The Clay Pipes

Tag: grace

  • Do We Truly Bear Fruit From Our Labor?

    Psalms 104:24-29 (NRSV)

    24 O LORD, how manifold are your works!
    In wisdom you have made them all;
    the earth is full of your creatures.
    25 Yonder is the sea, great and wide,
    creeping things innumerable are there,
    living things both small and great.
    26 There go the ships,
    and Leviathan that you formed to sport in it.
    27 These all look to you
    to give them their food in due season;
    28 when you give to them, they gather it up;
    when you open your hand, they are filled with good things.
    29 When you hide your face, they are dismayed;
    when you take away their breath, they die
    and return to their dust.

    All is in Gods hands. When He gives good things, we have good. When He takes away, we are dismayed. When He takes away our breath, we die. This passage gives me rest in that it says I need not fret about what I shall eat or wear or anything else I should need. It all comes from Gods hands according to His benevolent will. Therefore, fretting about not having what I want is futile, and I need not do it. This is not to say I should not strive for the things I need. Scripture is very clear that we are to labor to sustain ourselves, but we should understand that the fruit of our labor comes from God and Him alone.

    Is all of our labor futile and meaningless, are we just hamsters on a wheel?

    So what does this mean? That we are like little children mimicking the work that will produce? I remember children, mine in particular, that would break out their toy lawn mowers mimicking me mowing the grass with the real thing They were laboring to mow, all the while I was yielding the fruit of the labor. Are we like those children futilely mowing the grass, not really doing anything but reaping the fruits of the Fathers labor? I think the answer is, like the famous FaceBook relationship status, “it’s complicated.”

    Like the famous FaceBook relationship status, the answer is, “it’s complicated.”

    Scripture makes it clear that we as Gods creation, a little lower than the angels, have dominion over the earth. We are called to subdue it to our whims and our will, to the ends of providing for ourselves. Prior to the fall, this was simple, God gave us this right and we simply did it. But post fall, the second law of thermodynamics steps in and we are victims of entropy, meaning we are continually decaying and nothing is tending toward renewal, but simply destruction. This makes the act of subduing that much more difficult as any intervention on our part breaks down that which we are to yield lessening its value.

    Apart from Gods grace this process would yield complete destruction of the fruit and nothing to be gotten from our labor. But there is grace, and we are able to yield something, we are able to bring in the sheaves and taste the benefits of our work, but it is only because God withholds the curse from taking full effect.

    This is further reinforced by the above passage, in that it is God who provides or takes away, in our case providing or taking away His holding back of the curse and our subsequent fruit bearing from our toil. So all in all, we are doing the work of which we can draw a direct line to fruit that is born, but it is God that allows it.

  • We Are Free But Responsible

    Mans Condition

    “Man is condemned to be free. Condemned, because he did not create himself, yet is nevertheless at liberty, and from the moment that he is thrown into this world he is responsible for everything he does.” – Jean-Paul Sartre

    This is a good description of man, who he is and his chief problem. He did not create himself and is free to choose as he will, but he is responsible for all that he chooses.

    Mans Plight

    It is also a description of the curse and how the grace of redemption factors in. We were given freedom of will when we were created; freedom to choose to do good or evil. Adam’s fall is the primary and chief example of this when he chose to eat the fruit of the tree of life – that which was forbidden by God. Despite Gods existence and omnipotence He gave man this gift of free will as I believe He wanted love from those who were willing and not by mere robots programmed to love him without any inclination on their own part.

    There Is Grace

    Herein lies the potential for the curse however, as if we chose to do evil we would eat the fruit of perdition. But despite our willful disobedience, there is grace, the beautiful redemption of mankind, despite our willingness to choose something other than God. He has redeemed us, making us not responsible for our actions, thereby lifting the curse of free will, yet leaving free will in place as we still have the option to choose this grace; to choose God.

    Nothing has changes, we could have chosen God before the fall or can choose Him now, one however is without the responsibility of our actions.

  • Faith Expressed in Love

    Text

    Galatians 5:4 (MSG) For in Christ, neither our most conscientious religion nor disregard of religion amounts to anything. What matters is something far more interior: faith expressed in love.

    Background

    In the book of Galatians, Paul works to combat the notion of strict adherence to the law in order to earn salvation. It would seem that some of the Jews from Jerusalem had erred into thinking that observance of the Jewish ceremonies and procedures (including circumcision) was necessary to be saved. Paul points to the passage in Habakkuk where it is stated that the (Galatians 3:11 NASB) “ THE RIGHTEOUS MAN SHALL LIVE BY FAITH.” What this means is that we cannot earn our salvation, but can only be made righteous and partake in the benefits of salvation by believing in the sacrifice of Christ, believing that God has sent His son to die for our sins.

    Not Even Our Disregard For Religion

    Paul takes this a step further though, and challenges the idea that even taking a stance in which one disregards religion is no benefit as one might think. For when Paul cites Habakkuk “… the just shall live by faith…” it would seem as if to be on the right path with God is to deny all religion including ceremony and religious procedure. But this is not the case, for disregarding religion is also a work and as many non-denominational churches have proven, takes effort as well to consciously adhere to nothing, or at least very little.

    So What Must We Do?

    So what are we to do; nothing? Is that the response? We find the key to this answer in the text, “…faith expressed in love” Christ commanded the lawyer, in response to his question, what must I do to be saved to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart.. and your neighbor as yourself.” We are called to love, this is the work that we must be doing. To seek the good of others before ourselves and to give all that we can to God. Not with a view toward saving ourselves, but out of a genuine desire for the other to be blessed, be it God or our fellow man.

    But Isn’t Loving God and Our Neighbor Just Works?

    The short answer is yes, but it is different. The works Paul shunned were ones of outward effort and show that have no intrinsic value. Take circumcision for example, though it was believed as necessary to identify oneself as an adherent to Judaism, and to make one right with God thereby inheriting salvation, it serves no true benefit to one’s life of faith. One will notice in the passage that “What matters is something far more interior…” It is the motivation and the intrinsic value that makes a work “value-add” and appropriate. When we love our neighbor, it is an expression of our faith, and is born out of the desire to see others benefit. This is different from religious works in that those efforts are solely for the benefit of the doer. When we love God and our neighbor, we are letting go of any efforts to save ourselves ,and conversely, only seek the benefit of others, which is faith; a belief that God will save us, despite our lack of religious works for our benefit.

    Conclusion

    So it would seem that religious procedure and ceremony is of little to no value and that the opposite, to disregard all religion is similar. While it is true that in this sense, works are of no benefit, it does not in the same sense mean that we are not to work out our salvation. The work we are to be doing in this case, is not to benefit ourselves, but to benefit others, thereby placing our salvation solely in Gods hands and not within ours.

  • The Power of Humility in Times of Division

    Text

    Philippians 2:3 (NRSV) 3 Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves.

    Be Humble

    In this time of division and hatred, imagine the transformation that would occur if we would do this; thinking of our opponents as better than us. It strains our minds to even think this way, to consider the Conservative or Liberal as being better than ones self, and so to be respected. That is at the essence of this passage, respecting the humanity of the other person, loving them despite the perceived error of their beliefs. If we are to see ourselves out of this curse, we must do this, we must shed our pride, our convictions, our self-righteousness, and come to the other in humility, seeking to love them.