See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know Him. 1 John 3:1
“[Salvation] is the change from being confident about our own efforts to the state in which we despair of doing anything for ourselves and leave it to God.
I know the words “leave it to God” can be misunderstood, but they must stay for the moment. The sense in which a Christian leaves it to God is that he puts all his trust in Christ: trusts that Christ will somehow share with him the perfect human obedience which He carried out from His birth to His crucifixion: that Christ will make the man more like Himself and, in a sense, make good his deficiencies.
In Christian language, He will share His “sonship” with us, will make us, like Himself, “Sons of God”…Christ offers something for nothing: He even offers everything for nothing. In a sense, the whole Christian life consists in accepting that very remarkable offer.
But the difficulty is to reach the point of recognising that all we have done and can do is nothing. What we should have liked would be for God to count our good points and ignore our bad ones.”
C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity (New York: HarperCollins 1980) 128.
This post is about generosity and the good kind of despair.
Whether we like it or not, we want God to count our good points and ignore our bad ones, and what God desires is that we despair of doing anything for ourselves.
The gift that everyone gets who chooses this despair is “everything for nothing.”
That’s a gift that should be shared widely with others. It’s truly a remarkable offer. Where can you find that from marketers and merchandise peddlers? Nowhere.
While this post does not relate to financial giving, it has everything to do with the best kind of giving.
The gift, as the professor so eloquently puts it, is “perfect human obedience” which Christ carried out and wants to grant to us. God help us put this gift to use and share it with others.