God, in His great mercy, has given you life in Christ. He’s laid the table with the Bread of Life & the Wine of Relief. From this meal we rise & go forth to living works. To love our spouse. To raise faithful children. To build decks, websites, and investment portfolios. To write books, make movies, compose songs, photograph sunsets, establish just laws, and fight lawlessness.
All these good works, however, flow from the fountain of this table. We don’t scrap & claw to earn enough approval from the Father to score an invite to this table. False gospels say you must be good enough to come; but none of us are good enough to come, and all of our efforts to better ourselves only jam the gears even more. If you invert the doctrine of grace, you end up with a doctrine of dead works. Trying to do good works before receiving grace is like handing out blueprints for a cathedral in a graveyard. Corpses can’t build cathedrals, they can only populate tombs.
The Gospel says come without coin and buy bread. All of God’s infinite grace is here. Your sins are forgiven. Your shame is washed away. Your vices are crucified and you bear them no more. Your virtues are resurrected and sanctified to His glory. The abundant riches of God’s grace are all yours. All this is what gives rise to what some have called the Protestant work ethic.
You can’t earn what’s on this table. But you can receive it in faith, and then by God’s grace, turn a profit on it. So receive grace, in order to go forth with eager joy to do the works of grace, and then in grateful praise bring the fruits of grace to glorify God in the courts of His Kingdom.
So come in faith and welcome to Jesus Christ…
Leave a Reply