More thoughts on grace...
I want to share today's email from my daily thought subscription. I think it so beautifully portrays how grace and our freedom of choice work together. For those of us who are less eloquent, it is sometimes a challenge to show how these two aspects of faith work in harmony with one another. It reminded me of a Keller sermon I once listened to on this subject. Keller explained it something like this (extremely condensed and paraphrased by me):
If you had a choice put before you daily between two meals, a steak and baked potato or monkey brains, you would choose the steak and potato plate every single day. Does that mean you did not have the freedom to CHOOSE the monkey brains? No. You could have chosen that every day of your life. The problem is, you could not WANT the monkey brains. Therefore, you would not choose them.
The point of the story is that we cannot WANT God unless He first intervenes, initiates the work of salvation and draws us to Himself by the Holy Spirit and through His sovereign grace. We are born in sin. We are born in rebellion to God. Until He first touches us, we cannot want Him.
We should never feel morally superior to someone who has not chosen to serve God. We should be humbled that God enabled us to choose Him by drawing us and giving us a desire for Him. We did not do this for ourselves. God both intiated our salvation and made it possible through the blood of Christ shed for us. There is nothing in that process that should cause us to feel exalted or superior or smarter than anyone else. We are recipients of God's grace and mercy. We were dead in trespasses and sin. I remember hearing a friend (Todd E.) describe it this way:
A dead person can do NOTHING to help himself.
Enough of my intro. Here's the daily thought I wanted to share...
Langham Partnership Daily Thought
Chosen and Called (cont.)
Sovereign grace
If we ask what caused Saul's conversion, only one answer is possible. What stands out from the narrative is the sovereign grace of God through Jesus Christ. Saul did not 'decide for Christ', as we might say. On the contrary, he was persecuting Christ. It was rather Christ who decided for him and intervened in his life. The evidence for this is indisputable ... But sovereign grace is gradual grace and gentle grace. Gradually, and without violence, Jesus pricked Saul's mind and conscience with his goads. Then he revealed himself to him by the light and the voice, not in order to overwhelm him, but in such a way as to enable him to make a free response. Divine grace does not trample on human personality. Rather the reverse, for it enables human beings to be truly human. It is sin which imprisons; it is grace which liberates. The grace of God so frees us from the bondage of our pride, prejudice and self-centredness, as to enable us to repent and believe. One can but magnify the grace of God that he should have mercy on such a rabid bigot as Saul of Tarsus, and indeed on such proud, rebellious and wayward creatures as ourselves.
--From "The Message of Acts" (The Bible Speaks Today series: Leicester: IVP, 1990), pp. 168, 173.
If you had a choice put before you daily between two meals, a steak and baked potato or monkey brains, you would choose the steak and potato plate every single day. Does that mean you did not have the freedom to CHOOSE the monkey brains? No. You could have chosen that every day of your life. The problem is, you could not WANT the monkey brains. Therefore, you would not choose them.
The point of the story is that we cannot WANT God unless He first intervenes, initiates the work of salvation and draws us to Himself by the Holy Spirit and through His sovereign grace. We are born in sin. We are born in rebellion to God. Until He first touches us, we cannot want Him.
We should never feel morally superior to someone who has not chosen to serve God. We should be humbled that God enabled us to choose Him by drawing us and giving us a desire for Him. We did not do this for ourselves. God both intiated our salvation and made it possible through the blood of Christ shed for us. There is nothing in that process that should cause us to feel exalted or superior or smarter than anyone else. We are recipients of God's grace and mercy. We were dead in trespasses and sin. I remember hearing a friend (Todd E.) describe it this way:
A dead person can do NOTHING to help himself.
Enough of my intro. Here's the daily thought I wanted to share...
Langham Partnership Daily Thought
Chosen and Called (cont.)
Sovereign grace
If we ask what caused Saul's conversion, only one answer is possible. What stands out from the narrative is the sovereign grace of God through Jesus Christ. Saul did not 'decide for Christ', as we might say. On the contrary, he was persecuting Christ. It was rather Christ who decided for him and intervened in his life. The evidence for this is indisputable ... But sovereign grace is gradual grace and gentle grace. Gradually, and without violence, Jesus pricked Saul's mind and conscience with his goads. Then he revealed himself to him by the light and the voice, not in order to overwhelm him, but in such a way as to enable him to make a free response. Divine grace does not trample on human personality. Rather the reverse, for it enables human beings to be truly human. It is sin which imprisons; it is grace which liberates. The grace of God so frees us from the bondage of our pride, prejudice and self-centredness, as to enable us to repent and believe. One can but magnify the grace of God that he should have mercy on such a rabid bigot as Saul of Tarsus, and indeed on such proud, rebellious and wayward creatures as ourselves.
--From "The Message of Acts" (The Bible Speaks Today series: Leicester: IVP, 1990), pp. 168, 173.
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