Good morning! A little fall-like weather in the middle of summer makes a nice break. Yesterday, I promised the best indicator of Christian maturity - a dependence on grace alone. We like our records to be clean, or back in our unsaved days, we wanted our record to count for something in the way of salvation. We want our good deeds to outweigh our bad deeds and thus let us into Heaven. Of course, this runs up against Jesus saying that He was the one way to the Father. If there is another way, Jesus is a liar. If some set of scales can be tipped to our favor, then all that cross and resurrection stuff was unnecessary. Even going back to Noah's flood, was that of any use if those people still had a chance to balance or even overcome the negative weights on their record? On the other hand, what good does that scale illusion do us anyway? I mean, if we can't see the scales, how would we ever know that salvation was assured?
God gave us a better answer, the salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. The sign of maturity is in giving up ourselves to grace as opposed to depending upon some record of personal goodness. Good deeds done to save the self are selfish in nature anyway. We had no chance of making it to heaven on our record. Much better for us to learn to depend on grace alone. Paul looked at his record and threw it away as trash. Stephen didn't look to his record at trial, but looked to Jesus when convicted by a worldly court. Maturity by grace may come quite suddenly to us. God sometimes cooks the roast slowly and other times wants a quick doneness in the Christian. That allegory is going to a place that seems...uh, well if we are consumed in God's love then okay fine, bring it on! Amen.
Bucky
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