{"id":3309,"date":"2014-03-04T09:05:04","date_gmt":"2014-03-04T13:05:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/oldsandals.net\/?p=3309"},"modified":"2014-03-05T10:06:40","modified_gmt":"2014-03-05T14:06:40","slug":"a-wonderful-mystery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.oldsandals.net\/?p=3309","title":{"rendered":"A wonderful mystery"},"content":{"rendered":"

2 Corinthians 5:9-11<\/em>
\nTherefore we make it our aim, whether present or absent, to be well pleasing to Him.\u00a0For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad.\u00a0Knowing, therefore, the terror of the Lord, we persuade men.<\/em><\/p>\n

“A charge to keep I have, a God to glorify.\u00a0 A never-dying soul to save and fit it for the sky.”\u00a0 So begins the hymn by Charles Wesley, a Methodist, inspired by the writing of Matthew Henry, a Presbyterian, in his commentary on Leviticus:<\/p>\n

“We have ev\u00adery one of us a charge to keep, an eter\u00adnal God to glor\u00adi\u00adfy, an im\u00admor\u00adtal soul to pro\u00advide for, need\u00adful du\u00adty to be done, our gen\u00ader\u00ada\u00adtion to serve; and it must be our dai\u00adly care to keep this charge, for it is the charge of the Lord our Master, who will short\u00adly call us ac\u00adcount about it, and it is our ut\u00admost per\u00adil if we ne\u00adglect it. Keep it \u201cthat ye die not\u201d; it is death, eternal death, to be\u00adtray the trust that we are charged with; by the con\u00adsid\u00ader\u00ada\u00adtion of this we must be kept in awe.”<\/p>\n

This to me is all very interesting, and very instructive.\u00a0 Aren’t both of these godly men essentially saying the same thing?\u00a0 Neither considered their good works as meriting salvation.\u00a0 Yet both believed good works were a necessary part—in some sense the only true expression of—their faith in God, that self-conscious faith which is itself a divine gift.<\/p>\n

This is just another way of expressing the divine-human interaction in salvation that, no matter how it is systematized, is ultimately a wonderful mystery.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

2 Corinthians 5:9-11 Therefore we make it our aim, whether present or absent, to be well pleasing to Him.\u00a0For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad.\u00a0Knowing, therefore, the terror of the … <\/p>\n

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