Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

It does not, therefore, depend on human desire or effort, but on God’s mercy. For Scripture says to Pharaoh: “I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.” Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden.

• Romans 9:16-18

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.

• Ephesians 2:8-9

“ ‘At the faculty of philosophy I rarely used to hear about grace, except in an ambiguous way. But the whole day I would hear that we are masters of our own free acts and that it is in our power to do good or evil, to have virtues or sins, and many things Iike that. …
“ ‘However, even before I became a theological student, [Romans 9:16] came to me as a beam of grace and in a mental representation of the truth I thought I saw from afar how the grace of God precedes all good works in time and in nature. (The Case of God against the Pelagians, Preface)
“Does Augustine mean that we receive faith before we receive grace? But we cannot walk in faith without being in grace. How would we ever have received this grace? By our preceding merits? Grace is given to you. it is not a payment. That is why it is called grace-because it is freely given.  You cannot buy with preceding merits what you have already received as a gift. Therefore the sinner has received first grace in order that his sins might be forgiven. What has he merited? When he demands justice he will receive punishment and when he asks for mercy he will receive grace. (The Case of God against the Pelagians l.47).”

• Tony Lane, A Concise History of Christian Thought

Thomas Bradwardine (1300?-1349) was a cleric, mathematician, and physicist.  Briefly, he served as archbishop of Canterbury.

Bradwardine’s argument regarding whether faith or grace came first sounds like the classic question: Which came first, the chicken or the egg?  In the case of faith, I wonder if it matters?  When Ephesians 2 says that we get grace through faith.  So, the only reason to wonder about which comes first is the age old questions most humans have about anything that they want: What do I have to do to get it?

I have written many times about how I came to faith after saying the salvation prayer hundreds of times.  My guess is more than 500, every night for over a year and sometimes several times during the day.  I finally just gave up, asking God to do whatever He wanted with me.  I thought I heard a voice say, “That’s what I was waiting for.”  We get caught up in the altar call.  We get caught up in saying “magical words” in a short prayer.  We get caught up in water baptism.  We get obsessed over joining the church and becoming a member.  We get caught up in that first time we receive communion.  There may be ever so many other acts that we can perform.

But in that quiet moment when we are doing none of those things, God enters our heart because we did not do anything to prevent Him from doing it.

Don’t get me wrong.  All those other things are good in their way, but God does all the work.  We absolutely cannot get God to enter our hearts by telling Him to do so.  We must be humble before Him, and let Him take control.

God gives us the gift of faith, that saving faith where we trust Jesus with everything.

God gives us grace and mercy.  We deserve neither grace nor mercy, and no act that we can perform will ever change that.

Repenting of our sins cannot be done without the cleansing blood of Jesus pulsing through our system.  It is God’s strength that helps us to repent, but when we surrender to Jesus, we give up control over our sinful life.  We recognize that we need His strength, but we have the desire to repent.  In fact, the age-long process of sanctification is repentance.  We begin to desire to do God’s will and to run away from the sin in our lives.  Thus we avoid the sins of omission by doing what God wants of us and we avoid the sins of commission by not doing bad things.  And that takes a lifetime to accomplish.

But that does not save us, and even then, it is not possible without God within us.

Which came first?  Forget the question.  Praise God that He provides the gifts of Faith, Grace, and Mercy because salvation is nothing that we have done.

If you like these Tuesday morning essays about philosophy and other “heavy topics,” but you think you missed a few, you can use this LINK. I have set up a page off the home page for links to these Tuesday morning posts. I will continue to modify the page as I add more.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.