Do Not Take For Granted

I’ve covered the subject of “believe on the Lord Jesus” as being a crutch people use to excuse their lack of real commitment. In that article, I provided a number of scriptural proofs that true dedication and faith go much deeper and the requirements from God’s own word, the Bible, make this very clear. But one scripture I didn’t consider is 2 Corinthians 6:1 (other versions). It reads: “Working together with him, we also urge you not to accept the undeserved kindness of God and miss its purpose.” The logical question would be, “If all a person has to do is believe, how in the world could they miss “its [God’s kindness] purpose”? Quite apparently, more is needed.

Let’s dwell a moment on the phrase “its purpose.” Whose or what purpose? Again, God’s undeserved kindness. So what is the purpose of God’s undeserved kindness? In the preceding chapter, Paul wrote at 2 Cor. 5:19, “God was by means of Christ reconciling a world to himself, not counting their offenses against them, and he entrusted to us the message of the reconciliation.” Yes, God wants us to be reconciled with him. But just maybe you are focusing on the action from God that he is “not counting their offenses against them” and therefore that excuses anything you do. If so, Jude 4 will disarm that idea. It reads: “certain men have slipped in among you … they are ungodly men who turn the undeserved kindness of our God into an excuse for brazen conduct and who prove false to our only owner and Lord, Jesus Christ.”

In Hebrews 3:12-16, Paul makes a case that those whom God saved out of bondage in Egypt turned around an incurred God’s anger because of their disobedience. This point is made in more detail in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians at 1 Cor. 10:1-11. In these examples of disloyal conduct, we readily see that merely believing is not enough. Surely those delivered out of Egypt believed. Surely those crossing through the Red Sea on dried ground could not argue with their own senses. Yet believing and obeying were two different things for them. The moment things did not go as they wanted, instead of trusting in God to help them, they murmured, complained and demanded to go back to Egypt.

Today, “going back to Egypt” may be a symbolic journey some take in their hearts and minds by choosing to live selfishly rather than truly obeying God’s direction.