By faith obedience comes. (part 1)

Today, I was sitting in my Judaism class.  The teacher, a Rabbi, asked me what was going to happen to me when I die.  Without doubting, I simply responded, “Heaven”.  He followed up the question with “Why?”.  I just blurted out the scripture of John 3:16 and ended it with, “I believe that Jesus died for my sins on the cross. I believe that Jesus was my Savior and I’ve put my faith in Jesus.”  I then went on to tell Rabbi that I loved him,  but God is the one who will judge him but from what I had seen of his beliefs he would not be going to heaven.  It was hard but good – I was able to preach the gospel in a class on Judaism.  So I ask that you will join me in prayer that God will use me there and that God will start to soften the Rabbi’s and the students’ hearts so the good news of what belief and faith really looks like.

What does belief and faith actually look like though?  It’s a question that has been going around in my mind and has had me turned to the Bible more this semester than any semester in the past.  Anyone you ask that knows me well and knows my theology, I’m in love with grace.  Grace is grace.  Grace isn’t cheap, grace is free through faith.  Grace is the reason that I am the person that I am today and if it weren’t for how amazing grace is I wouldn’t understand the Bible the way I do today or even be seeking God the way that I am today.  A book that really got me to be in love with grace is Brennan Manning’s The Ragamuffin Gospel. In it, Manning writes:

We fluctuate between castigating ourselves and congratulating ourselves because we are deluded into thinking we save ourselves.  We develop a false sense of security from our good works and scrupulous observance of the law.  Our halo gets too tight and a carefully disguised attitude of moral superiority results.  Or we haven’t lived up to our lofty expectations of ourselves.  The roller coaster ride of elation and depression continues. Why? Because we never lay hold of our nothingness before God, and consequently, we never enter into the deepest reality of our relationship with Him.  But when we accept ownership of our powerlessness and helplessness, when we acknowledge that we are paupers at the door of God’s mercy, then God can make something beautiful out of us. (Page 79)

A few weeks ago I called my dear friend Grant, (Brilliant blog at http://gracepeaceandtruth.blogspot.com/) and told him that I was in a tough position.  My dilemma was this: I wanted to accept God’s grace in its fullness and forget about works but at the same time I knew that I couldn’t continue sinning.  Grant directed me towards Roman 6 and directly off the bat Paul writes this:

Romans 6:1 What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace my abound? By no means!

Paul continues to write about how we have been dead to sin and we have been buried and then raised from the dead so that we too might walk in newness of life. (Romans 6:4)  So that answers my question, even though we are dead to sin, we still walk in new lives.  That is how grace will abound.  Well, how do we get grace?  Paul answers it at the beginning of the same letter –

Romans 1:5 Through whom (Jesus) we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations.

We simply get Grace in obedience to faith.  So for grace, we still need faith.  So through grace we will obey for the sake of Jesus’ name among all the nations.  Because of the grace in me I received and then the obedience of faith that came with it, my Judaism class was able to see something different in my faith today something that they wanted.

I know I’ve been talking about Roman’s a lot but it’s an incredible letter.  I’ll get out of it after I talk about Romans 12:9.  The title of this passage in my Bible is “Marks of a true Christian” and then it reads like this:

Romans 12: 9-21 Let love be genuine.  Abhor what is evil; hold fat to what is good.  Love one another with brotherly affection.  Outdo one another in showing honor.  Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord.  Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer.  Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality.  Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them.  Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.  Live in harmony with one another.  Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly.  Never be wise in your own sight.  Repay no one evil for evil but give thought to do what is honorable in sight of all.  If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.  Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.”  To the contrary, “IF your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head”.  Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

That is what the Bible says about being a true Christian, which is pretty much the teachings of Jesus in a paragraph.  No, I’m not there yet.  I want to be, but I’m not.  I am a sinner.  I am a great sinner, even when I’m supposed to be a slave to righteousness, I bittersweetly disobey.  But that is how beautiful grace is through faith.  I have faith in the fact that God will get me to be the Christian that he wants me to be.  I can feel myself maturing from milk to meat daily.  I can feel the seeds that God is growing in me, I can feel the mustard seed starting to break through the Earth (Mark 4:26-32).

I’m sure a part two is going to come, we’ll see what happens and when that happens.  I can’t organize my thoughts right now and keep this coherent and organized.  I hope you got something out of it, or at least something to ponder.