The Greatest Gift

This is the message given at the Oahe Manor communion service Thursday, June 13, 2013.  The Bible verses used are Galatians 2:15-21.

What would you say is the greatest gift God gives us?

I suppose it depends on how you look at it. I mean, we would not have life in the first place if not for God, so we could say that’s the greatest gift. When we’re feeling lonely or sad, we might say that love is the greatest gift. If we’re having health problems, we may say that health is the greatest gift God gives us.

None of those is a bad answer, and there are a lot of other good answers, too. But as I think about it, I think the greatest gifts of God are grace and forgiveness. Jesus said that if we believe in God and believe in Jesus as our Savior, and if we ask God to forgive our sins, our sins will be forgiven and we will go to heaven. It does not matter what we’ve done in our lives, if we just do that, we’re in. No questions asked. It would be hard for God to give us a much greater gift than that.

The thing is, a lot of times it seems like it’s one of the hardest gifts for us to accept. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying we don’t believe in God or believe in Jesus as our Savior. What I’m saying is, we seem to have a hard time really believing that’s enough.

We say it, but it’s like we have a hard time getting it to sink in. We say all we need to do is have faith, but then we start slipping back into law and legalism. We start looking at our lives, and we think of all the things we’ve done wrong and all the times we’ve fallen short. We think about all the things we’ve done that we should not have done, and we think of all the things we should’ve done that we’ve did not do. And we think, with all the things I’ve done wrong, can I really be good enough to get into heaven?

And of course, the answer is no. You’re not good enough to go to heaven. Neither am I. No one is. No one could ever be. Remember, Jesus once said that no one is good except God. Neither you nor I nor anyone else is ever good enough to go to heaven. If we had to be good enough to go to heaven, heaven would be an incredibly lonely place.

What Paul is trying to tell us in our reading from Galatians today is to stop looking at it that way. Stop thinking we have to be good enough to go to heaven. That’s not how we get there. We get to heaven by our faith in God and in his Son Jesus Christ as our Savior. There are no other requirements. There are no other questions asked.

In fact, Paul says, in a way, that thinking we have to be good enough to get to heaven is a denial of Jesus Christ. Think about it. Jesus died for us. He died so that our sins would be forgiven. If, despite that, we still think we have to be good enough to go to heaven, then what we’re really saying is that Jesus Christ did not die for us. In fact, what Paul says is that if we say we have to be good enough to go to heaven, then we’re saying Jesus Christ died for nothing.

Again, this is not meant as a criticism of anyone here. I don’t think anyone here would say we think Jesus died for nothing. Most of us, maybe all of us, would say we think Jesus died for us, so our sins would be forgiven. We’d say that, and we’d mean it, at least with our heads. In our hearts, though, we still, a lot of times, have that element of doubt.

I think the thing is that it’s just such an incredible gift, you know? You know what it’s kind of like, in a way? It’s like if someone was to walk into this room right now, hand you a check for a million dollars, and then walk out again. Someone you’d never seen before, someone who had no reason to do something for you, just walks up and gives you all this money.

You’d be thinking, wait a minute. What’s going on here? What’s the catch? Nobody just hands you a million dollars for no reason. There has to be more to it. This guy must want me to do something. There’s no way somebody would just give me this for no reason.

That’s why it’s so hard for us to accept the gift of salvation God has given us. It’s just so hard to believe it. Why think about what Jesus did for us, dying on a cross to save us from our sins, and we think, wait a minute. What’s going on here? What’s the catch? Nobody would die to save us for no reason. There has to be more to it. I must be supposed to do something. There’s no way Jesus would just do that for me for no reason.

But he did. There’s no reason, other than that Jesus loves us. There’s no reason, other than that God wants us to be with him in heaven. We don’t have to do anything. It’s just a gift, an incredible gift from God.


So let’s accept that gift. Let’s stop thinking we have to do something. Let’s stop looking for the catch. Instead, let’s simply accept the incredible grace and forgiveness that God has given to each one of us.