Read: Romans 9:30-10:4 - STEP Bible, Bible Gateway
It is a great irony that, the more we try to earn God’s favour, the more we make a mockery of his grace, and hence the more difficult it is for us to receive it. For it is a central truth of God’s grace that it is given to us completely undeserved, and so any attempts to ‘deserve’ or ‘earn’ it actually neutralize its effect entirely.
This, says St Paul, is what has happened to Israel: they have fallen so far into trying to shore up their own claim to God’s grace that they have in fact negated it altogether. In trying to be righteous they have deprived God of his very capacity to show favour to them.
But Christ is the end of this unhappy state. And he is the end of it in two ways. In the first place, Christ is the one person – the one Israelite – who actually managed to keep the Law faithfully and perfectly, without any sense of entitlement (though he certainly was entitled, being God’s Son) or superiority on account of it. His achievement in keeping the Law frees the rest of Israel from bondage to their grace-negating attempts to earn God’s favour, and so opens the way for grace to flow back to Israel. But second, Christ’s successful keeping of the Law means that all those who follow him through faith – that is to say, Gentile Christians – can also become recipients of that same grace, purely as a result of faith in him.
Here again: it is only faith that matters. Let us always be on our guard against neutralizing the grace of God – of making it something that we suggest can be ‘earned’ or ‘deserved’. And let us never negate the extraordinary generosity and kindness of God in showering us with his grace by suggesting he might be less prepared to shower it upon anybody else who turns to him.
These devotions were originally written for the parish of All Saints, Ascot and we are grateful for permission to republish them on Fulcrum.
Patrick is curate of All Saints’, Ascot in Berkshire. A musicologist by training, he is married to Lydia, a university lecturer, and dad to Madeleine. He writes (sporadically) at benedixisti.wordpress.com and tweets (even more sporadically) as @patrickgilday.