Active Grace

 One vivid memory from my childhood is my mother’s love for exercise equipment. We always had some piece of exercise equipment in the house. I can remember a stationary bike, a rowing machine, a stationary bike with moving arms, a resistance workout bench, and a stair climbing machine were all, at one time or another, positioned neatly in our house in different places…holding laundry. Though the equipment was purchased with full “intent to use,” and the knowledge that regular use would lead to better health, the truth is simple: they were rarely ever used for exercise.

It became a running joke: I used to give my mother a hard time when she would look at a new piece of exercise equipment. “This doesn’t have enough room to hold more than four hangers,” I’d say. “This one can hold some folded blankets, but nothing more.” Yes, it really was that bad. And many of you know exactly what I am talking about.

The value in exercise equipment exists only through consistent use. Simply owning a rowing machine doesn’t make you healthier, it just means you own a piece of equipment whose purpose is to help you along your journey toward fitness. It is the doing that matters. You actually have to row.

But imagine you could buy a piece of equipment that did the hard work for you. What if you were guaranteed to see results simply by making it a part of your life (as most owner of exercise equipment vainly hope)? If there was a guarantee of this kind of return, everyone would have a rowing machine.

This is what God’s grace is like. It is guaranteed to bring results and change your life. It can do nothing else. When God sent his son to live a perfect life on our behalf, (to do the work for us) and die a sacrificial death on the cross in our place (to pay the price for us) it was so that we could be made into a new creation. 2 Corinthians 5:17 says “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.”

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if that exercise bike could make the same promise? “If anyone purchase me from the store and take me home, he will be fit. Behold, the fat is gone, all things have been made trim.” God’s grace is the only force in the universe that can make this bold and wonderful claim. Through the grace offered by Jesus Christ you are made new. You are not merely given the tools to be made new, or taught how to improve yourself until you are new. No, you are a new creation simply through God’s amazing, life-transforming grace.

Nowhere in Scripture does God command us to make ourselves new. Why? Because God knows we cannot do that. Look at what the Apostle Paul says in Romans 8:2-4:

For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. (ESV)

See that? God, through grace, has done what the Law could not do. Law cannot create, it can only condemn. Grace does not condemn, but transforms death into life through the finished work of Jesus Christ. We are made fit without having to exercise!

Now comes the even more mind-blowing truth: it is grace alone that keeps us fit, as well! Martin Luther once said that grace “gives our works a work-out.” Our lives now change from demanded exercise to grateful responses—exercises—of faith. Many people, though, think that once we are saved, we must maintain our righteousness through obedience. We get back on the exercise bike, determined to maintain by our own effort the sculpted spiritual physique that came as a pure gift from God. We submit ourselves “again to a yoke of slavery” (Galatians 5:1).

Paul ran into this type of regression in Galatia. In Galatians 3:2-3 Paul asks a question that we must all consider carefully. He said,

Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?

If grace was enough to save us from sin, renew us, and put us in a right relationship with God at the beginning, is it not enough to grow us in faith also? If we are trying to grow ourselves—or at least maintain our spiritual standing—then we are assuming that grace is actually not enough and that God needs our help in the matter. Is this harsh? Yes, it is. But the point must be made. If we can make ourselves holy by any effort, before or after salvation, then the cross is insufficient and a travesty.

Our growth, then, must be about God’s active and awesome grace changing us and not about how hard we try to change. Change is what grace does. Grace is always active and never passive, giving us the good works that God has prepared for us in advance (Ephesians 2:10). Grace is God’s working on our behalf from a place of love, forgiveness, and redemption. Don’t look at God’s grace as a piece of workout equipment only made effective through your own sweat and effort. Grace like that—not grace at all—ends up as a laundry rack. Look at grace as God’s wonderful, active working in us through the Holy Spirit, doing what we could never dream of accomplishing for ourselves. 

Your Best Life?

Do you want to be happy? Do you want fulfillment? Do you feel like you were made for success? Then we have an offer for you! It is time for you to live "Your Best Life Now!" Pastor Joel Osteen wants to help you become everything you ever wanted to be because as a child of the King you were made to be rich, successful, at ease, and have perfect teeth just like him. So come on and start claiming everything you ever wanted. Don't worry about the cost, God has already taken care of that. Just start living!

PUKE!!! 

Aside from Osteen's complete lack of Biblical knowledge, fake smile, and his canned repeat sermons there is something far more sinister about his message. It's like we've heard this before somewhere. Can't quite place it? Let me point it out...

Genesis 3:1-5:

Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the LORD God had made. 

He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” 2 And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, 3 but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’ ” 4 But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. 5 For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

From the beginning, Satan has tricked humanity into believing that they are made for something more than serving God, that we could actually be God. 

And he is still doing it today. 

The "Best Life Now" brand of Spirituality isn't about God, Jesus, or even being spiritual in the sense of looking for greater purpose or meaning. It is about inflating the ego of sinful people who have no sense of God and therefore attach God to materialistic success. 

When the message of Osteen's "Best Life Now" is held up against the Gospel message preached by Jesus, it is found so completely lacking that one wonders if Osteen has ever actually read the Gospels. 

Osteen says "God wants to increase you financially, by giving you promotions, fresh ideas, and creativity."

Osteen says "Your best days are ahead of you." 

Jesus said "If they hated me, they will hate you" and "blessed are you when you are persecuted" and "take up your cross, deny yourself, and follow me." 

Deny Yourself.

DENY YOURSELF. 

Osteen is merely a false prophet cashing in on humanity's longest running delusion. Namely, that we can have the favor of God and still hold on to our sin. Or, to put it another way, we can reject God's standards and still claim to be good people because we are "happy." And, if we are "happy" it must be proof that God is for us. 

The major flaw in this thinking is that the proof of what God thinks of us is found in the cross of Jesus Christ. God has already provided your best life now in the cross. The Christian life is not about what material success we achieve in this world, but about what Jesus Christ achieved for us on the cross. This is what makes Osteen's message and those like him so absolutely insidious. 

It takes our attention off of Jesus and places it squarely on us. Even if we are trying to be "good people" and do "good things" with our success, we are still focused on ourselves with the incorrect idea that we can somehow be righteous or see proof of God's favor apart from Christ. 

Some have described this as "all the blessings of God without the sacrifice" but it is worse than that because the blessings of God have nothing to do with financial and material success. We simply have to stop thinking that because we did the right thing, God is waiting to give us everything we want. 

Jesus has told us that to follow him we must carry the cross of self-denial. Stop looking for meaning, happiness, fulfillment, or favor in anything in this world. You must look to the cross and the cross alone. 

Quit defining yourself by your own feelings and take on the identity that Christ gives you as a part of His body that has been redeemed by the cross. Stop thinking about your own happiness and start thinking about Christ's sacrifice and what it means to your life. 

The truth is that as long as we continue to ignore the truths of scripture in favor of feeling "happy" or "contented" or "fulfilled" we prove that we have not even begun to enter into denying ourselves and carrying a cross. Do you want to rise Above Reality? Then reject the gods of this reality and follow the God of Heaven and Earth. Learn His ways, His values, His Truth, and Trust Him instead of your own feelings. Your life is not about living "Your Best Life Now." 

Your life is about moving from Death to Life through the perfect life, sacrificial death, and physical resurrection of Jesus Christ. Stop looking at yourself and start looking to the cross.