My Microwave Epiphany
Since the next two Fridays are holidays, this will be the last Discipleship Weekly for 2020. Look for the next blog post January 8, 2021.
I was cleaning up some spilled oatmeal in the microwave oven the other day, and I had an epiphany.
I know, not exactly a burning bush locale, but that’s where it happened.
As I was cleaning up the oatmeal that spilled over when I made my breakfast, I decided just to go all out and clean the entire inside of the oven. It was a small task, but I knew that it would encourage my wife.
I’m a natural-born people-pleaser, so I must admit that my motives were mixed. As I wiped down the inside of the oven, I knew that my wife would probably notice that the microwave was clean and that she would probably thank me for that small gesture. She would like it that I cleaned the microwave and would say thanks, and I would like it that she said thanks. Win-win.
It made me think about how, in a chicken-and-egg sort of way, this is the way a lot of thriving human relationships work. The giving and receiving of kind words and deeds creates a sort of healthy momentum: the kind word responds to the kind deed, which prompts the next kind word, and so on, back and forth.
But as I wiped down the oven, somehow I thought about how this isn’t the way things work in our relationship with God, even though we sometimes imagine that it does.
That momentum of reciprocating kindness that is so healthy in human relationships is actually toxic in our relationship with God. Why? Because He is not just another human; He is the Holy One of Israel, and it is a fool’s errand to try to gain His approval by our good deeds, to imagine that we could be in the kind of relationship with God that is defined by the exchanging of favors.
If God already sees me through the lens of the righteousness of His Son, there’s nothing I can do to make Him love me more… or make Him love me less.
Just think of it: can I, by my obedience and sacrifice, hope to create a better impression on God than His Son has already done in dying for my sins and making me right with Him?
Of course not!
Jesus has already put me in a better position with God than I could ever hope to be by my own efforts. God the Father, who looked on as His Son was baptized, pronounced His verdict: “This is My Beloved Son. In him am I well pleased.”
As uncomfortable as it makes me to say it, that is precisely what God sees when he looks at me. He doesn’t see my self-righteousness, my sloth, my self-absorption, my lust, my vanity. What He sees when He looks at me is the zeal, selflessness, purity, and humility of His Son; somehow, astonishingly, because of Jesus, the Holy One of Israel is well-pleased with what He sees in me.
I grew up being thinking that I was saved by grace, but I had to maintain my salvation by my works. I even remember hearing the doctrine of eternal salvation being explained in what I now see as a caricature: “’Once saved, always saved’ means that once you’re saved, you can live however you want.” I knew that wasn’t true, so I threw out the baby with the bathwater and assumed that my salvation somehow depends on my continued good performance.
But it occurred to me the other day that the misrepresentation I had heard was partly true. Once Christ has saved me, I can live however I want without jeopardizing my standing before God. Jesus’s death and resurrection have ensured that my position as God’s child will never change, regardless of how I behave.
It’s just that now that I am a new creature in Christ, my desires have begun to shift. Of course I still have the same old desires and temptations to sin, but now that I belong to Jesus, now that the Spirit has undertaken His gracious, patient sanctifying work, it is literally inconceivable that I could ever be comfortable living in rebellion against my Father.
But if my behavior can’t change my standing before God, why should I bother with good works? Why bother with helping my neighbor or being generous with a suffering brother or telling the truth even when it hurts? After all, God’s opinion of me won’t change regardless of whether I’m helpful or disengaged, whether I’m generous or stingy with my time and resources, whether I’m honest or shady. He still sees the sterling righteousness of Jesus in me no matter how I behave.
Why bother with good works? Surely not to impress God, not to create a good impression on the Almighty, surely not to somehow put Him in my debt.
No, my highest motivation for doing what is good and right is just to say thanks. Standing in the grace that God has shown me in Christ, I can’t reciprocate in kind, I can’t give back to God in proportion to what He has given me.
But I can express my profound gratitude. I can begin now, in this life, to do what I will do forever in eternity: living a life of holy gratitude.
We “exchange” gifts at Christmas, but with what God has given us in Christ, there is no “exchanging” gifts with God, no way to return to Him anything like what He has so graciously given us. We are the rebels invited to sit at the King’s table and enjoy His hospitality. Our part is only to receive and be grateful.
Because of the Gospel, because of what God has given me in Christ, I am free to lay aside my schemes for earning His approval, and I can respond to Him freely, out of a heart of gratitude, no longer out of guilt.
This is why the Gospel, the story of God’s gift of His Son, is such very good news.
May the High King of Heaven bless you and yours this Christmas as we remember once again how He changed the trajectory of history – the history of the world, the history of our families, our own personal histories – in the birth of that peasant woman’s first son in Bethlehem.
Persevere,
Pastor Paul Pyle
Discipleship Pastor
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