God Was Kind To You
“But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.”
Desperately Separated
The Christian life can easily move from a place of spiritual desperation to casual maintenance. Routine engagement with church, Christian content, and devotions like this one can leave the impression that Christianity only exists to benefit the life of the Christian. After all, the Bible is filled with life-giving insights and inspiring stories. It’s fairly easy to extract meaningful metaphors and tips from the Bible stories. But the Bible is more than a story about moral idealism.
That frame of mind embraces a message that, yes, sometimes humans mess up, but the truths packed into the Bible are capable of helping steer Christians in the right direction. If we start seeing the purpose of the Bible and spiritual disciplines as only adding to our lives, we’ve missed the starting point of the gospel.
The message of the Bible is that people didn’t just fall back from freedom, they fell away completely. The starting place for engaging with God is a place of desperate separation. Maybe you sing Phil Whickam’s “Living Hope” at your church. It starts with this line:
How great the chasm that lay between us
How high the mountain I could not climb
The song lays out a theology of hopeless desperation before God by confessing that even if we wanted to get back to God (which we often in our sin don’t even want), the distance to cross is too great. This is not exactly an uplifting start for a song talking about a God that is supposed to be hope made alive to people. But hope shines brightest in the darkness.
Entering Into The Gospel Story
Humanity’s standing before God is bleak. We enter into the story of the gospel as offenders. The ones who, despite being made in God’s image, live like we want God to die. To live in sin is to pronounce that God’s truth is detestable to us. That’s the natural inclination of the flesh—it wages war on the truth of God’s word.
But when God enters the gospel story, he does so by his own will in grace and mercy. That’s why Paul can say that Jesus has been kind to us. He offers us something that we don’t deserve.
Switching Perspectives
There is a time to reflect on Bible stories for moral insight, but that approach to the gospel story is an incomplete picture of what God is actually saying to us. If we are only looking for a nugget of truth to apply to our lives, we will probably miss it completely.
Approaching Christianity as a consumer of spiritual goods puts us in the seat of authority. We make the decisions, plan our spiritual growth, and get all the credit for each milestone. Have you ever met someone who is blatantly self-righteous? Anyone with all the receipts for their spiritual growth is probably growing into something other than Christ.
Christian faith can only be approached from a place of utter humility. It proclaims that the only thing we bring to the table is a dead heart but what we get in return is an invitation to everlasting life.
That’s because God, in his love, was kind to you.
Reflect
Do you see yourself in charge of your spiritual journey? Where are you holding tightly to your faith and missing out on God’s grace?
Take a moment to meditate on the kindness of God. Open your Bible to Ephesians 2 and respond to a God that reaches out to you.
Pray
Jesus, thank you for showing me your kindness by reaching out to me when I had nothing to bring to you but a dead heart. Help me see your gospel story as an invitation of grace. I confess that it’s only because of your love and mercy that I get to respond to your truth. So form in me what I can’t form in myself. Work in me what I can’t accomplish in my own strength. Create in me a new heart.
