We spend one day with Selwyn, looking at the verse John 1:14 (NIV): “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”
Where Selwyn says: ” Grace … works within the framework of integrity and truth.” I prefer to change the order, to say, “Truth and integrity work within the framework of grace.” If God did not exercise His ‘grace’, we would have no idea as to what was, or was not, truth. Once saved through God’s grace, then and only then, with the intervention of the Holy Spirit can we have any confidence in being able to discern what is ‘truth’. After all, we know from Scripture that the Holy Spirit is the ‘Spirit of Truth’.Â
Another point I would like to mention is that many ‘young’ Christians don’t live their lives in the knowledge of the point which Selwyn highlights (which I’ve slightly re-worded) in today’s study: “Christianity is the only faith where you can’t wangle God to get benefits out of Him. That is you cannot cajole, bribe, manipulate or wangle Jesus in the hope that He will do you favours.”
The number of chain-emails that I receive which often contain inspirational stories but end with something like: ‘Pass this message onto a friend and you will be blessed’, appears to be increasing. Such messages about doing something, a number of times, or the passing on of ‘nice’ chain messages about someone’s acts of faith are relatively harmless except when they say or imply , that ‘by doing so, you will be blessed by God.‘ In the case where a blessing is promised it demonstrates a works-based attitude towards God and the authors, of this type of message, lack a proper understanding of God’s grace - at the best, it demonstrates very, poor teaching. Do you agree?
Selwyn summarises this point well: “If we come to Christ honestly, obeying His commands, we obtain everything we need. When we come with crooked motives and crooked methods then we end up receiving nothing. … While we should always be eager to please Our Lord, we are not to please Him in order that He might bestow His favours on us.”
God knows what we need and He will ensure that we receive everything required for us to faithfully serve Him – we know this is true because of His love for us!
Truth is second
We spend one day with Selwyn, looking at the verse John 1:14 (NIV): “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”
Where Selwyn says: ” Grace … works within the framework of integrity and truth.” I prefer to change the order, to say, “Truth and integrity work within the framework of grace.” If God did not exercise His ‘grace’, we would have no idea as to what was, or was not, truth. Once saved through God’s grace, then and only then, with the intervention of the Holy Spirit can we have any confidence in being able to discern what is ‘truth’. After all, we know from Scripture that the Holy Spirit is the ‘Spirit of Truth’.Â
Another point I would like to mention is that many ‘young’ Christians don’t live their lives in the knowledge of the point which Selwyn highlights (which I’ve slightly re-worded) in today’s study: “Christianity is the only faith where you can’t wangle God to get benefits out of Him. That is you cannot cajole, bribe, manipulate or wangle Jesus in the hope that He will do you favours.”
The number of chain-emails that I receive which often contain inspirational stories but end with something like: ‘Pass this message onto a friend and you will be blessed’, appears to be increasing. Such messages about doing something, a number of times, or the passing on of ‘nice’ chain messages about someone’s acts of faith are relatively harmless except when they say or imply , that ‘by doing so, you will be blessed by God.‘ In the case where a blessing is promised it demonstrates a works-based attitude towards God and the authors, of this type of message, lack a proper understanding of God’s grace - at the best, it demonstrates very, poor teaching. Do you agree?
Selwyn summarises this point well: “If we come to Christ honestly, obeying His commands, we obtain everything we need. When we come with crooked motives and crooked methods then we end up receiving nothing. … While we should always be eager to please Our Lord, we are not to please Him in order that He might bestow His favours on us.”
God knows what we need and He will ensure that we receive everything required for us to faithfully serve Him – we know this is true because of His love for us!