hiatus from this blog over the last number of weeks. I have been in Ireland performing a culture study as well as a missions internship for the last month. To read more on this trip go here.
We now come to a very difficult question. It is in answering this question that we teeter on the brink of reentering a legalistic sort of faith. A friend of mine, Jonathan Erdman, with whom I sometimes agree and sometimes disagree, raises a very interesting and valuable point in regards to this issue. He in fact plans to write a book about it! At one point in his leak blog post he writes;
Protestant Christianity of all stripes carries [reciprocity] into their idea of grace, albeit in a way that I consider to be somewhat disingenuous: God gives you the "free" gift of salvation.....therefore....you should should be grateful and do __________. Where many Christians differ is in the way they fill in the blank. But there always seems to be a blank. The result of this is that most Christians carry forward some brand of guilt--guilt for not being good enough or making enough "spiritual progress," moral failings, etc.
It is true that in nearly all, if not every, form of religion carries into its theology this idea of reciprocity, or as Erdman refers to it, an “economy of reciprocity.” Yet, even as we discussed before, salvation does come by grace. So what is the catch? Is there a catch? It would seem based on our previous discussions about the gospel, there is a catch; a call to holiness and the way of suffering.
Think carefully. Holiness is what was required of the people under the Law and they failed miserably. Christ comes after some time of living under the Law and does perfectly what man could not – fulfill the whole Law perfectly. The Law served as a teacher, showing man he could not do it (Galatians 3:24 – the Greek word translated guardian is the term for pedagogue). So salvation must come to us as a gift, and thus the term grace, because we cannot earn it.
Yet then we are called to live a certain way in light of that freely given, unmerited gracious gift. Has grace become something other than gracious? No. We talked before about the work of the Spirit in a person’s life which results in a radical change of view regarding sin and thus a change in how people live and respond to sin. We live and strive to be holy because he is holy, not because it is commanded only, but also because our love for him automatically results in our desire to obtain that holiness. This is why John is able to say in I John 3:3 “everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.” It is the natural reaction of the one who has been redeemed.
So back to Erdman’s statement. Many churches do say we “should be grateful and do __________.” But indeed this is the wrong emphasis and salvation is no longer truly received by grace through faith alone. Forcing holiness and creating this expectation on people can create a false sense of duty in the Christian life. We should be able to expect to see a life change in people’s lives, but if we have to ask for it or even worse, demand it, then we have indeed lost sight of the grace that brings salvation. It is a difficult position to maintain, but nevertheless does seem to be what Scripture teaches.
HT: Jonathan Erdman
