I twigged to something today while listening to the very excellent Sonship series taught by Barry Henning of New City Fellowship, St. Louis.

The reason why God doesn't give us righteousness or salvation or anything else in response to our own efforts or attempts at living righteously, is that to do so would be to place God in man's debt. This in turn would make God into not-God, but a cosmic genie who exists to bend himself to man's will and to fulfill the legitimate demands placed on him by our good works. It would mean that we could manipulate God into giving us what we deserve for our efforts.

This is impossible. Instead, as Paul rapturizes in Romans 11:

Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!
How unsearchable his judgments,
and his paths beyond tracing out!
"Who has known the mind of the Lord?
Or who has been his counselor?"
"Who has ever given to God,
that God should repay him?"
For from him and through him and to him are all things.
To him be the glory forever! Amen. (Romans 11:33-36)

The reason that righteousness comes only as a gift, never in response to our own efforts, is not only that it is impossible for us to establish our own righteousness due to sin. It is also so that, by doing so, God ensures that all the glory will go to him. As it is rightly so. However, we are the beneficiaries of this boundless and totally free generosity, received only by faith and not by any works we have done!

It seems like a good system to me.

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).

One of the main objections I come across when talking to non-Christians is the problem of evil (or The Problem of Pain, as C.S. Lewis termed it).

The argument is this: if God exists, and if he's good, then why is there so much evil in the world, particularly in the lives of those who love God? If God is both all-powerful and good, then surely he both can and ought to stop suffering. Because he doesn't, or doesn't seem to, then there must not be a God. Or not a good God, anyway.