P.O. Box 53055    
Los Angeles, CA 90053   

NOTHING ELSE BEING NECESSARY #4

COMO ESTA, MY CHIQUITO BONITO

Today I’d like to tell you about the perfect lover.  No, I’m not talking about Romeo.  Or Casanova.  Or Fabio, that long-haired buff guy on the cover of so many romance novels.  (So they tell me.)  This perfect lover is a chunky guy named Mike Brito.

Actually, you’ve probably seen him.  The next time you happen to see a baseball game featuring the Los Angeles Dodgers, AT Dodger Stadium, look for a man wearing a white Panama hat standing right behind home plate.  He’s got a radar speed gun, and just before each pitch you’ll see him standing there, an unlit cigar in his mouth, clocking the speed of the Dodgers’ pitches.  He’s been doing it for 22 years at every home game.

Well, why is he the world’s perfect lover?  Because he certainly doesn’t look it.  But Mr. Mike Brito has a son, 23 years old, named Miguel.  He was brain-damaged at birth; he sits in a wheelchair, not seeing, not speaking, apparently not feeling.  And day after day, either before the game or after, Mike Brito drives to the Frank D. Lanterman Center for the Disabled, over in Pomona.  And he spends the afternoon with his kid, this silent, wasted-away child.  He takes off his three World Series rings that he’s gotten during his years as a Dodger scout, gets some lotion and then endlessly rubs and massages this boy he loves.  He softly says, over and over, to Miguel: “Oh, my chiquito bonito, my chiquito bonito.  Como esta, my chiquito bonito.” (“How are you, my handsome son?”)

And then he turns to Bill Plaschke, the sports reporter, who reverently wrote the story: “Look at his eyes; you can tell that he knows I’m here,” he says.  “Sure you can tell.  Can’t you tell that my son loves life, loves living?”  He points to the boy’s vacant stare.  “Can’t you tell?”  And for years he’s visited his boy, whispering to him, massaging him.  Feeding him some Snapple out of an eyedropper, this boy who breathes and eats through a tube.  He’s been doing it, day after day after day after day, for 16 years — this perfect lover.  And he says to Bill Plaschke: “The kid is an angel.  You cannot imagine how much we love him.  You just cannot imagine.”

Well, friend, that’s a heart-stopping story.  When baseball starts up again, and you see a Dodger home game on ESPN, you just look behind home plate for Mr. Mike Brito, the world’s greatest lover.

Now, why do we dig out a story like that one, when baseball season’s a good three months away, and when we’re on a topic that seems miles removed from Mike Brito and his son, Miguel?  Our subject this week has been NOTHING ELSE BEING NECESSARY, and we’ve been discussing together whether or not you and I bring ANYTHING up to home plate, so to speak, in terms of contributing to our salvation.  If Jesus Christ has hit a home run to give us the victory, do we at least help run the bases, or what?

Yesterday as we left off, we were trying to nail down the fact that while our obedience and good works have absolutely nothing to do with our salvation, they certainly do FOLLOW it.  We obey, not to GET saved, but because we already ARE saved.

But for just a few moments here, I’d like to invite you to go back with me to our original statement, and see if we can find traces of “the perfect lover” in it.  Listen again:

“The true gospel message which saves is — justification through grace alone, by faith alone, in Christ alone, nothing else being necessary.”

I think we have some understanding, by now, of what grace is: “the unmerited favor of God.”  God just flat-out GIVING us eternal life, even though we don’t deserve it, and even though we contribute absolutely NOTHING to the effort.  That’s grace.  And we are declared JUSTIFIED, or not-condemned, in heaven’s eyes — instantaneously — because of that grace.  There’s a big, big, continuing discussion still going on between Catholics and Protestants about whether justification is an immediate, “forensic” transaction — meaning God simply declares, right now when you ask for it, “Yes!  You are saved in My kingdom!” — like writing a check for a million bucks and electronically transferring it right into your bank account.  Or whether it’s a lifelong process, “individual growth in personal righteousness,” as one writer put it.  Let’s leave that issue to the side and simply focus on the fact that grace and justification are GIFTS of God to undeserving sinners like you and me.

Let me say again, with a big, big radio megaphone: our obedience has nothing to do with this.  Grace is an UNDESERVED gift from God; many Bible verses make that plain.  We haven’t yet gotten to Galatians 2:16, which says:

“By observing the law NO ONE will be justified.”

So we receive this gift from God.  We receive it by grace, recognizing that we don’t deserve it.  We get credit for a home run that Jesus hits over the fence, and we don’t even contribute as His bat boy.  Again: “Through GRACE alone, by FAITH alone, in CHRIST alone.”

And here’s where I want to pause.  Because FAITH — if we understand that word to mean that we are putting our entire salvation, our spiritual WEIGHT, our every hope of eternal life on something — means a new relationship.  We now have a relationship with Jesus; we are trusting in Him.  Having faith in Him.  Which means — it HAS to mean — that we now are going to be His followers.  We’re going to follow Him, emulate Him, live like Him, and, yes, even OBEY Him.  We said yesterday, and let me say it again today, that obedience is the FRUIT of our salvation, not the ROOT of it.

Imagine with me that perfect lover.  Mike Brito, if you will.  Or a perfect spouse.  You’ve entered into relationship with that person . . .  because they loved YOU so much FIRST.  The Bible tells us that we love Him (Jesus) because He first loved us.  Am I right?  And this perfect lover seems to love you with an INFINITY of love.  When you make mistakes.  When you fall and fail.  When you fail to live up to expectations.  Like that suffering boy, Miguel, who seems to make such little progress.  But the loving Dad just keeps saying, “Como esta, my chiquito bonito.”  “I love you.  Stay with me.  Keep trying.  Stay in relationship with me; I’m so glad we’re friends.”

And do you know what?  Obeying this wonderful Friend, responding to this wonderful Lover . . . helps KEEP you in relationship!  Helps KEEP you loving Him back!  He appears to have infinite patience, an infinite supply of love.  You could never exhaust HIM.  But your obedience, your willingness to follow, helps keep your own heart soft, helps remind you continually of all that He did for you on the cross.  Your obedience isn’t a requirement; it’s simply a response to that perfect love. It keeps you trusting Him.

Let me tell you something more.  When we realize that our good deeds aren’t the BASIS of salvation, that the life-and-death pressure is off because all the important stuff happened at Calvary, it actually makes it easier TO obey.  I’ve always cherished the two powerful points made in just a single paragraph out of the book, Mere Christianity, by C. S. Lewis.  Here they are:

“Handing everything over to Christ does not, of course, mean that you stop trying.  To trust Him” — or, we could say, to have FAITH in Him, which we’ve been discussing — “means, of course, trying to do ALL that He says.  There would be no sense in saying you trusted a person if you would not take His advice.”

This beautifully corroborates what we’ve been saying all week: obedience FOLLOWS grace, FOLLOWS salvation.  Because we trust this Savior, we now pay attention to what He tells us.  But Lewis goes on, and this is a great point now, a breakthrough idea:

“Thus if you have really handed yourself over to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey Him.  BUT TRYING IN A NEW WAY, A LESS WORRIED WAY.  Not doing these things in order to be saved, but because He has begun to save you already. Not hoping to get to Heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to act in a certain way because a first faint gleam of Heaven is already inside you.”

Friend, I simply love those nine words: “Trying in a NEW way, a less worried way.”  Once we comprehend, and have it sink in, that our salvation was taken care of at Calvary as a free gift, and that we respond obediently exactly in that way, a RESPONSE . . . we can obey with the pressure cookers off!  We don’t obey because we’re worried; we obey because we’re rejoicing.  We don’t obey because we’re scared of hell, but because we’re now citizens of heaven!

Let me tell you something: if you’re lucky enough to be loved by the perfect Lover — if you’re as fortunate as this Miguel, to have a Mike Brito who faithfully loves you — responding to that love isn’t a requirement; it’s a royal privilege.