Duty and Grace Post Election
How are you doing? It is the first Friday post election after all. Like the pre-election, the post election editorializing has ranged from Nirvana to Netherworld, from ecstasy to agony. As we have said in various ways throughout this cycle, and would say again here, it is not that politics are unimportant, but they are not the most important. And whoever sits in the white house, senate, congress or city hall, their hearts are all in the hands of THE KING. So humility for the winners. Grace for those who feel they have lost. And confidence for all in the King of Kings.
Even as we start with the election, we move quickly to our lives. After all, the day to day hasn't changed. As we woke up Wednesday and head into this weekend, there are still leaves to be cleaned up, laundry to be done, work left unfinished and relationships to attend to. How do we do this as God's people in ways that bring honor to our Lord?
This is the heart of what we have been talking about in our Adult Institute class on sanctification. How do we live lives of holiness that reflect the new nature that we have been given by grace? Sometimes we stumble a bit when we think about the call to holiness in a community of grace. Isn't the pursuit of holiness antithetical to a reception of grace? Do we try or do we trust? And the answer is.... Yes! John Owen puts it this way:
Let us consider what regard we ought to have to our own duty and to the grace of God. Some would separate these things as inconsistent, If holiness be our duty, they would say, there is no room for grace; and if it be the result of grace there is no place for duty. But our duty and God’s grace are nowhere opposed in the matter of sanctification; for one absolutely supposes the other. We cannot perform our duty without the grace of God; nor does God give his grace for any other purpose than that we may perform our duty.
You have been made new to live as a new creation in the midst of a world that desperately needs beacons of light. People, both inside the church and without, are constantly finding that the cisterns they are trusting in are broken. They are thirsty, longing to know where to find living water. This is why Paul charges Timothy to "preach the word". In the midst of culture that doesn't flock to Biblical truth, we are to live as to point to Christ.
