Nearly every childhood summer, many weekends were spent at the beach. I loved wading out into the warm swirling gulf waters with my cousin and our boogie boards in tow. One particular time the waves were perfect. Over and over we'd catch a wave, ride it in, and wade back out. I'm not certain how long we repeated this cycle, but at one point we looked up to see our mothers frantically calling out to us and waving. When we reached them, we realized the current had moved us about 50 yards from our campsite. Without realizing it we had drifted far from the watchful eyes of our families, far from where we needed to be. Without an effort on our part to stay near our families, the current carried us away. Working against the current takes effort and focus.
The same is true of our faith journey. Hebrews 2 opens with this warning,
"Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it...how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? " Notice the manner of movement away from the truth of Christ...drifting.
Drifting requires no effort, no focus, no energy. D.A. Carson describes this aimless spiritual movement well.
“People do not drift toward holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith or delight in the Lord. We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; toward disobedience and call it freedom; toward superstition and call it faith. We cherish the non-discipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation; we slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated.”
I love the phrase he coined here: "grace-driven effort." It implies more than just a checklist, behavior-modification, borderline-legalism, earning-your-salvation-type Christianity. Yet it is not grace and sin running wild and unfettered. Grace driven effort is a balance between these two extremes. And what is that?
The Gospel. Hebrews 2 encourages us to park ourselves right in the middle of the Gospel. Jesus, the son of God, put on human flesh. Deity shared in our humanity and experienced the full spectrum of suffering, pain, humiliation, temptation, and death. He came as an brother to wade through the mess. He forged a path to freedom from the fear of death and accomplished salvation. He became the merciful high priest who can fully sympathize, help, and rescue us. There is nothing that we face today or will face tomorrow that Jesus cannot help us through.
The Gospel. Hebrews 2 encourages us to park ourselves right in the middle of the Gospel. Jesus, the son of God, put on human flesh. Deity shared in our humanity and experienced the full spectrum of suffering, pain, humiliation, temptation, and death. He came as an brother to wade through the mess. He forged a path to freedom from the fear of death and accomplished salvation. He became the merciful high priest who can fully sympathize, help, and rescue us. There is nothing that we face today or will face tomorrow that Jesus cannot help us through.
What a glorious, beautiful truth is the Gospel! What love! Keep your eyes fixed on Him. Don't let the current sweep you off course.
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