During a recent outing to the tennis courts, Jordan (Resident Thorns Poet) drove through a rarely green stop-light unabated. Miraculously, he was able to achieve the same feat on the return trip.
"Wow," I mused. "That was incredible. Two green lights in two tries."
"That's right," replied Jordan with a smug glow of self-congratulation as if he had somehow willed the light green.
Jordan's faith in his self-sufficiency (although completely in jest) is a trap that many Christians fall into concerning their salvation (unfortunately not in jest): ascribing to themselves that which only God is capable of.
Jordan had no ability to make the light green, just as the Christian had no ability to call him or herself from death to life. Yet the free-will beast rears its head and Christians claim that they breathed life into their own dead lungs.
But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
Figurative Wesley-slayer, Augustus Toplady, put it this way,
"A man's free will cannot cure him even of a toothache or a sore finger, and yet he madly thinks it is in his power to cure his soul of sin."
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