Lately I've been listening to the very excellent Sonship series by Pastor Barry Henning of New City Fellowship in St. Louis, Missouri (scroll down nearly to end of page, second-to-last item).

While I was listening, something clicked. A perennial Christian problem is beginning the Christian life by grace (i.e., recognizing that it's solely by an undeserved gift of God that we receive salvation and all its blessings, based completely on what Jesus has done and not anything we've merited); but then, at some point, slipping back into living by works (i.e., believing that our acceptance with God and living the Christian life depends on our own efforts at obedience).

This mindset results in all sorts of problems, and it's nothing new. Paul scolded the Galatians in no uncertain terms for falling victim to a variation of this teaching, way back in the first century. They'd accepted the gospel but then started listening to false teachers who told them that in order to be acceptable to God, one must also keep the Jewish ceremonial law, including circumcision and feast days.

Paul countered:

You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you?....Did you receive the Spirit by observing the law, or by believing what you heard? Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort?....Does God give you his Spirit and work miracles among you because you observe the law, or because you believe what you heard? (Galatians 3:1-5)

In short, the polarization between the gospel and human thinking is this: we are prone to believing that we earn God's favour and acceptance by what we do. The gospel says that from beginning to end, salvation and acceptance with God is a totally free gift, received simply by faith and completely unreliant on our works. The book of Galatians is written to demonstrate this.

However, as I said, I twigged to one possible reason why this is perpetually such a problem:

It's relatively easy to believe God for things like salvation, forgiveness, eternal life. Those things are abstract, and we know that they're out of our control. None of us, generally, has an illusion that we can deal with whatever comes after death on our own, or that we can fix our problem of sin before a holy God.

But when it comes down to actually living the Christian life, day by day, it's far easier to slip back into the human penchant for control. We like to operate under the illusion that we are the masters of our destiny. Our culture teaches us that we are responsible for whatever happens to us, good or bad. We also feel somehow that now we're saved, it's up to us to "keep it up" by living righteously.

It's humbling and inconveniencing to admit that not only are we not in control, we are utterly and completely reliant on God's grace and his Holy Spirit to live a life worthy of his calling. It's a sore blow to human pride to acknowledge that we can't do it on our own, and that we need him.

At the same time, it's incredibly liberating. The knowledge that it's not dependent on our efforts and that, purely as a gift of his grace, God is prepared to give us all that we need to live the Christian life and to freely forgive us when we fail—well, that's the best news that anyone's told me in a long time. Probably ever.