What Must I Do? Part 3
Don’t love reading? Listen instead!
HOW TO INHERIT ETERNAL LIFE IS THE WRONG QUESTION
When you compile all of the aforementioned stories together where the question is explicitly asked, you find a very compelling, singular answer.
Striving to squeeze salvation out of the Law of Moses will only ever bring about Moses’ condemnation. Moses himself pointed toward Christ. The law, and your keeping of it, was never intended to bring about the reconciliation so desperately needed.
Again, “What is impossible for mortals is possible for God” (Luke 18:27). The point that Jesus makes, which Paul reiterates, is that there is nothing you could ever have done to right the wrongs or undo evil, brokenness, and sin.
What was impossible for mortals and for the Law to do, God did in and through the life, death, resurrection, and ruling of Jesus Christ once and for all, “the lamb slain before the foundation of the world” (Revelation 13:8).
What has always been and will always be needed is trust that the God who made you loves you with a love that will never let you go. And this is no mere starting point or first step. This is the fabric of reality and the Good News that holds all things together.
Your relationship with righteousness is your relationship with Jesus - it is one-sided. It is a one-way causal relationship: Jesus is the cause, you are the effect, just like your creation, your existence, and your resurrection.
Your relationship with righteousness is your relationship with Jesus - it is one-sided.
It is a one-way covenantal relationship: Jesus provides both divine and human faithfulness. ‘What is impossible for mortals is possible for God’ is not a cute, motivational hallmark meant to push the almost-courageous ones over the cliff of confidence. It is simultaneously exposure of our dire need and the revelation of the accomplishment of our salvation.
HOW CHURCH-GOERS INHERIT ETERNAL LIFE
Where the rubber meets the road is in all the things churches deem essential, right, and righteous for followers of Jesus. They aren’t in the Bible explicitly, yet, they have become the barometer of legitimate church in their self-referential perspective. To name a few: singing songs, listening to sermons, and attending Bible studies, mostly on Sundays.
In church, the way we learn to legitimize our faith is too often through behaviors, allegiances, or progress in a “by the book” sort of lifestyle. But this is exactly opposite of what Jesus has done and declared. There would be no need for the Incarnation of God if all humans needed was a great moral example.
You are free to stop trying to be or become something in order to get God, his favor, blessings, promises, and life. Eternal life is impossible for mortals to merit, but nothing is impossible for God. You are not called to a life of trying to experience or acquire what Christ promised to bring about in and for you.
You are not called to a life of trying to experience or acquire what Christ promised to bring about in and for you.
If you’re still arguing in your head with what I’m saying, how exactly do you explain away the words, “it’s impossible for you to do something to inherit eternal life”? What argument can you possibly make to legitimize the value of living a life of accountability and moral responsibility for the sake of winning eternal life?
A life of trying to do “what is impossible for mortals…” can only ever lead to demoralizing cycles of guilt, shame, anxiety, depression, and eventually utter exhaustion. This life of trying and toiling assumes a false reality and sets out to do the impossible.
ETERNAL LIFE IS ONLY GRACE
You can moralize or make a religion out of anything, but it will always be idolatry, inhumane, and insufficient.
And if you still feel compelled to retort, “but doesn’t God want you to at least try to live a good and moral life in response to what he’s done for you and what he’s made possible for you?” then you are in league with the characters in the Bible who tried to test and trap Jesus to ultimately dispose of him. I’ve been there. And I return there often.
But, the answer is no. Because although we might be compelled enough to trust grace to save us, we rarely trust grace to disciple us. We do things that turn grace into a tool or a means to an end. Another ingredient to apply to your recipe like salt or minced garlic. Just another thing to utilize for your own self-realization or self-aggrandizement.
…although we might be compelled enough to trust grace to save us, we rarely trust grace to disciple us.
But it’s not your recipe and you’re not the cook. And grace isn’t just one more ingredient among many. It is the ultimate reality giving life to everything from atom to planet to galaxy to universe.
You are the loaf and the yeast is generously applied by the master chef himself, Jesus Christ, the wounded and risen Creator and Savior who has made Himself one with His creation. Jesus is our oxygen, our righteousness, our very life.
ETERNAL LIFE IS OPPOSED TO EFFORT
You may have heard Dallas Willard’s famous saying about the difference between effort and earning. “Grace is not opposed to effort, it is opposed to earning. Earning is an attitude. Effort is an action. Grace, you know, does not just have to do with forgiveness of sins alone” (The Great Omission).
I take issue with this way of thinking because it has long helped would-be followers of Jesus take up the mantle of sanctified effort instead of sanctified earning.
Willard is splitting hairs to preserve control (over our own identity), a sense of contribution (to our progress in the spiritual life), and the ability to distinguish between who’s in and who’s out. Willard’s work regularly issues a call to get spiritually busy and serious to evidence the fact that you are a Christian and that the Spirit is at work in you.
In an attempt to really get Christians to take their faith seriously, Willard is suggesting a way of life that is anything but what Christ declared. But Jesus said, “On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you” (John 14:20, NRSV). This astonishing union Jesus speaks of is itself the Gospel of grace and the reality of forgiveness.
Willard assumes that humans can tell the difference between effort and earning. It seems to me that he fails to give credit to how addicted we are to earning. He also fails to give credit to the breadth of salvation in Christ. Salvation for humans is not Jesus changing God’s mind about humans as is popularly assumed. Salvation for humans is Jesus changing us and our minds about God.
We need forgiveness because we reject ‘the God Who Is’ and we favor the narcissistic god of our imaginations, the god who demands our slavish allegiance, worship, and progressive allocation of a holiness like his.
“For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (1 Corinthians 5:21, NRSV, emphasis added). Our union with Christ brings about a transformation in us that causes us to “become the righteousness of God.” That isn’t dependent upon our cooperation. Insofar as it is dependent on us, it is - again - impossible.
We are expressly not empowered to make ourselves any more righteous after the way of Jesus. We become the righteousness of God. You have become the righteousness of God. This isn’t a carrot being dangled out in front of you to get you off your ass.
You have become the righteousness of God. This isn’t a carrot being dangled out in front of you to get you off your ass.
The spiritual disciplines Willard is convinced will make you more like Christ ironically accomplish anything but. The spiritual disciplines we need are the ones that help us let go of the idea that what we do makes us more or less like Christ. We need to practice things that help us believe that nothing “in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:39, NRSV).
This is the thing you most fear believing. Trusting it to be true undermines everything you’ve previously done to make it true. “What must I do” is the wrong question.
This is a terrifying jump, but can anything else truly be called “trust?”
Check out the LARKCAST episode this blog is paired with to dive deeper into the conversation:
This blog explores what Jesus said and did. Everyone’s questions deserve conversation, not answers. You are invited to press in with us. Hit the link above to reach out or access all our resources. We'd love to hear from you.
If this post struck a chord, consider passing it on by clicking below.