Are You Trying Too Hard?

Many Christians measure  their spiritual walk (and others)  based on a checklist of all that they have done for God. This easily leads to legalism and bondage. Jesus doesn’t want us to “do” because He has already “DONE” the work when He died on a cross for our sins.

Our goal should not be  trying to earn God’s love, and keeping up appearances but focusing on the awareness that you are already his beloved. To walk in that love and allow it to flow through us into others.

David Torrance shares his thoughts about the sheer outpouring of God’s love granting us grace by the finished work of Christ, and our thankful response to that.

MM: In a word, how would you describe what Christ has done for us? I mean, why are people so excited about it? I could have my word for it, what’s yours?

DT: He’s done everything for us. When Christ came into the world, we read in John’s Gospel, he said, “I have come that you may have life, life more abundant, life to the absolute full.” So when we come to Christ, we are coming face-to-face with God, we’re entering into the family of God, but we’re discovering life itself, and that’s a good thing.

MM: Does that mean I don’t need to do anything?

DT: No. I wouldn’t say that. God has done everything for us in Christ. Christ has come, Christ has redeemed us. When Christ on the cross said, “It is finished,” that was a triumphant call, the triumphant shout of a victor. He’s done everything for our salvation. All we can do is accept it.

Many years ago (I mentioned that I was involved in mission) when Billy Graham carried out an “All Scotland Crusade” a long time ago in Edinburgh in 1955, some 2000 people went forward in his crusade in Edinburgh district. I was very heavily involved in the follow-up. We had classes for them for 12 weeks. We took away, I think, we think, 800 or 900 in three residential conferences.

I became involved in conversation with a man who was an office-bearing elder in the church, a very fine man. He said, “I’ve done everything that Billy Graham has asked. I came forward, repented, prayed, asked Christ into my life.” And his own words, he said, “I never seemed to have got there.” As I listened to him, I said, “You know what you’ve got to learn? Nothing at all.”

He was very startled. I said, “No. You’ve got to learn to do absolutely nothing, because when Christ said on the cross, ‘It is finished,’ he’s done everything for your salvation and there’s nothing left for you to do except to say thank you, and to go on and on and on saying thank you. Your thanksgiving is your acceptance.” I still see that man in my mind’s eye as it broke home to him. You could see his face relax, and he laughed. And the whole burden had departed. He was set free to live. He was set free to share the gospel with other people.

MM: He had been trying too hard.

DT: I think one of the disasters of the Christian church today…I love the church, I grew up in it…is that we tend to say, well, God has done his part in Jesus Christ. Christ has come, he’s died, he’s redeemed—now it’s over to us. And we call on our people to do their part. We say come, repent, believe, pray, worship, read the Bible. But we’re really throwing a tremendous responsibility back on the people.

MM: You do this, you do that.

DT: …so that their salvation, to put it rather crudely, we’re really saying that salvation is partly what God does and partly what you do. That’s totally wrong. It’s entirely of God, and all we’ve got to do is simply to thank him. And that must be a wholehearted thanksgiving. It’s a total letting go. A total surrender.

MM: If we really realize what a gift it is, then we are thankful.

DT: Absolutely. But it is a total thanksgiving where we thank God with our whole being. The Psalmist said that in Psalm 103: “Bless the Lord, oh my soul, and all that is within me, bless, praise, his holy name.” It’s that thanksgiving where we’re letting go…that we accept the whole wonder of what God has done in Christ. We’re receiving new life. In that freedom, there’s joy.

MM: If he’s done everything and he gives that to us, theologically, that’s grace. People misunderstand grace, though.

DT: Grace is a tremendous outpouring of the love of God in Jesus Christ. God, our Creator, came in incredible love to give himself to us in Jesus Christ—to give himself in his love, in his forgiveness, in his continuing redemption. If we were to stand under a waterfall, now, we’d be drenched, we’d be soaked. You and I stand under the waterfall, as it were, the outpouring of God’s love and grace, of his forgiveness, of his redemption. And that’s grace. The sheer outpouring of the love of God. Because we don’t deserve anything.

We deserve nothing. But God as love comes, gives himself to us, forgives us, redeems us, gives us life, through the Holy Spirit brings us in, we are adopted into the family of God, able to call God Father. Know that we are in Christ, sons and daughters of God, heirs of the everlasting kingdom. That all is a free, an abundant gift. That’s grace.

MM: I noticed earlier that you said not just that he gives us forgiveness, but he gives us himself.

DT: We can never separate the grace of God from the person of Christ. One of the great, dare I say, sins of the church through the ages is to separate the person of Christ and the work of Christ and separate Christ from grace so that…the medieval church was tempted to believe that grace is something that the church possesses, something that the church can dispense. That’s nonsense. We can be possessed by Christ, but we can’t possess Christ. Grace is wrapped up with the person of Christ and across the work of Christ, because we can’t separate them.

David Torrance served for 36 years in parish ministry in the Church of Scotland; he is the brother of theologians Thomas and James Torrance. He helped edit the English edition of Calvin’s New Testament commentaries, and is a co-author of A Passion for Christ: Vision That Ignites Ministry. His website is at www.livebyfaith.org.uk.