Grace or Gumption?
We’re all damaged goods. As the apostle Paul puts it, “For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). Instinctively, we know we’re made to be glorious creatures. Instinctively, we also know that we fall short of that glory.
Religion is our attempt to re-attain that glory. Religion is our attempt. It is what we do to save ourselves. It is “salvation through moral effort.”
One of the central teachings of the New Testament is that any attempt to save ourselves is doomed to fail. Religion has failed us. A number of books have been written lately that attempt to show that the greatest threat to world peace is religion. Much of the world’s violence, they say, is caused by religion. Of course, they’re right. Atheism is one of those religions. Atheism has its own definite beliefs about “God” and what it’s going to take as a human race to “save ourselves.” The atheist states of the Soviet Union, China and Cambodia killed tens if not hundreds of millions of people in the twentieth century. Yes, religion in all its forms has failed us, religion as the universal attempt to save ourselves, as our attempt to regain our former glory.
Jesus and the New Testament writers agree in their assessment that religion, whether theistic or atheistic religion, is a dead end. Religious effort is just one more expression of our fatal flaw, which is to try to play God. It is doomed to fail and needs to fail if we are to embrace God’s radical alternative. The New Testament radical alternative to religion is the word “gospel.” The bad news is that we can’t save ourselves. The “good news” is that we don’t have to.
“Religion is “salvation through moral effort.” The “gospel” is “salvation through grace.”
A religious life is one that tends to continually vacillate between feeling guilty and feeling superior. Some of us tend to get stuck on one or the other, but most of us manage to swing to the other pole at least once in a while. We may not even see ourselves as religious people, or even spiritual people. Maybe our sense of being “not enough” is not being as successful as we want to be in our job, sport or family life. When we do manage to make it up another rung on the ladder, it’s hard not to “look down” on everyone below us for their lack of talent or lack of effort. Of course, feeling superior just sets us up for feeling inferior when we invariably look up at the people perched on the upper rungs.
Some of us have given up on both religion and ladders. Our attempts to save ourselves basically involve saving ourselves from depression and despair. So we eat, drink and try to be merry as best we can, medicating ourselves, stimulating ourselves, doing whatever it takes to pull ourselves back from the “black hole” that threatens to swallow us up. But it’s not working. No attempt to save ourselves ever works, not for long.
The apostle Paul uses the three words – justification, sanctification and glorification — to describe three aspects or stages of salvation. These three words actually address our deep human yearnings for self-validation, transformation and experiencing ourselves as “glorious” creatures. The problem is, religious thinking and living can kick in at any time. For example, even though we call ourselves believers, some of us are still trying to justify or validate our existence by being “good Christians.” Or we accept the validation Jesus’ death on the cross accomplished for us, but now we attempt to sanctify or transform ourselves mostly through our own efforts. We don’t deny that grace is important, but we see grace as a kind of lubricant, something to grease the skids so that we don’t have to try quite so hard. This understanding of grace underlies the (non-biblical, by the way) aphorism: “God helps those who help themselves.” Finally, our struggle with self-esteem prompts us to exploit virtually every little success or accomplishment to extract some recognition or glory from others.
The message of the New Testament is that this whole system – this whole religious way of coming to life — is bankrupt. Any attempt to save ourselves — i.e. justify ourselves, sanctify or transform ourselves, and glorify ourselves — is doomed to fail.
So how to live by grace.
It isn’t by being passive. Paul himself writes: “Continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose” (Philippians 2:16). Instead of working on our salvation, Paul tells us to work out what God is working in. The “fear and trembling” he talks about is the biblical kind of fear that is actually “awe” before the fact the God is this close and this directly involved in our lives.
I’m looking forward to saying more about this, especially about what I’m learning at a personal level. I’ll end with this quote from Tim Keller that addresses beautifully our struggle to validate or justify our existence:
When my own personal grasp of the gospel was very weak, my self-view swung wildly between two poles. When I was performing up to my standards — in academic work, professional achievement, or relationships — I felt confident but not humble. I was likely to be proud and unsympathetic to failing people. When I was not living up to standards, I felt humble but not confident, a failure. I discovered, however, that the gospel contained the resources to build a unique identity. In Christ I could know I was accepted by grace not only despite my flaws, but because I was willing to admit them. The Christian gospel is that I am so flawed that Jesus had to die for me, yet I am so loved and valued that Jesus was glad to die for me. This leads to deep humility and deep confidence at the same time. It undermines both swaggering and sniveling. I cannot feel superior to anyone, and yet I have nothing to prove to anyone. I do not think more of myself nor less of myself. Instead, I think of myself less. I don’t need to notice myself — how I’m doing, how I’m being regarded — so often.
This is very “good news” indeed.
