One of the arguments that we as Christians have is how our relationship with God and the status of our salvation is defined. There are those who argue that we are saved by grace and that grace alone is what we need. Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross, they argue, was a get out of jail free card essentially, and that all we need to do is accept this free gift and we become part of the “in” crowd. The problem with this view is that while we do need to come to a union with God in Christ Jesus, throughout Jesus’ ministry he preached of caring for the sick, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, etc.
This brings us to the other side of the argument, that we are not saved by grace, but that it is our works that save us. We are not judged by the status of our souls in alignment with God but by how our actions align with God’s will for our lives. This view is good for displaying how we should act in the world but it does not acknowledge the life-giving sacrifice of Jesus’ death on the cross.
Both of these arguments, I think, fall short from the reality that we find ourselves in. The one is flawed in that we accept Jesus for fear of condemnation, but never allowing that relationship to change us by allowing God to give us rebirth in who we were made to be, and the other acknowledges the need for us to change and to change the world around us but sticking only to the ideals of social justice and charity ignores the matter of submitting to Jesus as Lord.
I think that to truly grasp the whole concept of how we are to live in relationship with God we need to embrace the idea that we are in a marriage to Jesus. The Bible is constantly describing the spiritual relationship we have with God in terms of marriage. Jesus Christ is our bridegroom and we the church are his bride. This being true then there must be likenesses in the areas of spiritual marriage to the Lord and the marriages that we share with our earthly husbands and wives.
In “Flame”, the second installment in a short video series called nooma, Rob Bell, one of the teaching pastors at Mars Hill in Grand Rapids, Michigan, breaks down love into three categories; friendship, companionship, and sexual love. Rob demonstrates how a balance between the emotions and attachments that two people can share with each other can be the difference between one or two small flames, and a raging bonfire. So how does this apply to grace and works? Don’t worry. We’ll get there.
First, friendship. So what is a friend? Webster defines the word friend as, “a person attached to another by feelings or affection or to personal regard,” so in our relationship with God, when we become friends with Him, we attach ourselves to Him as we would our human friends. We care for God and what God’s will is. We trust in Him and start emulating him. His concerns start becoming our concerns and we profess him to be who he truly is. In our friendship we lay the claim that Jesus is Lord and that God is the one true god.
We’ve already come to grace in God and yet we’ve only come to the surface of what a love relationship looks like. I think that too often this is where we as Christians stop in our relationship. We become friends with God and we get to know what he’s like, but we don’t go much deeper in any meaningful fashion and I know we can go further.
Companionship with God is the next step in reaching our goal. Companion is a soft word that I think should be connected to much powerful ideas. I don’t know about you, but when I hear the word companion, I think buddy, or pal, or any of those other words that evoke ideas of light childhood relationships that may or may not include shoes and a fishing pole. Companionship should, I think, instead be defined with the idea of two people inseparably bonded together. When I think of companionship, I want the image of wanting to be nowhere but where I am with whomever it is I’m with, be it my wife or with God. So in our relations with God, companionship is that yearning after we’ve learned who God is to be with Him only. To desire nothing more than to do his will, submitting all of our self to him fully.
So finally we come to sexual love. So what is sexual love and how can we relate it to our walk with God? At it’s core, sex has two purposes. First it is a physical manifestation of the emotional love between two people, and the second purpose is it’s result, which is children. In our walk with God, I see this love played out like this; the creation of more children, which is leading others to Christ, and works. Works, I believe is that physical manifestation of the love that we share with God, and from that love we birth more Christians and more works.
Think of it this way: we are introduced to God as we are a beautiful, deep, passionate woman who entrances every fiber of our being. We get to know God as we do this woman, learning what His likes and dislikes are, what He is like, and what He cares about. As time and connection progresses, we find ourselves falling more and more in love with Him and we want to shout this love from the rooftops. Everyone we meet we’re telling about this awesome God that we’ve decided to give our lives to. We, at some point come to the realization that there is nothing else we want to do and nowhere else we want to be than in his presence, which isn’t hard since God is everywhere. We start giving up the parts of ourselves that God is teaching us is not good, just as in a relationship and marriage, we are constantly learning about who we are through the mirror held up to us by our significant other. We shed our selfishness and replace it with selflessness, materialism is exchanged for generosity, and a mundane, banal life is given up for living each day with meaning and purpose. Each moment is a moment that can be used as an expression of love for the God that we hold so dear. And, in the end, that love is materialized in the generosity and care that we give to others, for everything we do for the least of God’s children, we do for God. We can not feed and shelter God for he doesn’t need anything, but we can manifest that love to others. We can listen and council those who are troubled, we can give the excess that we have, and I find it hard to believe that anyone in our country is in dire enough straights that nothing can be given, be it material or monetary possessions, we can just show love and caring for those who feel rejected and outcast. In this way, we show our love. Words without action are nothing but a clanging gong, but our actions of love to others is a beautiful symphony we write every day for our Lord. These actions make us pregnant with more and more works and those works birth more Christians.
While we can not come to saving grace through any way beside accepting Jesus as our love and Lord, works are just as important, for without the works and love and relationship blending together into a wondrous love affair, without works, we are just the creep, shouting to a woman that we love her when we’ve never gotten to know each other or done anything together.
May we fall head over heels for our wondrous, glorious, awesome God, and may we show that love each and every day to those around us with our works so that we may make love to our Lord so that we can become pregnant to birth more Christians and bring as much heaven to earth as we are able to.
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