Person-2-Person - January, 2020

The first full weekend of December, our church held its annual Build-A-Gift event. I was working Registration alongside my wife, Charlotte, in place of her usual partner, Colette Cummings, who was out of town. At one point, a couple brought in three young girls. The woman asked, “Should I go ahead and prepay now?” I told her Build-A-Gift was free to all, as it always has been, a church tradition. As she and her husband walked away, I thought of the old hymn, “Jesus Paid It All.”

“Jesus paid it all,
All to Him I owe;
Sin had left a crimson stain,
He washed it white as snow.”

Sometimes it’s hard for us to accept something that’s “free.” There’s usually a “catch” or “strings attached.” The late author Robert A. Heinlein popularized the expression, “There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.” And the late economist Milton Friedman used a variation of the expression as the basis for a book.

Paul wrote to the Ephesians about their “free” gift from God: “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.” (Eph. 2:8-9 New King James Version). But he didn’t stop there. “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.” (vs. 10 NKJV). We’re saved by grace but created for works.

Jesus’ parables reflect people receiving more than they deserve (the parable of the workers in the vineyard, Matt. 20:1-16) and receiving exactly what they deserve (the parable of the sheep and the goats, Matt. 25:31-46). For every stanza of “Jesus Paid It All,” there’s a stanza of “Must Jesus Bear the Cross Alone?”

“Must Jesus bear the cross alone
And all the world go free?
No, there’s a cross for ev’ry one,
And there’s a cross for me.”

I won’t delve into the theology of either hymn but if each of us has a “cross,” are we not in some sense “earning” or at least “paying for” salvation? This tension between the two ideas was apparently troublesome for the New Testament writer James. “You see then that a man is justified by works, and not by faith only.” (Jas. 2:24 NKJV). His interpretation flies in the face of Paul. One of the long-standing contradictions of the Christian faith and of the New Testament is the conflict between faith and works. I won’t belabor the point here except to say that I believe we are “saved” by grace but we demonstrate our salvation by the way we live.

In the end, it doesn’t matter which side of the argument we’re on as long as we do both: accept our salvation as if it depended on God and live as if it depended on us. Our works are not the mechanism of our salvation but they should be our response to it. I didn’t give my family Christmas gifts because they’re wonderful (although they are), I gave them gifts because I love them. God doesn’t give us the gift of salvation because we deserve it but because God loves us.

As we reflect on the recent season of gifts and giving, let’s remember the greatest gift of all, “the gift of God,” the gift of salvation, freely given as a baby in a manger, who grew up to teach, to die, and to rise again. When you receive a special gift, you want to tell your friends about it. The gift of God is for everyone (Rom. 10:13, Tit. 2:11) so let’s share it with everyone we meet.

“But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” (Eph. 2:4-7 NKJV.)