What comes to mind when we think of "righteousness?" Being a good person? Doing righteous deeds? In our small group this morning we talked about righteousness, grace, and a debtor's ethic. Much of our conclusions mirrored what John Piper said in his book Brothers, We are Not Professionals. It was so good to think of serving God as a gift that He enables us to do, rather than a servive we provide Him. We can live as a Christian only by His power and grace.
In fact, every time we do anything "worthy of our calling," we become even MORE indebted to God's grace. And that is the way God wants it. Helplessly falling more and more into His grace, with no way to dig ourselves out of the hole. He doesn't want us to. God doesn't only give us grace when we mess up, or when we have a big test or a talk coming up. He gives me the grace to wake up in the morning, to serve students on campus. No amount of preparing on my part can cause Him to deal out less grace, and no amount of good stuff i do causes the stream of grace to lessen. Oh the gratitude that springs up when we see it this way! We are debtors, ever increasing in debt, and our Giver wants it to be that way! We respond in joy not to even attempt to pay God back but because we are eternally grateful!
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5 comments:
Good post, I'll have to read that book by Piper.
It's a sweet book!
Good ole' Piper; what a guy! ANother great book that mirrors this post is "Future Grace" Piper's book on not having a debtors ethic, because we live be the power of future grace, not trying to work our way to salvation. We are saved, sanctified, and made holy by grace, and our response is not we need to pay God back, but rather we need to worship Him because He is good. This seems, at first glance, as a very slight difference, but after thining about this for the last few weeks, is crucial to a proper understanding of the Gospel. Not living accoring to the debtors ethic is so important (although not thought about too much--especially by me) but so important to truly living out being saved by faith alone. A great read for whoever has time.
Jeremy
Are we saved by faith alone? I'm confused from the other persons post.
Anonymous,
Saying we are saved by faith alone can be ambiguous but not necessarily wrong. We are saved by grace through faith. So it's not that we are saved according to our faith, strictly "by" our faith, or because of our faith, we are saved only because of grace through faith (Ephesians 2:8-9). Faith is that instrument which unites us to the saving benefits, which is why we are saved by grace "through" faith. In the Reformation the principle of sola fide (faith alone) is only rightly understood when it is founded upon sola gratia (grace alone). So the answer to your question is "yes" and "no" it all depends on what is meant by "saved by faith alone," which is why it can be ambiguous.
Grace.
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