Believing is Receiving
Read Luke 1:30-45
"May it be to me as you have said." vs. 38
I had initially decided to write about obedience today. In fact, I was even going to use Mary as picture of what pure obedience is...however, as I read the passage over and over, sat, prayed and meditated, I realized I had it all wrong. In essence, I had attempted to put the cart before the horse. Reading the story of Mary's encounter with the divine messenger, this profound announcement he makes on behalf of God, and this disorienting and disruptive moment in the life of Mary, I was quick to jump to her response, "May it be to me as you have said." At first I thought what a radical act of obedience toward God...and that's when I realized. This wasn't an act of obedience because no command was given (besides naming the child Jesus). Instead this was a profound act of accepting the Gift that God was offering the world. In the economy of God, receiving the gift always preceeds obedience to a command.
God had extended his hands toward Mary. You child will carry mine. You have found favor. He will be the Son of the Most High. Yes, Mary, he does have many of the titles that the Messiah is to bear. Here Mary is the gift. What is your response? Yesterday we talked of the response of innocent and simplistic, childlike amazement. Today we turn our attention to the response the proceeds from amazement...receipt.
I nearly perpetuated an extremely unhealthy tendency that exists within the church. I had nearly forgotten that before their is obedience, their is acceptance; which is truly the most profound and dangerous moment of faith. Unfortunately, we too often forget this. We are quick to turn our attention to commands and obedience. In fact, too often Christianity becomes a simple moralism, an existence that is caught up in nothing more than a running talley between the good done (commands obeyed) and the bad (commands rejected). Tragically, we measure our faith by our works done in fear rather than our lives offered in love.
The movement of God throughout the Scriptural story, as we discussed a few days ago, has always been the movement of gift. He gives life out of nothingness, hope out of impossibility. Humankind, has always been on the receiving end of God's tenacious gifting. Before there is a command, God gifts humanity with his ruach (his breath or Spirit--Gen.2). Before there is a command, God gifts Israel with liberation, identity, and hope (Ex. 11-19). Before there is a command, God gifts Mary with a child...a baby of His own making, not a man. Before there is a command, God gifts us with the salvation through Jesus Christ.
But just as gift preceeds command, acceptance preceeds obedience. The ball is seemingly placed in our court time and again. Will we believe in the gift of God? Will we have faith...however, realizing that faith without receiving is dead. But yet, too few accept the gift. Many chase after the commands attempting to justify their lives through good deeds done in obedience to God's weighty commands. However, few live as those whose lives have been radically altered by a God that interuppted their existence with arms extended out, saying, "Here, take this...it will change you." Few, are gutsy enough to say, "May it be to me as you have said." Therefore, we leave God with arms extended, responding, "Wait a minute, let me work a little harder first." "Wait a minute God, what are the stipulations first?" All the while, He is simply trying to give us His gift.
Today, I challenge you. I challenge you to back up for a moment and identify whether or not you too have placed the cart before the horse. Have you ever received the gift? Does your response of obedience first flow from a life completely altered by the awesome gift of God? Or have you bypassed acceptance and moved straight toward fearful obedience of God's weighty commands. How you answer these questions will greatly determine your faithfulness in following God and bringing him glory in this world. "Without faith it is impossible to please God."(Heb. 11:6) Faith is believing...but believing is receiving.
4 comments:
Jeff,
Thanks for all of your outstanding devotionals. I picked up your website today and hope to continue the blog even while I am in Iraq.
Regarding this post:
I am inspired to write about two themes that show up here.
1) God is called two things in Scripture a. Holy & b. Love. That is who He is. At first reflection it seems that these two things should contradict each other. If holiness is separation from sin and we are sinful then how do we also respond to his love? But through His love, He gave us the gift of His Son Jesus (who is the Christ) to pay the penalty for our sin to make us clean and allow us access into His throneroom where we can freely, even boldly, worship without dying. If we do not pass through the door to His throneroom (Jesus) and worship, however, we take His gift for granted and throw it aside as if it was the wrapping paper instead of the gift itself.
2) God's gift and our act of obedience work in tandem with each other. This was as true for the Hebrews as it is for us today. The Old Testament is filled with covenential language, "I will be your God, you will be my people." It is initiated by love Dt. 7:7-8; Jn. 3:16 and maintained by steadfast love (loyalty) or lovingkindness. Joshua 24 and Jeremiah 31 both give us a good example of his covenant and how His gift and our obedience work in tandem. Just like Israel, if we cast away His gift, God is under no compulsion to maintain His end of the covenant. But if we will be His people and serve Him unyieldingly then His blessings will continue to follow us and successive generations wherever we are.
We are saved by grace alone, but saving grace is never alone, it completes itself in works! Paul and James told us that. :o)
Blessings!
Shawn
Shawn, thank you for the response...I love the opportunity to converse.
1.) I would raise a question. Have we limited "holiness" by defining it primarily as "separation from sin." This is something that I am wrestling with currently. As a part of a Holiness denomination, we are given ample opportunities to consider the nature of holiness. Much of the language of holiness that we find especially in the Old Testament is derived from the Priestly writing sources that were consistent in maintaining the purity and non-corruption (or perversion) of God's character. God is pure from sin...for sin is at its core non-receipt (as I draw from the devotional) of the gift which manifests itself in disobedience. God cannot reject God's self therefore he is free from sin. However, to push this further...God's holiness can't just be freedom from sin (the negative) it must also have implications to the positive. God is not only free from sin...God is ever extending Himself toward his creation...God is eternally giving of himself in sacrifice and offer of relationship (covenant)...God is giving himself even to the point of humiliation (in Jesus Christ as we read the Kenotic passage in Phil. 2). Therefore not only is God pure but he is also giving...that giving is God's love...a giving of himself. Therefore as we define holiness, it must not simply be absence of sin but also the abundance of love. Holiness is not simply substantial (sin-based) it is also and I would dare to say more predominately portrayed throughout the complete narrative as relational (or loved based). Food for thought...
2.) I could not agree with you more
"God's gift and our act of obedience work in tandem with each other." To miss this, is to in Dietrich Bonhoeffer's words...cheapen grace. However,that obedience gains its substance in the receipt of that which we could have never gained for ourselves. Our lives of obedience flow from gratitude and humility rather than from duty (the deontology of modernity). As I recognize and read the covenantal language of the Old Testament I am utterly amazed at how unfaithful God is to the covenantal stipulations. In fact, one might say God is irresponsible with his Covenant with Israel. At every juncture in which God would be completely justified to cast off Israel and release them from his covenantal obligations...something happens. God's holiness (as defined above--His perpetual self-giving love) triumphs. Tracing the first 3 chapters of Jeremiah...God is likened to a husband whose wife has run around on him. Within the covenant of marriage the man is justified to put her away and never receive her again. But God resists the urge to forsake his first love and instead chooses Israel once again. He chooses to bear up under her infidelity and offer the gift of forgiveness. Within this economy our obedience is the result of an encounter with a God who shatters the boundaries of contractual faithfulness and bears up under our rebelliouness. Please don't misunderstand me...this is never reduced to a sort of benign universalism or a covenant that requires nothing on our part. Instead it is covenantal relationship that is properly centered on the self definition of God who is a "forgiving God, gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love." From there we can begin to echo the words of Paul...shall we continue to sin so that grace might increase--Absolutely Not--how can we continue to sin if we have died to sin and have been raised with Christ to new life. In my baptism (at least in the language of Paul) I participate in the receipt of a gift that causes in me a radical rupture with my past and moves me toward the new...a life of consistent, diligent, perseverant, and dependant devotion and obedience. For that is the ongoing mark of knowing God, in our Lord Jesus Christ.
Man, I look forward to our conversations. :)
Jeff,
Hey, this is good stuff. My brain hasn't been forced through these processes since seminary. I'm loving it!
I agree with you in that holiness cannot simply be defined with the negative, but also with the positive. To neglect his outstreched arm would severely limit his grace in frightening ways. It seems that we are saying the same thing but you filled in a couple of holes. :o)
It is his loving pursuit of us that brings us past the firery barrier of his holiness, as defined strictly by the negative definition of holiness. It is because of his outstretched arms, the positive approach toward his holiness, that brings us through to the other side alive. I believe that it is important to be aware that God is unapproachable without Him making the first move.
"Our lives of obedience flow from gratitude and humility rather than from duty (the deontology of modernity)." -- Well said brother!
He has already and will forever make the first move because it is in God's very nature to show love and to keep the relationship alive. Hosea also paints a very graphic picture of what this looks like. How many of us would run back to a whore and keep her as our wife over and over again?
Where the balance between eternal security and hyper-fundamentalism lies is a debate that will continue until we see God face to face I'm sure. He left that as a mystery perhaps so that we would be constantly aware of where we walk; in humbled obedience to the Master and in the freedom of His grace.
I stated earlier:
"We are saved by grace alone, but saving grace is never alone, it completes itself in works!"
Perhaps a less confusing and better way of saying this statement is:
We are saved by faith alone, but saving faith is never alone.
Blessings,
Shawn
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