An unlikely story

“This righteousness is given through faith inJesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.” This is a verse from the bible..Romans to be exact.



How could anybody get what incredible good news this is? God just accepted the entire world no strings attached. You can’t even say “well there is a catch, you have to believe.” Believe just means you accept this gift. There are no strings …just accept the gift. The bible does say repent..which means change your mind. You change your mind about God. He is not a demanding despot who needs you to keep His rules. He accepts you gratis.



Now when somebody accepts you for free, just loves you, when you know in your heart you really haven’t given them the time of day, its embarrassing. It’s hard to just accept that love. It kind of makes you look bad. Surely there is something you can do to be worthy.



I know I hate it when I owe somebody money and I forget to pay them back. It’s completely embarrassing. I make it a huge priority to remember to pay them next time I see them. Why? Because I am such a great guy? No I pay them back because I want that person (and myself) to think well of me.



Well I have forgotten to pay God back for everything my entire life. However He still treats me as if I have been the most faithful son imaginable (he treats me like His very own Son Jesus!).



This Father is a very disconcerting person. I don’t understand him. There is no bargaining with Him, He sets the rules and the rules are He has accepted me (and you) freely as a gift. His ways are not our ways. We live by deals and transactions. We say you do this for me and I’ll do this for you. With God its one way; His way, or the highway. He says shut up... I do this for you.



Wouldn’t this be very easy to abuse? Well we killed His son when he told us about this love. The rule keepers said..this upsets our entire system. We have our entire legal (do this do that)system here and it works very well.

So the lawkeepers killed him. So you probably can't abuse grace anymore than that. Yes the dead god on the cross does open Himself to being abused, taken advantage of and forgotten. He even says go ahead and eat my flesh and drink my blood poured out for you.



So just saying yes to this kind God seems kind of wrong. You know you really haven't done enough. You haven't given a dam about this God..and surely you better straighten your life out a bit before you just dive in. And even if you have the guts to just accept this unbridled acceptance, your a little afraid this God may suck you in and then ask something of you you don't want to do.

Yet what does he say? "Behold I stand at the door and knock (very gently), if anyone opens the door I will come into his house and dine with him and he with me." Whats the harm in that? He is saying "I find you appealing. I want to get to know you..and you to know me." Do you remember Jesus' complaint at the last day? when He said many will say to me "hey I talked about you all the time and called myself a Christian." What does he say? I never knew you. Thats what bothered Him..they really did not know Him (and He them)



So what is the one requirement? Believe IN Him, know Him. Believe yourself into Him and He into you. Remember the old story of the garden of Eden? Remember when God came looking for them in the garden after they sinned. Remember they were hiding? If you read the story, God is sad..they are now hiding from Him and afraid! They no longer are comfortable around their creator, and they are ashamed. So God kindly makes them some clothes to warm them..and says they must leave the place of comfort and warmth...This is really symbolic..for once they mistrusted their friendship with Him..and saw Him as a crabby despot, they had left the warmth of His friendship.



I don't have time to tell you how he gets them back, I have to go to a Christmas play at church about an audacious story of God sneaking back onto the planet as an infant in a normal human family in a nondescript little town, telling people god loves them and they can return to him without fear. Ridiculous.