Transcript:
We understand grace to an extent on the front end of salvation because we believe the word of God. We were in need of regeneration. We were dead in our trespasses and sins. We needed to be made alive.
We needed resurrection. Many in the room would rejoice. We weren’t just sick and in need of healing. We weren’t just dirty and in need of cleansing. Right? We were dead and in need of resurrection. We needed grace. We get that. But then for many, it’s as though once we’re in, once we’re regenerated, we want to flip the whole thing back to an economy of merit.
And now we’re just collecting stars and earning cookies.
We’re like the older brother in the parable of the prodigal son. Do you remember what the father said to the older brother toward the end of that parable? He said, son, you are always with me and everything that is mine is yours. We don’t realize that. We don’t get that. We are so often wrong in our thinking. We get it all kinds of twisted.
It is as though we think that we have worked really hard at the Christian life and thereby have validated the favor we’ve been shown by God. It is as though we think that through our working, we can go back and retroactively vindicate God’s saving.
As though we can become the kind of people that God would’ve been happy to save in the first place. Beloved, it can’t be done. It can’t be done.
It’s like if you were to buy your young child, your very young child, an expensive and utterly unique gift. A gift that will bless him for the entirety of his life.
A gift that will change his entire life. And upon receiving this gift, the child goes to his piggy bank and scrapes together a few quarters and gives them to you and then spends the rest of his life trying to earn what you gave him. Now, there are two significant things that child does not understand.
One: he doesn’t understand that he can’t come close to being able to earn this gift. He can’t come close to being able to pay for it because he cannot comprehend its cost or its value. But then secondly, he doesn’t understand that you, as a loving parent, don’t want him to live his life trying to earn it.
You want him to live in it and to live from it; not chasing after it all of his days.
Listen to the full sermon here!
Everyday Grace 005