Follow The Call

I once used the phrase “God is making me eat my words right now.” While I doubt that God would do something as course as that, He certainly does challenge us to be better people and come closer to Him. My lack of posting energy can be attributed towards that. There are two verses that used to challenge me, and as I read through The Cost of Discipleship they come back into view. The first one is Romans 6: 1-2 “What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?” The next verse is James 2:14 “What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds?” Bonhoeffer writes a lot about two suppositions, one is that those who obey have faith, and two is that those who have faith obey. They work together as a circle, but alone are two extremes, the latter being more dangerous as it leads to “cheap” grace. My question has always been this, what can I do to get God’s grace, and can I ever lose it? The answer, I am finding, is simple (only in terms of length), to get God’s grace we need only to respond to Christ’s call to follow Him (thus Bonhoeffer’s obedience leads to faith). While we cannot ever lose God’s love we can lose His influence in our lives. Lately I’ve come to realize that I was relying on “cheap” grace. I was finding consolation in the fact that “it’s okay because God still loves me.” One thing I’ve realized though is this, it’s not okay. Whether you call someone names or steal thousands from a bank, it’s not okay because the effects and consequences are still there, not only those who are harmed but us too. Grace, as Bonhoeffer puts it, justifies the sinner, yet through God’s perfection it condemns the sin. Paul writes later in Romans that we are “dead to sin and alive to Christ.” That is what the true Christian life is about. I used to think that a Christian is no different than any other man except he is forgiven, that couldn’t be more wrong. To follow Jesus’ call means dropping what your doing and following Him. It’s hard, it was hard to give up baseball, and it’s hard to forgive the past, but the end result in communion with God is far sweeter than any homerun.