I have been thinking a good bit about life-change lately. Specifically, I have been thinking about the role of grace and the tension it creates in life. I was always taught that salvation was by grace (Eph. 2.1-10). That meant that God was responsible for saving me. All I had to do was ask and it happened. I couldn’t do anything at all to earn salvation. In fact, I wasn’t supposed to do anything at all. That would be “working for my salvation.” That was contrary to grace so I just sat around waiting on God’s great gift of salvation. Now, I believe that the life of Christ and Scripture teach that salvation is a gift from God. It is by grace. The rub comes in how responding to this gift actually plays out in life as we experience it.

Here’s what I mean. If salvation is rescue from life as I live it and if it is a gift from God, then shouldn’t we see some elements of that gift playing out in our lives today? Now? One would think so, but just waiting around for God to zap us to a new life doesn’t seem to work. For years I sat waiting and waiting. I prayed earnestly, “God give me life”, and yet it eluded me. So I picked up my Bible and started reading and I began to run across statements in Scripture, statements that seemed to run contrary to my present approach. I read verses that told me I was supposed to be working. I was responsible for putting off the old person and putting on the new person (Eph. 4.22-24). I was supposed to put to death the old life and strive after the new (Col. 3.1-17). I was supposed to be working out my own salvation (Phil. 2.12-13). Now I had something of a theological conundrum. Was salvation my work or God’s work? Was it by grace or by works? What was I to do?

I have actually come to the point that I think that it is not an “either/or” issue. Salvation, the movement from life as we know it to the life that God intends for us involves our work and God’s work and this approach fits very nicely with grace. What!?! How can this be? I think the solution to the Gordian knot of grace is found in John 15. In this passage Jesus states plainly that the responsibility for moving to the life God intends for us falls on two parties: God and us. God’s part is simple as is ours. God’s role is to do the transforming. He does bring about the change necessary in our life to lead us to the point that we can bear fruit, shorthand for new life. Our role, on the other hand, is to surrender our lives in an ever-increasing way to Jesus by seeking to remain in him. Here in one passage we have both, grace and works. Salvation is a work of grace, something only God can do, and yet we are responsible for a part. We have to labor to open our lives to God. That helps me understand grace a bit better. While grace is opposed to earning, it is not opposed to effort. However, this effort is not directed to achieving my salvation but in making my life more open to God’s salvation. As I play my part by seeking to open my life to God then I experience in an ever-growing fashion the work of salvation He wishes to bring about in my life. I begin to see His gift grow in my life today, in the now. I have found that it is in living in the tension of grace and effort rather than rejecting it by favoring grace as opposed to effort or vice versa that I see salvation in my life in new ways every day.

A fellow traveler,

Blake
Spiritual Formation Pastor