God has been teaching me that I did nothing to earn a place in his kingdom. I can fully rest knowing he has chosen me. It is not my work, job, responsibility or obligation to maintain or gather his love and favor. I can rest. You can rest. In Christ there is rest for our souls, there is rest from striving and labor and toil. You and I did nothing to gain his love and election and therefore we can do nothing to lose it. God’s love and grace is eternal extending beyond the cross in every direction of time and space.
When Adam was cast out of the Garden, the bible doesn’t say God stopped loving him and he had to work his way back to the paradise, but rather God changed the relationship between them, no longer would Adam enjoy unlimited exposure to the presence of God, no longer would Adam be able to eat freely from the tree of life, walk beside God in the cool of the day. This aspect of HOW he related to God was interrupted, but the love and election God had towards Adam remained intact. God doesn’t cut us off, he doesn’t change his mind and abandon us when we do wrong. The bible says God helped Eve, even after she fell. And God continued to interact with his chosen even with their sin habits and fallen nature absorbed their hearts. He spoke with Cain, instructed Noah, called Abraham, chose Jacob, he was with Joseph. He blessed Israel, He saved Israel, He revealed himself to Moses. These people didn’t earn those positions any more than a beautifully plump tomato earns the right to be picked. Even a sizable ripe tomato has zero power. It has no choice over how it will grow or where it will be planted in the garden or if it will get enough sunlight and water. When the tomatoes come out desirable, we do not praise the tomato, we give credit to the Gardner. God is the Gardner and we are his vineyard. He does the work, he makes the decisions and we bask in his choices, but we can, as humans, choose right and wrong, I just don’t believe it effects whether or not God chooses us as his people. He is not waiting to see if Kim is going to be a good ball player before putting me on his team. He put me on his team and it has helped me to be a good ball player.
In some regard we ought to be like little children in how we receive and experience the love of God, totally consumed by it, yet unaware and powerless to change it.
Is God’s favor and love new to the “New covenant?” Did God only begin this sort of grace filled display of affection when Christ came? Is it only Christians he loves and chooses this way, absolutely not; God is the same today, yesterday and forever. He doesn’t change he is not fickle and trendy. Neither did he withhold from those who knew him first through the first Covenant. However, His unconditional love was realized to its fullest measure in Christ. He didn’t change, we did, the world and time did. Christ on the cross was the peak and culmination of the complete love of God. Adam didn’t have to earn God’s love, Noah did not have to earn God’s grace and election, Jacob could not possibly have, with all his foibles. Those who appeared perfect to us such as Samuel, whose words did not fall to the ground, or Joseph were chosen well in advance, as we were, even before the foundation of the world. Therefore, we know it is not our works that gain God’s favor, he chose us before we could do anything good or bad, right or wrong. They didn’t have to earn God’s love while “Christians” get a free pass. The only difference between Gods love for people before the cross and after the cross is in how it is understood by those people. What is the difference between your love between your oldest and youngest child? One you loved first the next last, the power of that love lies in neither child, the reason for that love belongs to neither child, for most good loving parents would agree no matter what their child did good or bad it wouldn’t affect the love and affection they have towards them. The power of the love we have for our children ultimately lives within us, as the parent. There are surely some parents who have no love in themselves, and their children suffer for it but it is not that child’s fault nor doing. Because that child has no power over what is inside the parent. Just as we old or new post or pre-cross have no power over what lies hidden within the heart of God. It belongs to him alone. We are only the benefactors.
But even so, the men and women of old didn’t yet know Christ in the same way we do. Do we have an advantage? Today people open a bible, laid out in neat and organized verses and chapters. We read the story of Jesus’ life in chronological order and then we read the letters that were neatly compiled by his disciples to explain in detail what we are to believe and why and how we are to live. The men and women who lived in ancient times experienced God’s love in a different way, certainly not from reading about it in a chapter book. And that was his favor and grace to them pre-cross. In some ways I wonder if they experienced God’s love and mercy more profoundly then we do, because they were experiencing God in more physical palpable ways. In real time Noah conversed with God, Moses saw his form and fire in the burning bush and spoke face to face with him, Jacob wrestled with him, Abraham negotiated with him, Samson’s parents had dinner with him. Daniel’s three friends stood with him in the fire. There are hundreds of ways the saints of old communed with God in a way we don’t see today happening today. The author of Hebrews tells us this plainly, in the days of old God spoke through and to prophets but today he speaks through his son, the word of God, he communicates his unconditional love through Christ and we only have to receive it by faith, but in days of old he communicated it to them directly it just wasn’t fully realized and exposed until the cross. God loves and chose his own from Adam to the last baby who will ever be born. He knew and he knows. There was no less grace or favor in biblical times than there is today.
1:2 it is Christs blood that cleanses us and it’s an eternal cleansing, an eternal purpose and eternal results. The eternal part matters. The animals that were slain and slaughtered as part of the atonement process, day and night, had to be killed over and over again, another animal every morning, another animal in the evening. Blood was continually being shed, poured out, sprinkled spilled and applied. The carcasses were continually burned, broken and disposed of. It was a monotonous process that was absolutely for the people of God until Christ. As the Lamb of God, Christ’s blood was shed, his body disposed of, his blood poured out, but only one time, and for all sins, for all the people he chose. Christs blood was enough, enough for our peace with God, enough for atonement, forgiveness and enough to offer mercy and grace in fullest measure. It was enough to be shed one time for everything. His sacrifice and offering is complete and sufficient without our involvement, you and I were not there, making the cut, throwing the stone, pounding the nail neither washing his feet with our tears, it is by faith and faith alone that we participate in the death of Christ.
1:3 He causes us to be born again – once again there is a reminder that he causes us, we don’t cause ourselves, he doesn’t respond to our work or obedience, his decision is not based on what I do or don’t do. I can’t add anything to his love, election, redemption or work. I hear in the words of God the reassurance of God’s unmerited favor for me in these verses. It is of great difficulty that we move through this world holding onto grace. Why? Because at every corner we are told to work, to do, to gain, to earn and it is not a terrible message nor a wrong conclusion, it’s just not the only message. It is not a blanket message that covers all things. Yes, work for some things and believe for others. We ought to work the bible tells us if you don’t work you don’t eat. Even in paradise, God told Adam to cultivate and work in the garden. When Adam was cast out for disobeying God again, he was told to work the ground from which you came. Our nature and instinct and even our delight is to work and reap. The biggest of that reward is a sense of pride and accomplishment. By all means work, but when it comes to being born again, believe, because it is not our achievement but God’s. He chooses us. He loved us first. He sprinkled us clean and we just get to rest in that beauty and redemptive love of a faithful creator.
1 Peter 1:1-8
my faith place 