November 23, 2004

Show Time

Back, but not much blogging 'til tomorrow. My wife had surgery this morning and is now home resting not-so-comfortably 'cept for the miracle of painkillers. I spent part of my day with taking care of the kids, and occupied the time while she was in surgery and post-op recovery reading the first four chapters of Tod Bolsinger's new book, Show Time: Living Down Hypocrisy By Living Out The Faith. It's a very very very fine book - if you're a Christian and have ever wanted a book that explains the nuts-and-bolts of how the seed of faith grows into an authentic and effective expression of the Christian life, this book is it. From Chapter 2:

The first step for living an effective Christian life is to begin being transformed because we have been saved, not in order to be saved. ...

A word of caution is in order: When we talk about being good, we are not encouraging either perfectionism or legalism. Both are distortions of biblical virtue When the Bible speaks of being virtuous, it is not exhorting people to live without flaw or to strictly adhere to a list of rules. But too often in the church today, those are the messages being taught.

The result is that far too many of us have struggled far too much with trying to be perfect; and far too many of us have expressed self-righteousness, not virtue. But neither the word nor the implication in the passage [2 Peter 1] is about achieving perfection or keeping rules. ... Christian virtue is about being declared good and then consequently growing in goodness each day.

Bolsinger's book is especially welcome to someone like me, who grew up in a tradition that reduced salvation to a formula of human actions: faith in God plus human works earns salvation. The only problem with that formula is that it is wrong. Salvation was accomplished by Jesus on the cross and is the free and undeserved gift (i.e. grace) from God to the believer. To say that salvation is the result of faith plus works or faith plus anything is to say that what Jesus did by dying on the cross and, two mornings later, emerging alive from the tomb, was insufficient, that only human works can complete what Jesus left incomplete. But Jesus left nothing incomplete. His work was sufficient. His work was perfect. Bolsinger, again:

It may sound simplistic but effective faith must be genuine trust, and genuine trust is living in complete and utter dependence on the grace and mercy of God every day. Effective faith is not about depending on God's grace for salvation and then doing the best we can on our own steam; it is faith that displays the trust we have in God's grace for our salvation by living it out. Effective faith demonstrates that we know that we have been "saved by grace through faith" [Eph. 2:8] and then in awe-filled gratitude to God seeks to demonstrate the difference that that knowledge makes.