An Imperative, but Always Grace Dependent

A friend recently passed on a blog comment to me about the inter-relationship between what we know God has done for us and what we do in response. See the original comment here. The writer, Michael Bird, reflected that in our desire to hold Jesus and what he has done for us up as central, we have lost the fact that we actually have lives to live in response to his action. He certainly has a point, but how much of a point?

As 1Corinthians 6 puts it so well: "You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body." Something has been done for us by God, and that means that we have responsibilities in this world in terms of our priorities and how we live. Yes, absolutely, let's not lose that imperative to holy lives of service. But is it the case that once God has saved us we are then on our own to live these lives of service? Is it the case that there is a clear division between looking to Jesus for our salvation, but then looking to ourselves for our sanctification and our transformed lives?

I suppose the question I am interested in here is one of 'how.' How do we give our lives in service? How do we change the way we think so as to bear the priorities of God?

If God is love, such that his every decision arises from the prism of his love, coloured and focussed by that love, then what or how will so fill our hearts with that love that we will think and act like him? And the answer to that question I think is to come back once again, to gaze on Jesus.

I am constantly struck by the statement of Paul in 2Timothy2 that the Lord's servant must labour in various ways: teach, gently instruct; to the end that people would repent and come to know God. It is fascinating that there is no direct causative link between the servant's labours and the repentance of the hearers. There is an intermediate agent which affects the change, and that agent is God. If it is the case in our labours to change others, do we really think it won't be the case in our labours to change ourselves?

God has saved us through the sacrificial work of his Son, we have been brought at a price, now serve God: Exhort yourself, challenge yourself, encourage yourself, but what will actually change your heart so that any good deeds you may do will arise out of a heart of love and not merely duty or guilt? What will make that change? It is God: God may perhaps grant you repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth.

So uphold the imperative to action by all means, know that you have been bought at a price and now you must labour in response to his work, but know that your labours will only spring from a right source, will only flow from a heart of love, as you more and more grasp the love of God in Jesus Christ and receive grace to change, grace that you cannot command or control, but receive only by faith.