I was reading a blog last week that I have just started following by Steve Liscum. Check out his blog here at http://steveliscum.wordpress.com/. In one of his recent blogs he asked the question, “can someone tell me why we try to earn God’s grace?” Its a pretty challenging question, and one I think the church should spend some time trying to find some answers to. Anyhow, I spent some time this week thinking about this question and I came across this passage in Bonhoeffer’s Life Together:
The root of all sin is pride, superbia (the Latin word for pride). I want to be my own law, I have a right to myself, my hatred and my desires, my life and my death. The mind and flesh of man are set on fire by pride; for it is precisely in his wickedness that man wants to be as God.
I think Bonhoeffer’s words make some sense in considering this question. If it is true that we want to be as God as Bonhoeffer asserts…and as I would assert as well, because of our sin/pride then the reason we try to earn grace is because we think we can give grace to ourselves by working hard enough to be good to earn God’s favor. Our culture teaches us that all we need to do is work hard and we will achieve whatever dreams we have. If our culture teaches this, it is no wonder this mind set has seeped into our churches. Our pride tells us that if we work hard at this thing called Christianity God will reward us with His grace, but the scandal of the Gospel and of Jesus is that no amount of work will earn us that grace. It is freely given. What a serious blow to our pride that is. That means that anyone can have that grace, despite their ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or bank account size. That means that we are all on equal footing before the LORD. Most people’s pride won’t allow for that so we continue to create for a system that allows us to earn grace, because that means certain people will be kept out while others who did all the right things will be in.
Pride is a dangerous thing. Let us all humble ourselves before God and each other and grab hold of the Good News of Jesus Christ which tells us that we are all sinners in need of saving and reconciliation to our God. That grace offered in and through Jesus Christ is free to all and requires no work from us.
c2wvu 