(God) has saved us and called us to a holy life–not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time, (2 Timothy 1:9 NIV)

You may remember a grassroots campaign urging “Random Acts of Kindness.” One of the things that made that campaign so striking, so fresh and exciting, is that a random act of kindness, giving things to people who have had no chance to do anything for us, is so rare. It still is.

On the backside of our giving, our gifts so often come with strings attached. They expect or demand some kind of response. Haven’t you felt awkward receiving a gift from someone because you wondered what he wanted from you? Or maybe you have received a gift and felt guilty, because you hadn’t gotten anything for the gift’s giver, and now you felt like you should go out and get him something. We live in this world of “what’s in it for me” or “what’s it going to cost me” because our sinful, selfish nature can’t see the sense, or even the possibility, of anything being truly “free.” And that’s a serious problem, because in eternity there are only two places that we can go, and only one of them has an admission price we pay ourselves, and it isn’t heaven.

But the undeserved love of God is truly a gift. He laid down no conditions before he gave us this grace. Indeed, we gave him no reason to want to make this gift to us. We weren’t able. His gift of grace is truly free. And once we have received it, he does not demand a response, as though grace were charged to our Visa, and we were going to pay it off over time. Grace does not demand a response, but it does invite one. We can even say that it inspires a response, that it compels a response, because the free gift of grace changes all who receive it. It fills them with love that freely gives, just as we have received.

Perhaps the gift nature of God’s grace is clearer to see when Paul says, “This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time.” Don’t misunderstand Paul’s words. He is not saying that God’s grace was given to us at some point before creation. There were not millions or billions of years before creation, and then one day God woke up and decided, “I’m going to create me a world, and when it goes wrong, I’m going to redeem it. And when I do, I’m going to save Joe.”

No, in eternity there is no time, no progressing from one moment to the next in the same way we think of it. God always was. And as long as there has been God, his grace has been given to you. There was no “day before” grace. God’s grace–to you personally– is eternal, just like God himself is eternal. It is unchangeable as God himself. You can’t get anything less demanding of something in you, anything more “free,” than that.

Can you put a value on a gift like that? The old Motown song sings, “Money can’t buy you love.” And when it comes to God’s love, neither can good works, personal sacrifice, or anything else we can think to give. God has always loved you just because he chooses to love you. You can not turn this love off, you cannot make it stop, any more than you can change God himself.

(Picture by By LetsgomusicStyle – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=27330732)

Ecclesiastes 12:1, 6-7

“Remember your Creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come and the years approach when you will say, ‘I find no pleasure in them…’

Remember him–before the silver cord is severed, or the golden bowl is broken; before the pitcher is shattered at the spring, or the wheel broken at the well, and the dust returns to the ground it came from, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.”

In Christianity for Modern Pagans, a commentary on Blaise Pascal’s meditative Pensees, Peter Kreeft notes a connection Pascal made between our realization that death might come at any moment and the way that we live our lives:

“Our life in the world must vary according to these different assumptions:

1. If it is certain that we shall always be here…
2. If it is uncertain whether we shall always be here or not…
3. If it is certain that we shall not always be here, but if we are sure of being here for a long time…
4. If it is certain we shall not be here for a long time, and uncertain whether we shall be here even one hour.

This last assumption is ours.”

You might say that each assumption is progressively closer to truth.

The imminence of death has the ability to bring us back to our senses. Dr. Johnson, the famous English writer of the 1700s, observed, “I know of no thought that so wonderfully clarifies the mind as the thought that I shall hang tomorrow morning.” When the doctor gives you only so much time to live, or you are otherwise faced with your mortality, priorities become somehow easier to put in order.

Kreeft says this about Pascal’s words: “Suddenly you stop filling up the boob tube of your consciousness with trivia. Death turns your habitual perspective upside down–that is, really right side up. Tiny things like economics, and technology, and politics, no longer loom large, and enormous things like religion and morality, no longer seem thin and far away.”

We might add enormous things like the gospel, and immortality.

As he brings his book to a close, the writer of Ecclesiastes emphatically and poetically impresses the nearness of death on us and importance of using the time we now have to know God’s grace. The fact that we all die stands behind the author’s conclusion that everything is meaningless, or vanity. Knowing the God who created us, who redeemed us from our sin, and who will receive our spirits when our bodies return to the dust is the solution to the problem.

Kreeft concludes, “In a word, death removes ‘vanity.” Well, almost right. Death makes clear the problem. Jesus’ promise, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die” removes vanity. Not only does the resurrection promise that death is not our end, it gives meaning and motivation to the life we live right now.

That was the Apostle Paul’s conclusion: “Therefore…,” in light of the certainty that Jesus rose and so will we, “…stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain” (1 Cor. 15:58).

James 3:13-18

Who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show it by his good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom. ¹⁴ But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth. ¹⁵ Such “wisdom” does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, of the devil. ¹⁶ For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice. ¹⁷ But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. ¹⁸ Peacemakers who sow in peace raise a harvest of righteousness.

I grew up in a family where everyone (except maybe my dad) felt a pathological need to be right. One way this showed itself at our house was the location of the World Book Encyclopedias. (Encyclopedias are books where people found answers to things before Google). We kept them within reach of the kitchen table, because often while we were eating supper we would get into an argument about some bit of trivia, and we would reach for the encyclopedias to settle the argument.

There is nothing wrong with being knowledgeable. Scripture praises things like knowledge, understanding, and wisdom. The book of Proverbs is devoted to it. But not all wisdom and knowledge are the same. Not all wisdom and knowledge are good.

The Apostle James distinguishes wisdom from wisdom by its product. God’s wisdom, the kind that comes from heaven, produces a good life and humble deeds. It turns out people who are pure, peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy, impartial, and sincere. The other kind, which James says is earthly, unspiritual, and of the devil  produces bitter envy, selfish ambition, disorder, and every evil practice.

Can we tell the two apart before we start dealing with their consequences? Law enforcement officers who specialize in crimes involving counterfeit money say that the best way to recognize a counterfeit is not to study counterfeits. It is to become as familiar as you can with the real thing. Then the counterfeits will stick out like a sore thumb. More important than studying the devil’s counterfeit wisdom is becoming familiar with God’s true wisdom. Too much interest in the occult tends to draw people in to it. Better to be familiar with true worship and true religion, and the occult will be obvious enough when we see it.

For true wisdom we need to read and know the Scriptures more and more. But even true knowledge about God and his word can be used in a way that produces “envy and selfish ambition, where you find disorder and every evil practice.” Paul once warned his friends in Corinth,, “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. The man who thinks he knows something does not yet know as he ought to know.” Knowledge, even Bible knowledge, without love makes us proud. Without love taking and forming and applying all our knowledge, it can never be “the wisdom that comes from heaven.”

Love happens where faith happens. The best way to recognize true wisdom is to know and trust the one who is wisdom itself. Again, Paul tells the Corinthians, “Christ Jesus…has become for us wisdom from God–that is our righteousness, holiness and redemption.” The man hanging on the cross may look foolish to the world, but his perfect life wraps me in a righteousness that all my genius and cleverness would never have thought of. All my brilliant plans to achieve holiness would have had me bathing myself in so much spiritual mud, but his blood simply and purely cleanses my dirty record and makes my heart look pristine. There is no clever business model we could follow to pay off the debt of sin we owed and restore our credit with God, but Christ has made himself our payment, and “in him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins.”

God’s love to us in Jesus makes us wise. Wisdom in practice looks just like that love.

Left photo by CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=227127

“May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ…be with you all.” 2 Corinthians 13:14

Sometimes we think would like to stand before God on our own record. I must admit that I can hardly keep from wincing when I hear otherwise Lutheran Christians protest, “But I am a good person!” They may be decent citizens from the world’s point of view, but do any of us really think that the all-seeing, all-knowing God is going to buy such a claim from any one of us? Over 900 years ago St. Anselm warned people who took pride in their own shallow and external morality, “You have not yet  considered how great your sin is.” We do well to take that warning to heart today, especially when the advertising industry keeps pumping us full of messages that say, “You deserve more!” “You deserve better!” and dozens of talk show hosts reaffirm the myth of basic human goodness. If it were true, you wouldn’t need God to go with you with his grace.

Many would say that I am terrible for denying you such a sense of personal pride, but that approach to God and to life is a terrible merry-go-round to get on, and hard to get off. There is no peace there, only a life that is relentlessly driven by the quest to be good enough. There is no freedom there, only slavery to a set of expectations that is always beyond our reach, if we are honest. There is no confidence that God loves you there, only a nagging fear that you are falling further behind on his demands.

The Apostle Paul wants to spare you of this. He wants you to know that God goes with you with the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Look at how Jesus gave! Was there ever a person, whether heartless Pharisee or public sinner, for whom Jesus ever wanted anything but the best and the kindest, whom he wanted anything other than to love with his whole heart? “While we were still sinners,” Paul assures us, “Christ died for us!” He fully intends to show that kind of favor to you for the rest of your life— no matter what you do! You cannot commit a sin so serious that he would no longer be willing and even wanting to forgive it. God has set his heart on you. In the life and death of Jesus that heart showed that no cost was too great to make you his own. Today he wants you to know that, no matter what, that same grace, that same gift, that same favor goes with you, wherever you go.

I John 3:2

“Dear friends, now we are the children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known.”

Now we are the children of God. That’s not so bad when you consider what we were. You know Paul’s words from Romans 5? “When we were God’s enemies we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son…” Really? Enemies? That seems a bit strong doesn’t it? Enemies? Yes! There is no other way to describe people who have taken their own Maker’s instructions, thrown them aside, and like a defiant little two year old looked him in the eye and said, “It’s my life. I’m going to do what I want. I don’t care what you say about sharing. I don’t care what you say about how I use my body. I don’t care if you don’t like my potty mouth.” Active little rebels–we were God’s enemies!

Or there is Paul’s other picture from Ephesians: “As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins…” Dead ! A spiritual corpse! From God’s point of view, in our sin, without real love for anyone but ourselves, we were lifeless, hopeless, useless–done!

And that is what we were. It is hard to say which is worse, being enemies or corpses, but we don’t have to make a choice, because the Bible calls us both.

But on a dark Friday nearly 2000 years ago Jesus gave up his life to remove our guilt and to forgive all our sins. Again, look at the quote a moment ago from Romans 5, “When we were God’s enemies we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son.” We are reconciled, not enemies.

By his resurrection from the dead three days later Jesus conquered our death. As much as that means new life for our bodies, it also brings new life to our souls. “When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ,” Paul wrote the Colossians. Now we have faith, we have hope, we have life.

It’s harder to say which is better, the cross or the empty tomb, but Jesus gives us both. His salvation doesn’t leave us hard choices. It gives it all together as one beautiful gift.

That is why John can say, “Dear friends, now we are the children of God.” Now we are children! Do you know what that means? The first word here tells us that we are dear, we are loved. God treasures us as his own.

As God’s children, we are cared for. “As a Father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him.” Do you have pictures of this kind of thing from your own childhood? I picture my wife keeping vigil at the side of our son at Medical City when he had cancer. Our heavenly Father keeps his vigil over us, always ready to take care of our every need.

As God’s children, we are simply enjoyed by him. He is pleased to laugh and play with his little ones. I can’t help but think of the Christian character in the movie “Chariots of Fire,” Scottish runner Eric Liddell, telling his sister that when he runs he “feels God’s pleasure.” God’s children are people in whom he takes delight.

“Now we are the children of God.” That’s not so bad now, is it, and Jesus’ death and resurrection have made it all possible.

Photo by Ragesoss – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2109742

“For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” 1 Corinthians 1:18

God has saved us through the foolishness that is the message of the cross. Did you notice in the passage above, in contrast to the world’s evaluation of the message of the cross as “foolishness,” Paul does not describe it as “wisdom,” which we might consider the natural opposite. He calls it “power.” That’s because this message is not just information that educates us. These words have power that change us. It penetrates our hearts and souls and clashes with what it finds there, and in the end it makes us different people.

But it does so not in a harsh and forced way. The miracle of this power of the cross is that it works through love. Long before evangelical Christians in our country began to make so much use of the term “born again,” they described themselves as people who had been “seized by the power of a great affection” (See Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel). And it is the cross, that sign of weakness and failure, that brutal, gory, scary event that shows us the worst mankind has to offer, that opens up to us the full depth of that affection and love of God. It is hard to look at, this is true. It is hard to see the good. But only at the cross can we see that God’s love for us knows no bounds. No price is too much for God if only he can make us his own again. He would suffer death for our sins himself before he would let our sins kill us. He would suffer hell in our place before he would let us suffer hell ourselves. He would pay everything, do everything, give everything necessary to save us before he would let us pay even a fraction of a penny, before he would let us take even the smallest part or make even the smallest sacrifice to set ourselves free from guilt and the punishment our sins deserved.

Maybe that doesn’t make sense. Maybe it seems unjust for an innocent man to die for the guilty. Maybe it seems foolish that one man could die for the sins of a whole world, including those who lived thousands of years before him, and those who lived thousands of years after him. So who’s complaining? God doesn’t ask us to make that message palatable for a world of do-it-yourselfers. He doesn’t ask us to make it reasonable for world that thinks it knows more than it does. Let the message sound as foolish as it does. But know that God loved you so much anyway.

And know that the power of that message still works on the hearts of you and countless others to save us today.

Generally God calls himself our Father. But from time to time he compares the way he cares for us to the tender, motherly care our mothers extended to us each day. “You will nurse and be carried on her arm and dandled on her knees. As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you; and you will be comforted over Jerusalem” (Isaiah 66:13).

Are you at the very end of your strength? Do you find yourself at a place where you don’t know what to do, where you can’t get through the challenge, where it is simply too big for you to get over? The idea behind that “Footprints in the Sand” poem that’s so popular isn’t some new revelation. Isaiah promises you will be “carried on her (in this case, God’s) arm.”

Do you simply need someone to love you and pay attention to you?  You will be “dandled on the knee.” You see, God didn’t bring you into a relationship with himself just to press you into work and get some cheap volunteer labor out of you. He actually takes an interest in you. He enjoys just having you. Like a mother who is happy just to hold her child and play with it and bounce it on her knees, the Lord is happy just to have you, and talk to you, and see you enjoy his blessings.

So it is that he comforts us over the sins of which we are guilty and the threats that we perceive to the people of God on earth. Don’t despair when it appears that the church is in decline, whether in numbers or in strength, because God promises to care for us like a doting mother and give his people  unending peace.

(Photo by Christopher Michel – A mothers love, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=37115846)

You and I can wring our hands about the unraveling of the church’s moral fabric, but if we’re honest, we have to admit that we have done our own share of thread pulling: sexual indiscretions when we are young and cowardly looking the other way when we are old; lying to avoid taking responsibility for mistakes and letting someone else take the rap; laughing at jokes and entertainment and using language that ought to fill us with shame; and all the while dutifully going about our public lives as Christians. Yes, we have pulled our own threads out of the moral fabric of our people. We may lament having to live with the consequences of our current moral crisis, but we know that we don’t deserve any better. What we deserve is far worse, and God has something far worse prepared for those who will not repent.

It has always been this way. Over two thousand seven hundred years ago the LORD warned his people through Isaiah, “They have chosen their own ways, and they delight in their abominations; so I also will choose harsh treatment for them and will bring on them what they dread” (Isaiah 66:3-4).

But warning and judgment are never the last word for the God of Scripture. He never goes long without holding out a promise of Grace. Now he offers us something far better. “For this is what the Lord says: I will extend peace to her like a river…” (Isaiah 66:12). What the Lord offers us is peace. This is not a truce, in which neither side wins, but both sides agree to give up the fight. No, our Lord has won the war. He has destroyed everything in us that was offensive by the death of his Son on the cross. He has put down our rebellion by the forgiveness of our sins. He has overcome our resistance by the onslaught of his love. He has overwhelmed our defenses as he sent in wave after wave of his grace, pouring in over our lines, disarming our wills, and conquering our hearts. God has extended spiritual peace to us through the work of his Son and the preaching of his gospel.

And that peace keeps flowing to us in an unending supply. He extends peace to us like a river. This is not a little creek that might disappear in a dry year. The word river here is the word that is used to describe the Nile, the Tigris, or the Euphrates. This is like the mighty Mississippi, swiftly, relentlessly pushing great volumes of water along on its way to the ocean. If you live in New Orleans, you might run the risk of being overwhelmed and flooded by the Mississippi, but it’s not going to shrink up and leave you dry. God’s peace in the forgiveness of sins and the giving of his love relentlessly, generously flows to us in an overflowing supply.

The ancient Jews recognized that peace with God meant more than an end to the fight. When one is at peace with God, then everything else in life is affected. We gain a sense of serenity and wholeness in knowing that things are the way they are supposed to be. That doesn’t mean everything is pleasant or easy, but God is in control, and God loves me, so everything must be serving both him and me.

(Photo by Walter Siegmund – Own work, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1446381)

I am usually the one bringing a good word from God to someone in distress. But I have been on the other side of the transaction, too. Twenty years ago we rushed my little boy to the hospital as he struggled to get a breath. His gasps for air were coming at more than one per second. He cried, but there were no tears. The staff at the first hospital were unable to get an IV started. An ambulance rushed him to the Children’s Hospital where they have more experience with infants. The next morning his condition was stable, and his parents had not had a wink of sleep.

My pastor found us in a room that morning, my son in a crib, my wife in a chair, and me sitting on the floor–all of us exhausted. His visit was short, perhaps no more than 10 minutes. He spoke about Joshua 1:9, “Be strong and courageous…the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.” He prayed. He left us to rest.

Those words that morning were like food. We devoured them like people on the edge of starvation. I felt like King David’s dear friend, Saul’s son, Jonathan discovering honey after an exhausting battle. “He reached out the end of the staff that was in his hand and dipped it into the honeycomb. He raised his hand to his mouth and his eyes brightened” (1 Samuel 14:27). Our souls brightened to hear God’s promise of presence after a night of battling for our child’s life.

“Hunger is the best cook,” they say. Guilt, regret, illness, heartache, rejection, danger, loss–these create the hunger that whets our appetite for just a taste, just a bite, from God’s promises. “My comfort in my suffering is this: Your promise preserves my life,” the psalmist observes in Psalm 119 (vs. 50). I pray that the words and promises on this page, even if just little bits of bread for the soul, will brighten your eyes.