Friday, June 20, 2008

Honouring God with Empty Hands

Further to the post below (Paul's All or Nothing Gospel, June 08) - Miroslav Volf puts it this way...

"To want to earn benefits from God or to receive them as payback is to say three wrong things at once: (1) God is a negotiator God; (2) we can give something to God in exchange for something we want; and (3) we are agents independent of God who can relate to God any way we find to our liking. None of these things is true, however. God is not a negotiator but a pure giver. We can give nothing to God but have received eveything from God. Finally, we are not independent of God but are living on a given breath. To fail to recognise these things is to live blindly and to claim God's gifts as our own achievements. To recognise these truths is to understand ourselves as who we truly are, fundamentally receivers.

And that brings us to faith. Faith is not something we give to God. In that case, faith would be a work, and a silly kind of work because it would be work we do even though it doesn't benefit anyone. But exactly the opposite is true. To have faith in God is to be 'without works' before God (Romans 4:5). Faith is the way we as receivers relate appropriately to God as the giver. It is empty hands held open for God to fill. That's why, as Luther put it, faith 'honours God', it tells the truth about God and our relation to the divine Giver and ascribes to God what is due. In contrast, good works offered to God dishonour God; they tell a lie about God and our relation to the divine Giver, and they take away God's due."

M Volf, Free of Charge, (Zondervan, 2005), p43

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