03/11/2008
4But God, who is abundant in mercy, because of His great love that He had for us, 5made us alive with the Messiah even though we were dead in trespasses. By grace you are saved!
Ephesians 2:8 - 9 (HCSB)
8For by grace you are saved through faith, and this is not from yourselves; it is God’s gift— 9not from works, so that no one can boast.
One of the buzz-phrases from my work-place is “you manage your own career.” This phrase is intended to convey that you and only you have control over whether you advance in your career. Your manager is not responsible for your career; the company is not responsible for your career; only you are.
This is not unlike our culture in general. In psychology, it is called the “locus of control.” That is, if you have a high-internal locus-of-control, then you tend to blame yourself when problems occur, and seek your own solutions. If you have a high-external locus-of-control, then you tend to blame others for your problems and look to others to correct those situations. Our culture drives us towards a high-internal locus-of-control. We teach our kids to run the fastest, throw the farthest, win the spelling-bee. We brandish slogans like “The second place winner is the first loser.” Everything we do is performance driven.
In a sense, though, this produces people who are highly responsible for taking care of themselves. The converse is that they tend to be less conscious of the needs of others (since others need to fend for themselves). This also drives the humanitarian doctrine that humans can solve all humanities problems. It drives us away from looking to an all-powerful, loving God to save us.
In our society, it is difficult to understand how something so great as eternal life can be given freely. We don’t have to do anything to get it. Game-shows and contests all challenge us to perform some feat of knowledge or strength to win the prize, yet the greatest prize to which we could ever aspire, is completely free. We need only to ask.
So, we try to earn the gift. In so doing, we somehow convince ourselves that we have come to *deserve* God’s gift. The bad news is, when we have that attitude, we completely miss the point and fail. It is only when we realize our complete *inability* to earn the gift, that we get it.
The gift of eternal life is a gift from God, granted solely out of His grace.
Jeff Justus
Cleff Publishing
www.cleffpublishing.com
©2008 Cleff Publishing, all rights reserved.
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