Opus 2025-207: Two Words

Tradition has its place.  I think it’s almost the unforgivable sin to begin playing Christmas music before the Thanksgiving meal.  That is a tradition in our home.  It is a tradition because I declared it myself.  I declared it so because my family had already decided that was the way it would be.  Still it is a tradition.

Life is full of traditions.  Some are silly, some deeply meaningful.  We need to always keep in mind, though, that traditions are the result of past habits, not necessarily based upon divine decree.

Which brings me to my “deep thoughts”.  I am thinking of salvation, and two keywords involved in that.  Both of them are found in this passage,

Ephesians 2:8 (KJV) For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:

The two words are “Grace” and “faith”.  You may be familiar with the Greek here.  Grace comes from charis and faith comes from pistis.  The problem comes when we accept blindly traditional interpretations of how these words relate to each other, and to the other word, which is  “gift”.  The problem for me is that tradition says that grace is extended in a way that has nothing to do with our desire and is totally irresistible.  That same tradition says that faith is nothing dependent upon our choice, but is given to us by God.

Both of these traditions are grounded in a commendable emphasis on the sovereignty of God.  God is God.  He will not be manipulated by us.  We cannot “earn” His love or blessings.  The problem is interpreting that to mean that He becomes a robotic force that makes random choices.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  The biblical concept of God is that He is a person and that He responds to us as persons.  He wants to forgive.  He wants to save.  It is His will that everyone to be saved.  If He is sovereign, and that it is His will, you would think that everyone would be saved, but such is not the case.  Your understanding of grace and God must make allowance for the fact that He has a living being response to us as living beings.

In the same way, we cannot come to faith in the absence of divine strength.  The natural man has no interest in the things of God.  The blessing is that God has extended, through his Holy Spirit, the ability to respond to Him.  It is not an overwhelming force, such as the kind of gift of faith that makes us believe, but it is the gentle reinforcement that makes it possible for us to believe if we choose to.  This choice is key to God extending His grace towards us.

On both sides, we have real personalities.  They respond to each other, or not, if that is the choice of the human individual.  That is the essence of free will, we have been created in the image of God.  He has given us the ability to respond.  After that, it’s up to us to follow the inclination of our heart.

Don’t let the logical tradition hold you back from the offering of God.  At the same time don’t feel that you were totally powerless to respond if that is your choice.

homo unius libri