Gratitude is a healthy emotion for worship, but it is a dangerous reason for obedience. We are explicitly commanded to be grateful: “Can Christ’s peace be an arbiter in your hearts?And be grateful? (Cl 3:15). everyone, give thanks, for is god’s will in Christ Jesus for you?(1 Ts 5:18) How can we not be grateful when he owes everything to God?
But when it comes to obedience, gratitude is a dangerous motive. Do you tend to express yourself in terms of debt? Or what I sometimes call the debtor’s ethics. For example: “Look what God has done for you. Motivated by gratitude”. Shouldn’t you do much for him?Or: “We owe God everything we have and what we are. What have we done for him in return?”
- I have at least three problems with this kind of motivation.
- First.
- It is impossible for us to pay God for all the grace He has given us.
- We can’t even start paying him.
- As Romans 11:35-36 declares.
- “Who gave it to him first to do it?[Answer: no one.
- ] For him.
- And for him.
- And for him are all things.
- For him.
- Then.
- Eternal glory? We cannot give god back because He already has everything we have to give Him.
Second, even if we could compensate God for all his thanks to us, we would only succeed if we made grace a commercial transaction. If we could pay for it, grace wouldn’t be funny. “When it works, the salary is not considered a favor, but a debt?(Rom 4. 4). If we tried to negotiate with God, we would cancel out grace. If friends try to show you a special favor, love, inviting you to dinner, and at the end of the night you say you will reward them, by receiving them next week, you cancel the grace of your friends and turn it into Commerce. God does not like to see his grace nullified. He likes to glorify her (Ephesians 1. 6, 12, 14). .
Third, focusing on gratitude as an element that allows obedience tends to underestimate the crucial importance of future grace. Gratitude looks back, contemplates the grace received, and is grateful. Faith looks to the future, sees the promised grace for the future, and feels hope. “Is faith the certainty of what is expected, the conviction of facts that cannot be seen?(Heb 11. 1).
Faith in future grace is the power of obedience that preserves the pleasant quality of human obedience. Obedience is not about rewarding God and therefore making grace a business. Is obedience the result of god’s confidence that God will give us more grace?Future grace? And this trust magnifies the infinite resources of God’s love and power. “I have worked much more than all; But not me, but God’s grace with me?(1 Co 15. 10). The grace that allowed Paul to work hard, in a life of obedience, was the daily arrival of new resources of grace. Is this what faith trusts? The continuous arrival of grace. Faith contemplates promises such as: “The Lord your God will be with you wherever you go” (Jos 1:9) and, in this trust, faith ventures, in obedience, to accept the promise.
The biblical role of past grace — especially the cross – is to guarantee the certainty of future grace: “He who has not forgiven his own Son before has given it to us all [past grace], will he not give it to us?mercifully all [future grace] with him? (Rom. 8. 32) Trust in future grace is the force that allows obedience. The more we trust in future grace, the more we give God the opportunity to show, in our lives, the glory of his inexhaustible grace; he therefore takes possession of the promise of future grace and, on the basis of that promise, practices an act of radical obedience; God will be powerfully honored.
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