God’s Grace in Christ isn’t Cheap

It's not even expensive-- it’s free

The lectionary epistle for this coming Fourth Sunday of Lent is Ephesians 2.1-10, a passage so powerful and important it bears quoting:

“You were dead through the trespasses and sins in which you once lived, following the course of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient. All of us once lived among them in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses, and we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else. But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ--by grace you have been saved--
and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God-- not the result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.”

Preachers barely need to preach this Sunday.

As we make our way to the cross this Lent, it’s worth noting that, according to the apostle Paul, we need it— the cross.

That is, our condition before Almighty God is both more helpless and more hopeless than our requiring a co-pilot. We don’t need help. That’s Americianity. That’s not Christianity. That’s not the gospel. According to the apostolic message, we don’t need help; we need an embalmer. We don’t need an instructor; we need an undertaker. Or we need someone who can raise the dead.

The Gospel is not that Jesus will do the rest if or after you’ve done your best. No, that’s an ancient heresy called Pelagianism, and, while it might be the most popular religion in America, it is not the gospel.

You do your best and Christ will do the rest.

No.

A corpse can’t cooperate with God. A stiff can’t set out to improve itself. With rigor mortis, you can’t even repent. Apart from the unmerited, uninitiated, one-way work of Jesus Christ for you upon you— applied to you at your baptism— you are dead in your sins. The gospel begins not with you behind the wheel of life and God as your co-pilot. The gospel begins with you dead in the grave. Jesus doesn’t help us steer our lives. Jesus takes our sin-dead corpses out of the trunk of the car, and he makes us alive again. That’s the gospel.

He makes us alive for him. He makes us alive for good works, Paul says. But notice, Christ does not make us alive for good works that we self-select. Christ makes us alive for good works he has chosen from beforehand.

We do not pursue good works for God.

God places us into good works for himself.

So that, from beginning to end, the gospel is not about what we do but about what God has done and is doing.