What is your response when you unexpectedly receive a gift from someone?  Do you feel the pressure to have to pay them back, trying to match them so you don’t feel indebted to them?  If that is true, what happens to the significance of the gift you received?  It gets nullified by your effort to pay it back!  So we end up never really being able to receive only, we have to do gift exchanges…

This is how many of us understand the gospel, and God’s grace to live a Christian life.  That somehow I can pay back what God did, in order to get out from this enormous debt Jesus dropped on me, by dying on the cross for my sins!  So we can spend most of our life being religious, trying to work off an impossible debt, instead of enjoying the free gift of salvation in faith and love.

I do agree that salvation is not free, it cost God His Son. But we can’t pay God off with our works, ever (Isaiah 55:1)!  What God does expect, is for us to embrace the depth of how much it cost His Son, and in response be grateful and receive it, by worshiping Him with great joy for the debt payed! (Colossians 2:14)

Eventually you realize that if you try and pay back every gift given to you, you make yourself hard to love!  Because instead of receiving it with gladness, you can become resentful from the pressure you put on yourself, not to owe anyone thing.  But a gift is not a loan, it’s a gift to be received and thankful for, and hopefully help our love and appreciation grow.  But if you try and “payoff” grace, without understanding we will never be worthy of it, you will miss out on God’s love in Christ Jesus.

In His Love, Ld