Tuesday July 18, 2017

 

We live in a performance driven world. In sports if you score the most points you win and in business if you close the greatest number of deals you will get a bonus. Almost everything we do in life is based on our ability to perform. We learned this at a very young age when our parents rewarded us for getting good grades and punished us when we got bad ones. The principal behind the performance-based orientation is fairness, people ought to get what they deserve.

 

It is difficult to argue against a performance- based system, especially one that rewards people according to their good or bad deeds. The danger however with the performance-based system comes when we allow it to shape the way in which we relate to God, and this happens quite frequently. If you were to ask the average person to evaluate their personal standing with God, it is highly likely that the determining factor will be how well they are able to keep their list of religious behaviors. This poses a problem because God’s standard is perfection and that is a standard none of us will ever be able to live up to.

 

When we open our Bibles, we discover that from beginning to end, the means through which God relates to us has nothing to do with our ability to perform and everything to do with His grace. Grace is way too big and complex for me to explain yet at the same time, two words are enough to define it, “unmerited favor”. Grace happens when someone gives you something that you have not earned nor deserve. Our relationship with God is based exclusively on His grace. This isn’t anything that we earned and in actuality we could never earn it nor do we deserve it. Since God however loves us so much, by His grace we are saved and are given righteous standing with Him.

 

 But God is so rich in mercy, and he loved us so much, that even though we were dead because of our sins, he gave us life when he raised Christ from the dead. (It is only by God’s grace that you have been saved!) – Ephesians 2:4-5 NLT

 

Before Christ came into our lives, we were dead to God and no amount of good deeds could ever change that. However, because of God’s grace, because of His unmerited favor, we are now alive to God. As Christians, the meaning of grace is that we no longer believe that we have right standing with God because we are so good instead we believe that we have right standing with God because He is so good.