an interesting thought

So yesterday night was my college group's weekly bible study get together at my pastor's house. We were going over the last chapter of The Prodigal God by Tim Keller [very interesting book!] and there was a quote from the book that I thought I'd like to share because it really stood out [??]. So for those that don't know, Tim Keller is a very widely known pastor who leads Redeemer [a church] up in New York and this excerpt from the book deals with a woman he met several years ago at his church. The excerpt explains just how well this woman understood the Gospel and...well, you can read for yourself:

"Some years ago, I met a woman who began coming to Redeemer, the church where I am a minister. She said that she had gone to a church growing up and she had always heard that God accepts us only if we are sufficiently good and ethical. She had never heard the message she was now hearing, that we can be accepted by God by sheer grace through the work of Christ regardless of anything we do or have done. She said, "That is a scary idea! Oh, it's good scary, but still scary."

I was intrigued. I asked her what was so scary about unmerited free grace? She replied something like this: "If I were saved by my good works - then there would be a limit to what God could ask of me or put me through. I would be like a taxpayer with rights. I would have done my duty and now I would deserve a certain quality of life. But if it is really true that I am a sinner saved be sheer grace - at God's infinite cost - then there's nothing he cannot ask of me." She could immediately see that the wonderful-beyond-belief teaching of salvation by sheer grace had two edges to it. On the one hand it cut away slavish fear. God loves us freely, despite our flaws and failures. Yet she also knew that if Jesus really had done this for her - she was not her own. She was bought with a price."

If only it were to come that easy to me. Well, no, I understand it. Now I just need to be reminded of it every, single, freaking moment.