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But it is not as though the word of God has failed.

Romans 9:6

When we see a Christian brother or sister in spiritual failure, does this mean that God has failed?

The doctrine of grace creates many questions. If God forgives freely, then why try to do the right thing? If God loves sinners, then why not just sin all the more so that God will love us even more?

These questions are addressed in the first eight chapters of Romans and the inspired concepts of Paul explain to us that to sin and to be unrighteous is not true freedom or true life, rather it is death. The grace gifts of God are life and peace. We may not gain forgiveness through our works, and we cannot gain life through our disobedience, but we may gain both of these through Christ and through His Spirit, which we receive through faith. It is the old man, the old sin nature, that rejoices in sin. It is the new man, the new person created by the Spirit of God that delights in obedience and in the life in the Spirit.

But another question relates to the nation of Israel: Did their spiritual failure mean that God had failed? At the heart of the answer is the nature of the Old Covenant, or Old Testament, and what this means for the New Covenant of grace we have in Christ? Since salvation is by grace through faith, and not by works, where is the dividing line between what we do and what God does? Where is our responsibility and where is His and how are they divided?

Paul responded that those who do not believe are marginalized by God - and this is true whether we speak of saving faith or day-to-day faith as we seek to live obediently to God. God looks for faith in our hearts, simple trust in God and obedience to His word and His Spirit. Those who lack saving faith are blotted out of His Book of Life, and cannot expect to spend eternity with God. Those believers in Christ who lack obedient faith to live for Christ, and not for themselves, are also marginalized from what God is doing.

But then in the end, does this mean that in a round about way that God had actually failed, since the object of His word to bring faith and transformation was not achieved? The answer is that God’s word brings clarity and His Spirit brings conviction, yet there is still the responsibility to believe and obey. Isaiah 55:11 avers: “My word that comes from My mouth will not return to Me empty, but will accomplish what I please, and will prosper in what I send it [to do].” The word of God embraced in faith results in salvation; the word rejected still achieves its purpose of judgment against the unbeliever.

A law on the books of society’s legal rules does not fail when a criminal disobeys it. And a sign on a life vest in a sinking ship has not failed if someone fails to heed the warning and take the means provided for his salvation. The word of God teaches both the standards of God’s righteousness and His rules for life that we should obey, and it presents the means whereby we may receive His grace and forgiveness in Christ.

This is why so many times in the Scripture we read of encouragements and urgings to respond to the word of God and the witness of His Spirit immediately. God has given us some responsibility to obey and though we will probably not be able to sort out in our theology exactly where that line between His election and our faith is - salvation always retains a great mystery of the way that God deals with us - He does hold us accountable to our faith or lack of it.

So today is the day of God’s witness to us and our time to respond. If we respond with faith and obedience, we are in the center of what God is doing in the world. God’s word never fails.

Doctrinal Studies election, faith, salvation

But when the king came into see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing wedding clothes.

Matthew 22:11

Hans Christian Andersen, the Danish author, wrote the tale of The Emperor’s New Clothes. In the story a vain and foolish ruler is swindled by two conmen who pretend to be tailors and claim to be able to weave cloth that anyone unfit for his position, or hopelessly stupid, cannot see. Of course, it is mere pretense, but the swindlers are clever and make a great show of the pretend fabric. When shown the “material” each reacts in horror that he is actually unfit for his position, even the advisors and the emperor himself. When the emperor parades before the town people in his new “clothes” even his people are ashamed to admit they cannot see anything, until a little child cries out that he is not wearing anything at all.

The tale reveals the vanity and pride that exist in our hearts. We will willingly go along with what we know to be false, if only so that we will not appear so foolish.  Jesus’ parable of the wedding banquet reveals a greater and inspired truth, that it is not a child who will in the end reveal our true spiritual condition, rather it is God Himself. In Christ’s story the invitation was made for all to come to the wedding banquet of the son of the king, and though the response was great, there was one man who was not properly dressed for the occasion, who was then thrown out of the party.

The people who came: We first notice that there were no requirements for the people who came to the banquet, other to be invited, and that requirement that was met by the king and his servants. In the same way in Christ, there is no requirement that we need to measure up to before God invites us to turn to Him and be saved, other than the requirement to hear the gospel and trust in Him.

We also notice that the people said nothing about the man who was not properly dressed. They did what we all would do. They looked at the man and noticed that he was not properly dressed, but thought of their own poverty and felt unworthy to judge the man. In this way we are very often like the emperor’s associates and people in Andersen’s tale - we pretend and deny and avoid looking at things as they truly are, for fear of how poorly it will all reflect upon us.

There is something good in the humility that this reveals, but it also reveals the danger and deception of pride, and disrespect for gospel itself.

The clothes that they wore: In the parable Christ never mentions what the wedding clothes should have been, but from elsewhere in the Bible we are very well informed as to His intent. They are not our good works. Our righteous acts are like filthy rags before God, wrote Isaiah (Isa 64:6). We can imagine a poor and impoverished man who tried to dress himself properly for the wedding banquet of the king’s son, and failed miserably to do it properly, and then we have a good picture of our own spiritual poverty. We cannot stand before God in our good works or in our good intentions, or in our philosophies, or in any other ideology or religion.

There is only one thing that would cover us, and it covers us completely, and that is the righteousness of Christ. In Christ we are forgiven and we are also covered with His righteousness. .Paul wrote: “For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: ‘The righteous shall live by faith’” (Rom. 1:17). When we make a decision to cease to try and earn our way to heaven and to accept our own moral failure and spiritual poverty, and to accept the free gift of God in Christ Jesus, we will be putting on the wedding clothes fit for the celebration of heaven. .

Around one another we should always remember that it is not our own acts that we boast in, nor that we are confident in, but in the grace of God in Christ.

The man who was thrown out: This person represents the individual who decides to stand before God in his own righteousness, rather than in the righteousness of Christ. In the story we can imagine the man thinking, “I see my neighbors here and they are poor like me. They may have on fancy clothes but I know where they have come from and who they really are.”

Anytime we see a believer in Christ in light of his moral failings we are seeing him wrongly. God sees us in light of the grace of God in Christ. His righteousness covers us. And that is how we should see one another also.

The story illustrates a beautiful truth about the gospel. All are invited to come to Christ just as they are, but no one is invited to remain as they are. No one is invited to enter into life except by going through a great inward spiritual re-birth. Do we stand in our own good works, or do we stand in the grace of God in Christ? Do we judge others and seek to make ourselves look better in our eyes by tearing them down in our minds? Or do we come as poor, hungry spiritual beggars and receive the gift of life from Christ?

Those who hear the invitation to believe, who turn from themselves and their own efforts of being righteous, who trust in Christ and in Him only - they find in Christ life and love and hope. Would you trust in Him today? If you have already trusted in Him, be sure to stand in Him today as well.

Edward Mote wrote the hymn: “My Hope Is Built”

“My hope is built on nothing less

Than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.

I dare not trust the sweetest frame,

But wholly lean on Jesus’ name…

When He shall come in trumpet sound,

Oh, may I then in Him be found.

Dressed in his righteousness alone,

Faultless to stand before the throne.

On Christ the solid rock I stand,

All other ground is sinking sand.”

Lenten Devotionals (Fastenzeit) salvation, self-righteousness