I was reading a portion of Michael Horton’s book, [amazon_link id=”B00B853PQM” target=”_blank” ]Gospel-Driven Life, The: Being Good News People in a Bad News World[/amazon_link], the other day.
A portion jumped out at me and I felt it was worth sharing. Listen to Horton describe the gift of grace.
“God does not simply create the gift and offer it to us, if we will only climb the stairway to heaven to get it; he brings it down to us, uncurls our ungrateful fingers, and places it in our hands. In our naive works righteousness, we will always look for methods of pulling God down out of heaven or for bringing Christ up from the dead. The hardest thing in the world for us even as believers in Christ is to sit down and receive something.”
A few paragraphs later he compare this amazing gift to receiving an inheritance as a part of someone’s last will and testament.
“You stand up for a “do this” covenant and you sit down to hear the reading of a will telling you what you have inherited from someone else’s labors….The riches of this estate that believers inherit are so vast that the will must be proclaimed every week. Christ’s attorney must read and expound the will in sections over a lifetime.”
“Christians still hear the law and are called to obey it, but as the reasonable service of their adoption as royal heirs, not as the condition of their receiving it. One becomes a beneficiary of the estate on the basis of another family member’s achievements, received through faith, and then follows the “house rules” not as a way of gaining or keeping the inheritance but as a proper way of responding to our new surroundings in a new family.”
That is rich.
Read it again. Allow the truth to sink in deeply.
No one works for an inheritance, we receive it as a gift.
The letter to the Ephesians echoes this thought, “In him we have obtained an inheritance…In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.” (Ephesians 1:11,14)
Breathe deep, receive the truth.
As a response, Horton puts it so well. Let us walk in a “proper way of responding to our new surroundings in a new family.”
Read Michael Horton’s word picture again. Remind yourself of the truth of the gospel everyday.
Photo By: Ken Mayer
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