Imagine
the following dialogue for a moment:
Dad:
“Here, daughter {hands her an envelope}, this is a graduation gift from your
mom and I.”
Daughter:
{opens envelope} “This is a check for $50,000!!!!” {Screams in excitement}
Dad:
“Yes, we are wanting to pay for your college.
It is a gift we have been planning to give you for quite some time. The joy you have right now has made all the
saving and sacrifice worth it!” {Smiles broadly}
Daughter:
“Thank you so much! I can’t tell you how
much I appreciate this!!!”
Dad: “You’re
welcome. We will set up a repayment plan
once you finish up with school.”
See
anything strike you as odd about this interaction? I am sure if you are struggling to survive on
your current income the thought of someone having $50,000 to give away seems
absurd. Yet, try to move past that and
see if you find anything else. Does the
father’s final statement “We will set up a repayment plan once you finish up
with school” strike you as odd?
Why?
We have
a word in our society for this transaction of goods, and it is not a gift. It is a loan.
What separates the two? A gift is
something given to someone with no expectation of repayment, as determined by
the giver. Sure, the recipient of that
gift may feel undeserving and attempt to pay back the giver. However, this does not change the original
intention of the giver, he/she still intended to give without repayment.
On the
other hand, a loan is given with expectation of repayment. Once again, the giver determines this. If I were to loan my friend $100, but he
assumes that it is a gift, would he still not owe me the $100? Of course he would. We might need to have an additional
conversation where we are on the same page, but his misunderstanding of my intention
does not afford him the right to keep the money. Just like a gift, the giver, not the
recipient, determines a loan.
So
while all the technical definitions and illustrations? We need to recognize a lie that Satan subtly
sneaks into view of God and our way of living: God’s grace to us is a loan.
Here is
how he sneaks it in:
“God
sent Jesus Christ to die for us.
Therefore, since He gave everything, we owe our lives to Him.”
“Jesus
Christ paid for our sins on the cross.
Consequently, we should spend the rest of our time here on Earth paying him back.”
“Everything
we have was given to us by God.
Therefore, we owe Him 10%.”
Before,
I go any further, there is a lot of truth in those statements: Jesus did pay
for our sins, He did give everything, and everything we have is His. In addition, we should give our lives to him,
we should serve him with our gifts, and we should give to God out of good
consciousness. Furthermore, God does
deserve our trustworthiness, our love, our faithfulness, our time, our talents,
and our monetary gifts. In that sense we
do “owe” God. However, a clear
distinction must be made between “owing” in the sense of thinking we can pay
Him back and “owing” Him in the sense of choosing to live for Him. The former is living under the grace loan,
the latter is the godliness of living under grace.
This is
because when we say we should “pay him back”, we, the recipients, are
attempting to determine the nature of grace instead of God the giver. As we illustrated earlier, we cannot
determine whether grace is a gift or a loan, only the giver can. So let us go to Scripture to see what He says on the nature of grace.
“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not
your own doing; it is the gift of God.”
Ephesians 2:8 (emphasis mine)
“But
the free gift is not like the
transgression. For if by the transgression of the one the many died, much more
did the grace of God and the gift by the
grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abound to the many. The gift is not like that which came through the one who sinned; for on the one hand
the judgment arose from one transgression resulting in
condemnation, but on the other hand the free
gift arose from many
transgressions resulting in justification.” Romans 5:15-16 (emphasis mine)
“For
the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans
6:23 (emphasis mine)
“Now we
have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that
we might understand the things freely
given us by God.” 1 Corinthians 2:12 (emphasis mine)
“Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a
drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” John 4:10 (emphasis mine)
Gift of God, free gift, gift by the grace, gift, free gift, free
gift, freely given, gift of God, given…we could on and on and on. However, hopefully you can get the point: God
GIVES us His grace FREELY, which means He gives it WITHOUT EXPECTING REPAYMENT.
To approach Him with that intention is to deny the nature of the
gift. While we may feel it is honorable,
what we are really saying is “I am more comfortable with a grace loan,
something I can pay back.” Yet two
things are profoundly wrong with that:
1)
We could never “pay back” God, or even BEGIN to pay back God for
Christ’s sacrifice on the
cross. Imagine
if Bill Gates wrote you a check for 30 billion dollars and you turned around
and
sent him $10 in the mail. Anyone
with a sound mind would find this ridiculous!
He gave so much and you gave so little in return. Yet, what God has given us in His Son Jesus
is worth far MORE than $30 billion (we couldn’t put a price tag on it) and what
we could possibly give Him in return is far LESS than $10!!!!
Furthermore, to even say that we could pay part of it back is to say that over time we could have earned our
righteousness in the first place. If
someone loans me $1000 it is because I do not have the money at that time. However, I will have it later (hopefully) and
will then pay them back. Yet, with our
righteousness there is no way, even given an eternity, to where we could earn a
portion of it. Therefore, we could not
even pay back a trillioneth of what we owe.
2) By
the very definition of grace, God cannot give it as a loan nor could you pay it
back. It is theologically
impossible. Paul puts it this way: “But
if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works; otherwise grace would
no longer be grace.” (Romans 11:6) See
that? IF it is by grace, it is NO LONGER
on the basis of works. If it were on the
basis of works, grace would NO LONGER be grace.
The two are mutually exclusive.
You CANNOT have grace AND works.
This is why grace HAS to be free and it HAS to be a gift; to expect a
repayment is to nullify grace.
Therefore, is it a sign of thankfulness when we attempt to pay
back what God has given us? No!!!! Instead, we are doing the complete
opposite. We are pouring contempt on the
loving intention of God. It’s insulting,
it’s foolish, it’s poor theology, and it’s EXACTLY what Satan wants us to
do. He wants us to picture God as a loan
shark. He wants us to live in fear,
guilt, and avoidance. He wants us to see
grace as a loan.
Instead, we must accept the free gift of grace for what it is: a
gift. Only from there can we attempt to follow
Christ, not in order to pay Him back, but simply to say thanks for what He has
done. We do this willingly. We do this joyfully. We do this lovingly. We do this in His presence.
What a contrast that is as compared to the grace loan. When we leave our transaction mindset at the door, biblical grace is such a beautiful thing. Therefore, along with our Heavenly Father, I encourage
you to accept His gift of grace.