Will You?

 

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast.  Ephesians 2:8-9

 Have you ever felt like spirituality was complicated? Like there’s a huge long list of “Thou shalt” and “Thou shalt not”s? Have you been overwhelmed by the weight of your sin debt and felt like nothing could set you even in the scales of eternity? Have you thought about “getting right with God” but hesitated because you didn’t want to have to quit certain things or change behaviors? I’ve got really good news for you today – God didn’t want to make coming to Him complicated or overwhelming, He made it super simple.

 I think that people like to make things complicated. They’ve said that in order to be right with God you need to accept Jesus as your Savior and go to church every week. In order to receive salvation from your sins you need to believe in Jesus and read your Bible and pray every day. But that’s just not what God has told us in the Bible! Maybe we feel the need to make Christianity complicated to make it a more exclusive club or make ourselves feel better about what we have done for God, but God made it pretty clear in our verses for today, it’s not about what we do or don’t do – it’s all about what He’s done for us already.

 It is by grace that we have been saved. So what is grace? Webster had a lot to say about it, and I encourage you to go read up on the full definition, but the bit that stood out to me was, “the free unmerited love and favor of God.” Grace is something we cannot earn, that we do not deserve. We are not saved because we tried really hard, or asked just the right way. We are not saved because we did the right things in the right way at the right time. It has nothing to do with anything we did or didn’t do. It’s not about balancing scales or being better than 54% of the other people around us. God sent His Son to save us not because of who we are, but because of who He is.

 Why didn’t He make it more exclusive or difficult to achieve? Well, for one thing, He knew we just couldn’t achieve it on our own. Also, He loved us and wanted us to be with Him, so He put salvation together in the only way we’d be able to participate in it – by leaving it all up to Him. Do we need to accept Jesus as our Savior and ask Him to be Lord over, in charge of, our lives? Yes. Do we come to this realization on our own? No. We can only come to the place where all of this makes sense, where we see our need for God and His perfect provision for us and we want it, if God opens our eyes and enables us to see it. Why? These verses tell us that too, “not by works, so that no one can boast.” God doesn’t want people taking credit for what He has done. It’s not good for them, or for others. We need to give God the glory for what he’s done in us.

 So, addressing the elephant in the room – hello elephant – what about those who don’t accept Jesus? Did He just not choose them? I wrestled with predestination vs free-will in a blog post earlier this year, interestingly when presented with the same verses for my SOAP. For once in my life I found a sense of peace when posed with the question, does God choose me or do I choose God? The answer that I found was “yes.” Yes, in order for someone to come to faith God needs to draw them and yes, in order to be saved the person much choose God. My basic understanding of why some don’t accept Jesus is that although God presented them with the opportunity and the faith to do it, they choose not to. It seems that both wills need to be present. God is not going to force anyone into salvation, and we certainly can’t get there apart from Him. 2 Peter 3:9 tells us, “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” God wants all of us in Heaven with Him.

Here's the Thing: God made each of us individually, knit us together in our mother’s wombs. He has watched over us our whole lives, grieved with us over our hurts and rejoiced in our achievements. He is the ultimate Father who knows how to give good gifts and desperately loves His children, and that’s us. It breaks His heart when someone chooses not to be with Him, but true love requires choice.

P – Father, I didn’t know where my study was going to take me today, but as always You showed up and showed me what You wanted me to learn, to remember, to share. Thank You. Thank You for always showing up for me. Thank You for never leaving me hanging. Thank You that You are my good and perfect Father. Thank You for giving me the faith to see Your love for me and my need for You. Thank You for the grace extended to me that I could never deserve on my own. Thank You for Your perfect wisdom in putting together salvation in a way we could actually participate in it. I love You so much, LORD!