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DOUBLE JEOPARDY ON THE ARIZONA HIGHWAY

There’s a sorry little story that many of us have come close to replicating in our own lives. A true experience reported in the magazine Arizona Republic — a man named Terry Mikel was pulled over by a highway patrolman, who discussed with him the spiritual topic of velocity. How fast the man’s car was going relative to the posted speed limits for that freeway. But the one-way conversation ended up in an “Amazing Grace” kind of way; the Arizona policeman said to the naughty driver, “I’m going to let you off the hook.”

Wow! Wonderful! Thank you very much!

“Well, that’s all right,” the officer said. “Now, listen, you slow down and drive safe.” And, closing away his ticket book, putting his sunglasses back on and adjusting the brim of his hat, the lawman began to walk back to his car.

Now get this. The speeder, the guy who’s just been forgiven, Mr. Mikel, clears his throat and says to the cop: “Excuse me, officer, but you should say: ‘Slow down and drive safely.’ You said, ‘Slow down and drive safe,’ but ‘safely’ is really correct.”

Without a break in stride, the policeman turned around, came back to the car, wrote out a $72 speeding ticket, handed it to Terry, and then drove off. True story. And you can just file that little gem away under the category of “Stupid Stupid Stupid.” Sometimes you just keep your big trap shut, and only correct the grammar of people who don’t wear badges, carry guns, and wield ticket books.

Of course, the reason we bring it up here on our Thursday radio program is this: is it possible — as we’ve been studying together — for you and me to receive grace . . . and then have Jesus turn around and take it away? Could He say to us: “Because of Calvary, and because you’ve accepted Calvary, I’m not going to give you a one-way ticket to the destination of the lost”? But then, as He looks at our continuing sorry performance, at how we continue to speed through the suburbs of sin, He then shakes His head and says, “You know, come to think of it, I believe I will give you that ticket after all. Because you don’t deserve the forgiveness I just gave you. Not with that hot car you’re driving, and all the dirty magazines you’ve still got in the trunk.” Friend, could it happen like that?

If you’ve been with us these past three weeks, and especially this week as we’ve explored the Word of God together on this topic of justification, let me bring you up to speed — no pun intended — with where we are at the moment. The Bible seems to teach that from God’s side of the Interstate, salvation is a free, irrevocable gift. For the person who truly accepts Jesus Christ and enters into a faith relationship with Him, eternal life is an instant and everlasting guarantee. “Whoever lives and believes in Me will never die,” He promises. God will never take the gift away, which means that you and I can drive toward that heavenly kingdom in perfect confidence. “Blessed Assurance, Jesus Is Mine.”

However, as we also studied yesterday, it’s my conviction that God will also never take away our ability to either choose Him or depart from a relationship with Him. From that point of view, our friend could have — by his own choice — rejected the gift of grace that Arizona highway patrolman had first tried to give him. So we would say things this way: “Once Saved Always Saved . . . as long as I continue to choose to be saved.”

We’ve done some study on what various faith groups believe on this question of eternal salvation, eternal security. The other day we shared a reference passage from our friends in the Catholic Church, where the suggestion is that a person can lose their security, their justification, by committing what are called “mortal sins.” And sometimes other churches, including my own Adventist denomination, are accused of teaching something along these lines: “Saved by Grace, Kept by Works.” Meaning that grace is a free gift paid for by Calvary, but if I don’t subsequently begin to keep the Sabbath and the other nine commandments, and obey all of the Law, I will lose that grace. It would be like that Arizona driver, Terry Mikel, getting $72 worth of forgiveness from the cop. And then, instead of correcting the officer’s grammar, what if Terry revved up his engine, peeled out his tires, and — right in front of that officer — shot out into the fast lane at the same 110 miles an hour he was doing before? Would grace be taken away? Is it theologically correct to say: “Saved by Grace, Kept by Works”? Because if so, then it appears that works actually are a condition of salvation, and grace is gone. Along with assurance, of course.

Here’s the slippery dilemma, and this is why the three weeks we’ve spent on this topic are nothing compared with the 500 years Protestants and Catholics have used up wrestling with the issue. If Christians are told, “Once you are saved, you must obey . . . or you’ll be lost,” that seems to be legalism. On the other hand, if Christians are told, “Once you are saved, any genuine faith relationship with Jesus will lead you to obey,” that is not legalism . . . and yet it sort of sounds like the same thing. “If you love Me, you will obey what I command,” Jesus tells us, in John 14. Either way, we’re obeying. And the question hangs out there: But if we don’t obey? . . .

Let me borrow once again from this very thought-provoking resource book: Catholics and Protestants: Do They Now Agree? Here’s a quote from Catholic canon, the Council of Trent, on this point:

“If anyone says that a man who is justified and however perfect is not bound to observe the commandments of God and the Church, but only to believe, as if the Gospel were a bare and absolute promise of eternal life without the condition of observing the commandments, let him be anathema.”

That’s pure Catholic teaching, and the two Protestant authors of this book don’t like it. However, exactly nine pages later, they say something which hardly sound different from it. Listen to this:

“Scripture is clear that good works and sanctification” — which refers to the process of becoming holy, Christlike — “are crucial — indeed it is the very knowledge of grace itself (in a Protestant sense) that produces good works and growth in holy living.”

So good works are not “necessary,” but they are “crucial”? It’s hard to sort out the difference there, isn’t it? And there’s a very long, good, insightful discussion in this book about the theology in the book of James, where the inspired New Testament writer states plainly: “Faith without works is dead.” And whether those works are a requirement for salvation, or the inevitable response of a person who is saved . . . you’re still doing works. You’re still obeying the speed limit.

But friend, let me put 500 years’ worth of debate into my own little nutshell right here. For sure, “requirement” is not the right word. Because “requirement” brings on legalism, destroys grace, and obliterates assurance. “Grateful response” is a much better way to think about why we obey, especially as we realize that it’s the power of God which He specifically offers to help us obey. And that we obey for the purpose of glorifying Him, not to qualify for a heavenly home we’ve already been given.

But now, how about this expression, “Saved by Grace, Kept by Works”? Once we have received God’s grace, do we need good deeds to keep us in His heavenly tent? Are offenders kicked out? Protestants say no, but we have a lot of troublesome Bible texts to deal with on that matter.

The bottom-line reality is this. You and I are saved by entering into — and staying in — a relationship with Jesus Christ. If you happen to meet me someday on the golden streets, it will be because I began depending on Calvary for salvation, and I kept on depending on it right through to the day of our Lord’s return. As Jesus Himself said in a story He told in Luke 12, “It will be good for those servants whose master finds them watching when he comes.” If I see you there, it will be for the same reason: you accepted the Cross of Christ, you entered into a relationship of total dependence on the merits of Jesus’ death and perfect life, and you stayed in that relationship — “abiding” is how the Savior would put it — until He came to claim you as His own.

From that point of view, let me ask, does our obedience — does a quiet, sober, holy life — help that relationship? Does it help keep you loving Jesus, trusting Him, seeking Him, staying close to Him? Of course it does. Goodness and mercy help each of us, every day of our lives, stay in relationships down here with those we love: spouses, kids, parents, friends at work. Can we recollect, with vivid pleasure or pain, the times a co-worker either made a relationship a joy or a burden by how they acted?

So would I say, “Saved by Grace, Kept by Works”? No. Would I say, “Saved by Grace, Relationship sustained by joy and love and worship . . . and works”? Friend, that always has been a reality, and it always will be. Even Jesus, the very kind and understanding police officer, said to the woman caught careening down Adultery Avenue at a high rate of speed: “I love you. I don’t condemn you. Now . . . go and sin no more.”