It is accepting adoption by faith and accepting being found by faith. You can’t adopt yourself, neither can the lost sheep find itself. (Being lost is not entitlement.) Jesus is the Good Shepherd.
During a dark time in her life, a woman in my congregation complained that she had prayed over and over, “God, help me find you,” but had gotten nowhere. A Christian friend suggested to her that she might change her prayer to, “God, come and find me. After all, you are the Good Shepherd who goes looking for the lost sheep.” She concluded when she was recounting this to me, “The only reason I can tell you this story is—he did.”
Once you has been adopted by your Everlasting Father, you can be confident of the endurance of that undeserved gift – no court can rescind it, and once you have been found, you can rest in the strong arms of your loving Shepherd, rejoicing in your foundness with him and never fearing to be lost again. (A good thing to be remembered at Thanksgiving. )
The gospel of grace means that salvation is a work of God – not a work of your theology. That means that all the details for a particular person is for God to say not us – it is His job, His judgement, His understanding, His expertise, an adoption by Him as His child. Of course leaving things in the hands of God like this is a death knell for the use of religion as a tool of power. In order to use religion to manipulate people you have to put it in the hands of people to say when people have earned their salvation by whatever you want to say they have to do or say or believe.
What we are to do is have faith not entitlement. The confidence of faith? yes. The confidence of entitlement? no. What is the difference? Paul made this perfectly clear in Romans 10. Faith doesn’t even ask the question of who is saved or who is damned. The confidence of faith is the confidence to do what right without asking such questions. The confidence of entitlement is the opposite, the confidence that you can do nothing as you like since salvation is one of your accomplishments. Thinking it doesn’t matter what you do, because this gift which you now own placing God under your contract and obligation cannot be taken away from you – that is the confidence of entitlement. Nowhere in Jesus’ answer of Matthew 19 to the man asking “what must I do to have eternal life?” does Jesus say you don’t have to do anything… quite the opposite – the man went away disappointed because Jesus asked too much. So, these are two very different types of confidence… the confidence to do what you can always, and the confidence you have done enough and don’t need to do anything more.
This is why it says in Philippians 2:12 “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.” To say that this means salvation is a product of our own work would be taking it out of context. The point is not that salvation depends upon us, but only that the confidence and faith which is asked of us is not one of entitlement – it is the confidence to DO SOMETHING, to do what is right, and not the confidence to sit on your fat bottom, thinking you have it made.
The gift which God gives is not some get out of jail free card or gate pass into heaven. The gift which God gives is His continued work to remove the sins which are strangling our spirit and dooming us to hell. So you see, there is nothing there to be owned. There is no contract making God your slave, no adoption papers obligating God, or making salvation one of your accomplishments. All that is entitlement and not faith.
There are multiple severe warnings for us from both Jesus and Paul to be sure that we are indeed adopted and redeemed, that we are grain and not tares, sheep and not goats, as well as details as to how to test ourselves to be sure. It is not about ‘my theology’, it is about faith (and reading well).
The adoptee can recognize, can “own”, and be confident of a permanent relationship with their adoptive Father. It is a gift and not the entitlement of your repeated accusations.
Yes but how do we put our best foot forward, by focusing on building our resume to serve our eternal best interests, or, by loving God* and focusing on caring for others? Whose well being should we focus on?
*If it doesn’t offend anyone, I’d prefer not to always write “that which gives rise to and supports God belief”.
I don’t see how that is a ‘we’ question. It has to be merely rhetorical since you neither believe in God nor eternity.
For the Christian, loving God and loving and caring for others are inseparable – “Inasmuch as you have done it to one of the least of these my brothers, you have done it to me.” Christians also need no résumés or tally sheets, as does at least one cult, notably the Jehovah’s Witnesses who have literal Field Service Reports for such accounting. The record proving the Christian’s adoptedness is already on file, and loving God and caring for our fellow man in obedience is serving our eternal best interests – it is not an either/or question.
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