We are coming to the end of our study in the Lord's parable (Luke 15) and Tim Keller's book, The Prodigal God. If you have missed these classes, please consider reading the book. It will help you greatly in getting your thinking right on the most important question of our faith: on what basis is a man accepted by God?
As Christians our head often answers that question differently than our heart. Our head says, "I am accepted by God on the merits of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection." This is our sound, heady doctrinal answer safely stowed away in the heavens for the future. But our heart answer, our functional-life-on-earth-right-now answer is: "I am accepted by God (a little more today than yesterday) because today I didn't over-eat," or "...because today I didn't look at sexually explicit photographs," or "...because today I felt miserable about my sin," or "...because today I gave away more money than I have ever given away before," or "...because today I read more of my Bible than I have ever read before," or "...because today I did something so kind for someone else I surprised even myself."
The good feelings that inevitably come from these righteous adjustments are too often recorded in our souls as upgrades in God's love for us. But in Christ, God loved you as much as he possibly could before you successfully tempered your eating, before you averted your eyes, before you felt miserable over your sin, before you gave your money, before you read your Bible, and before you did something kind. How could God possibly love you before you did or did not do these things? This is the scandal of the Christian gospel. God does not love you without condition, without cost. No, he loves you on the condition and cost of Christ crucified for you. Not the Eternal Son crucified just for others, but crucified for the person who lives at your house with your name, who looks like you. You. He loves you with the same depth and breadth of love that God the Father has for God the Son. Though you are a sinner still, God does not love you with a second-class love. You are not kept by God because you keep up with him. You are kept because you are his son. You are a son because Jesus is your elder brother.
Why then would someone tend to their gluttony, avert their eyes from pornography, feel miserable over their sin, give away their money, read their Bible, and do kind deeds for others if God loves them before they do or don't do all these things? Because they have discovered true repentance. True repentance is a turning away from sin in the light of grace. Such turning away never stops for those who have discovered God's grace because such repentance is fueled by love for God. False repentance, on the other hand, is turning away from sin for gain. And it never lasts. Here again is an excerpt from Keller's book on this striking truth:
Some years ago I met a woman who began coming to Redeemer, the church where I am a minister. She said that she had gone to a church growing up and she had always heard that God accepts us only if we are sufficiently good and ethical. She had never heard the message she was now hearing, that we can be accepted by God by sheer grace through the work of Christ regardless of anything we do or have done. She said, "That is a scary idea! Oh, it's good scary, but still scary." I was intrigued. I asked her what was so scary about unmerited free grace? She replied something like this: "If I was saved by my good works--then there would be a limit to what God could ask of me or put me through. I would be like a taxpayer with rights. I would have done my duty and now I would deserve a certain quality of life. But if it is really true that I am a sinner saved by sheer grace--at God's infinite cost--then there's nothing he cannot ask of me." She could see immediately that the wonderful-beyond-belief teaching of salvation by sheer grace had two edges two it. On the one hand it cut away slavish fear. God loves us freely, despite our flaws and failures. Yet she also knew that if Jesus really had done this for her--she was not her own. She was bought with a price.
Our last class is this Sunday. We'll cover the several dimensions of salvation that the genre of this parable reveals. Six copies of the book remain at $10 a piece. Yours in Christ, John
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