Naughty or Nice

"...for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus."--Romans 6:23

          While humming along with Santa Claus Is Coming to Town the other day, I thought about the words and how they reflect many people's view of God - The people on God's Nice List are blessed and will go to heaven, while the ones on the Naughty List are going to hell.  I lived with that internalilzed belief for many years.  I wanted so badly to be good, for goodness sake, but deep inside I expected a lump of coal.
         
          Thankfully, I was finally shown that everyone who has ever lived, with one significant exception, is on the Naughty List and there is no amount of effort any one of us can put forth that is enough to get us off. The standards for the Nice List are just too high. The good news is, Jesus came and lived up to those standards for us and as a result, all the blessings of heaven and earth, reserved for those on that list, belong to anyone who accepts Jesus' gift.

          For me, the news of that gift has never gotten old; they joy and relief it brings me has never dimmed.  The excitement I feel when I think about it has never gone away.  I can't say that about any of the earthly gifts I have received, no matter how expensive or beautiful they were. Most of them are gone and forgotten. The gift of salvation remains ever new.

          The only time that joy has ever been threatened over the years has been when I have heard or read something that made me feel condemned and guilty again.  At those times I would slide, almost without thinking, into a posture of shame and defeat, and large doses of grace-filled scripture reading would be required to bring me back to a state of gratitude once more.

          I've often thought that the biggest battle Christians fight is the battle to continue to believe in God's grace.  One of the reasons for this is that the philosophies of this world which we live with on a daily basis are completely anti-grace!

          Worldly wisdom says, you have to earn what you get.  God says, "Now to the one who works, wages are not credited as a gift but as an obligation. However, to the one who does not work but trusts God who justifies the ungodly, their faith is credited as righteousness." (Romans 4:4-5)

          The world says, you get what you pay for. God says, "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith--and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God--" (Ephesians 2:8)

           The wisdom of the world says, "God helps those who help themselves." (Benjamin Franklin in Poor Richard's Almanac)  God says, "You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly." (Romans 5:6)

          The world says, give me what I deserve.  God says, "For the wages of sin is death..." (Romans 6:23) If we got what we truly deserve, we are only deserving of death. The verse goes on to say, "...but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."

          This Christmas season, my prayer for you is that no one can steal your joy as you remember that "Every good and perfect gift comes from above" (James 1:17); not from Santa who knows if you've been bad or good, but from the God who "...so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." (John 3:16)