It’s not fair.

Sometimes life is tough. Sometimes circumstances and occurrences are put in our path that cause the normal, everyday things of life to fade into the background or stop all together. We become crushed under the weight of emotion; anger, fear, worry, rage, stress and depression clog up the normal workings of body and mind to the point that it become hard just to keep standing.
Life isn’t fair.
It’s not fair that some live while others die. It’s not fair that a few are rich while many more languish in poverty, its not fair that some are punished unjustly while others get away with murder. It’s not fair!
Job knew more about suffering than most. Step by step he lost his wealth, family and health until he was left with nothing but his life. After some less than helpful advice from his friends he brings his complaints to the God he had so faithfully served. Rather than being met with sympathy God firmly puts Job in his place in a ‘smack down’ quite literally of biblical proportion. Over 4 chapters God challenges Job to understand his position in the world.

God revealed himself and forced Job to come to terms with his own weak and sinful state and his true standing before his awesomely holy and powerful God.

Then Job answered the LORD:

“I am unworthy—how can I reply to you?
I put my hand over my mouth.
I spoke once, but I have no answer—
twice, but I will say no more.”

Job 40:3-5

Job finally realises his true position under God and his wisdom and love and that whatever Job has lost it cannot be measured against the storehouses of the God he served. Ultimately Job repents of his failings

My ears had heard of you
but now my eyes have seen you.
Therefore I despise myself
and repent in dust and ashes.”

Job 42:5-6

But just a moment, the book says right at the start that Job was ‘upright and blameless’ and that even in the depths of his sufferings he ‘did not sin in what he said’ (Job 2:10). So what has he done that is worthy of repentance?

Simply this; that he was, like you and I are, just another sinner. Just another human being living under the curse of sin and in need of a saviour. That a holy and righteous God would even have anything to do with mankind is one of the greatest mysteries of all time. Despite our cataclysmic moral collapse as a people following our perfect representatives (Adam and Eve) rebellion in the garden this same God still wants to know you and me, more than that, he loved us so much that he sent his only son to die and take the punishment that was due to us as a race. Talk about not fair…

I’m pretty sure that all this didn’t make Job feel much better about his losses. In fact I’m sure that his experience shaped his personality for many years following the events of his life recorded for us in the Bible. But perhaps that’s the whole point. God doesn’t send us troubles to destroy us but to build us up and to encourage us to rely on him for everything, sometimes though to build up properly you need to demolish a few things first.

If you think it’s not fair then you’re absolutely right, it’s not. There’s no way that we should have stand a chance, we, our whole race, should be dead, condemned by the curse of sin and yet God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son…

New Theme

Yes it’s still me, I just got a little bored with the old theme. Here’s a (not so) shiny new one called Greyzed which I like.

The Cart Before the Horse

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

Ephesians 2:8-10

Having just read Charles Spurgeon’s sermon entitled All Of Grace I felt extremely humbled by the understanding that all of our salvation comes from God. We are saved with God’s salvation given by God’s grace and received by faith in Jesus Christ. But even that faith is a gift given by God and not made up or reliant on our own works or even our own beliefs.

Think about that for a moment; if God has given you faith in Jesus Christ unto his salvation then whether you’re a creationist or evolutionist, whether you hold to post millennial or pre millennial eschatology then no matter if you’re right or wrong you are saved!

The amount of money you put in collection each week, the amount of time you spend in your quiet time. The work you do for the church and for others, none of it will get you closer to salvation.

As Spurgeon himself puts it from Romans 11:6

If by grace, then it is no more of works: otherwise grace is no more grace. But if it be of works, then it is no more grace: otherwise work is no more work.

Grace demands the freely given gift. If we had to do something, anything at all to receive that grace and the gift it gives then it is no longer a gift given by grace but a wage earned and due. Would (or could) we demand that God must give us his own salvation that was bought at the cost of Jesus blood because of our own works or beliefs? No! God himself must choose, in his own unique wisdom and understanding, the recipients of his own grace, otherwise he would not be God.

Ephesians 2:10 says that we were created in Christ Jesus to do these good works, and check this out; even those works were prepared by God for us to do! We have a salvation entirely of God in which he leads us to do those good works that are equally entirely of him!

What I’ve seen in the way people actually live though (myself included) is putting the cart load of good works and beliefs before the workhorse of God’s salvation by Grace through God’s gift of Faith.

We may hold to the theology of Ephesians 2:8-10 but how does that theology manifest itself in our lives? Herein lies the challenge of Christian living; to live like kingdom people in the world. To be clear that the works and even beliefs that we do and have are subject to the saving faith that God has freely given us in his grace and not the other way around.

How do we do that? By following the best and only example laid down for us. The life and works of Jesus recorded in the gospels contain the attitude and drive that we should seek to emulate. What we find is a life driven by the goal of first giving glory to God then showing his love to everyone else, not to curry favour with God or people but because of God’s gift of salvation by grace through faith.