Archives for 2012

I still remember the words of my friend Roger at the visitation after my father died 37 years ago. "I know what you are going through," this classmate from grades 1-12 said quietly. "I lost my daddy, too." A dozen words, ten with one syllable, none either fancy or profound. But they came from a heart informed by experience and inspired by God to speak. Isn't that often God's way? "He comes alongside us when we go through hard times, and before you know it, he brings us alongside someone else who is going through hard times, so that we can be there for that person just as God was there for us" … [Read more...]

James A. Harding, for whom Harding University is named, was a gospel preacher and educator whose life bridged the 19th and 20th centuries. His life was defined by unswerving personal trust in God -- on a daily basis, at the most practical level. We glimpse this faith in the following excerpt from a tribute by his student Robert Henry Boll, published in 1922 in Boll's journal, Word and Work. * * * "Others will tell more comprehensively the story of the life and work of this great man and greatly beloved who passed away on Sunday, May 28. There are yet those who . . . can write a full … [Read more...]

I recently traveled to Houston's medical center for a routine doctor's appointment. While driving, I often listen to recorded books. On this day I was engrossed in The Desire of the Everlasting Hills by Thomas Cahill. Although unorthodox in his christology, Cahill summarizes the teaching of Jesus both passionately and with eloquence. At the moment he was discussing Jesus' judgment parable of the Sheep and the Goats. The charity that pleases Jesus, Cahill rightly expounded, is not only free-hearted and generous but joyful and spontaneous -- giving to the needy who in that instant stand in for … [Read more...]

Augustine was right when he argued against Pelagius that the path to God's forgiveness and favor lies in trusting Christ's achievements on our behalf and not in establishing a satisfactory record of obedience to God for ourselves. Luther and Calvin were correct in making the same point more than a millennium later. But many of their evangelical descendants, repeating religious words drained of original meaning, have lost both the sense and the experience of the full-bodied salvation which Scripture assures us is indeed "by grace through faith." Grace means that God gives us what we do not … [Read more...]

Obedience is not a popular topic today. As strange as it may sound, a great many people who call themselves followers and disciples of Jesus recoil at the suggestion that careful daily obedience either matters to God or ought to concern them. Yet according to Jesus himself, discipleship at its core involves listening to him and doing as he instructs. This is clearly seen throughout the Gospel of Matthew, which scholars believe was originally written as a manual or handbook for early disciple communities. (The vision of a community of disciples is also obscured today by the almost-exclusive use … [Read more...]

A gracEmail subscriber writes: "Over recent months I have felt the Holy Spirit leading me to study 'means of grace.' Are there God-given means of grace -- things we can do that will release grace to us? Is this a scriptural idea?" * * * If we think of "grace" as salvation and fellowship with God, there is finally only one "means of grace." That is faith -- trust in God, dependence on him and his unmerited kindness. Grace is a gift, and it can only be enjoyed by receiving it. In this most basic sense, we have access by faith into God's grace (Rom. 5:2). We are part of God's creation and we … [Read more...]

Several gracEmail subscribers ask, if our obedience does not save us, what we do with all the scriptural admonitions to obey God and to be busy with good deeds. * * * We take them seriously and at face value, keeping in mind the relationship they point out between our own activity and God's acceptance of us. The gospel tells us that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself and that he accomplished that by Christ's physical body through death (2 Cor. 5:19;Col. 1:21-23). The gospel is (literally) "the good news of your salvation" (Eph. 1:13) and it announces "the hope laid up for you … [Read more...]

A wise and mature Christian teacher recently commented, "I am concerned that in running from legalism, we don't become totally antinomian." * * * By "legalism," my friend meant the notion that we can obtain God's favor through our own record of obedience. "Antinomian" is a double-jointed word from two Greek words meaning "against law," and it refers to that error which twists God's mercy into a license to sin. Both errors are as old as the New Testament. Some first-century Jews tried to make circumcision and observing the Torah conditions of salvation (Acts 15), and some Gentiles tried to … [Read more...]

A gracEmail reader in the West writes, "If we don't live under law but under grace, then what about God's commands? Somehow law, rule and command all seem like synonyms to me. I feel beaten down, struggling to feel worthy. I also can't find an official list of God's commands and everyone I talk to has a different list." * * * Laws, rules and commands are quite necessary to an ordered life and a peaceful society. God's commands are "holy, just and good" (Rom. 7:12). But they can be misused and abused. Laws were never intended as a stairway to heaven -- for every one of us eventually stumbles … [Read more...]

A gracEmail subscriber asks what responsibilities we might have if we are saved totally by God's grace. * * * Indeed we are saved totally by God's grace -- we do not deserve any part of it. The gospel is the "word of his grace" (Acts 14:3; 20:32). Yet "responsibility" is a good word for our activities, for everything we do is in response to what God has done already. We dare not receive God's grace in vain (2 Cor. 6:1-2). Nor dare we ever rely on our own performance for right standing with God, which frustrates his grace (Gal. 2:20). Anyone who professes to trust in Christ for salvation, … [Read more...]