Monday, January 20, 2020
688 - Over Priced
Spirituality Column #688
January 21, 2020
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary
Over Priced
By Bob Walters
“A cynic … knows the price of everything and the value of
nothing.” – Oscar Wilde
Wilde’s words are a wise assessment of mankind’s common
conflation of price and value: knowing one does not mean one knows the other.
And just here I’d like to explore the value of our salvation
in Christ without a theological reliance on its price. I’ve always thought it a point of rudeness to
ask how much a gift cost, and considered it a mark of grace to simply
appreciate a gift’s value as an expression of the giver’s esteem. You know … it’s the thought that counts.
When accepting and believing the deliverance of our eternal
salvation in all that Christ did, it looks to me that it is a gift from a God
who wants us to have it as badly as we – may or may not realize – need it
ourselves. God surely sees salvation’s value as grace and peace in His book of
life, not a price-driven ledger entry of pending doom.
Yet that’s modern Christianity’s brand: “Jesus paid a price,
so you gotta’ believe.”
I roll my eyes at “paid a price,” but it’s not surprising
that humanity’s greatest-ever bestowed gift – salvation in Christ – is
pervasively dumbed down to an exercise in market economics: Jesus paid a price for our sins! What do we owe Him in return?!?!
With all my heart I think the answer is … we don’t “owe” Him
a thing, any more than He owed us His obedience and faithfulness on the
cross. It’s what Jesus did because that
is what a loving God does. It was a
divine “get to,” not a “have to.”
Same with us … faith in Christ is a “get to” because He came
and taught us and the Bible supports it and explains it. We “get to” participate with Christ and be
restored to Godly relationship. My faith
never feels like I’m paying somebody back for a price that was exacted. I’m thankful, not “debt-ful.” I ring up the love, not the cash register.
If Jesus’s point and God’s plan were to forever put us in
bondage to a price rather than provide an avenue of grace, peace, love, and
free acceptance of the eternal gift of sharing divine glory … I guess I’m
thinking the story the Bible tells would be quite different. Love would not have been so central. Salvation would have quoted a price.
With faith in Christ, we participate in God’s glory; the
glory that I believe is life’s profound purpose and the locus of life’s
ultimate value. That’s not something one
buys.
We are supposed to teach the world truth, not barter our
forgiveness. There’s nothing more we can
or need to do. Faith and obedience take
care of the rest.
That’s the example of Jesus; that’s what He did. He had faith in the Father, love for mankind,
and was obedient unto death. It was a gift
nobody imagined or thought they needed.
Only God knew its value, and we still today see it as conditional: focusing
on Jesus having to “pay a price” for our salvation, not providing a gracious
gift. Such a swap-sacrifice would not
harken love; it would harken guilt, shame, and negotiation.
Sacrifice as price is a worldly and culturally commercial construct
that devalues the grace of “giving something away” for love. Divine sacrifice doesn’t come with a price
tag; it comes with the very highest of Godly value: love.
Walters (rlwcom@aol.com)
is aware almost no one agrees with this assessment of faith but doesn’t
understand why anyone thinks price is a better sales pitch than love.
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