Walking Thoughts

Did you ever have a teacher who made it a point to make you fail the class?  Have you ever had a professor that purposefully tested you on material that wasnot covered or deliberately created a test that would have a mean equal to a failing grade?  I did.  In fact, the main purpose of many of the courses I took in college was to have people fail out, drop out, and be discouraged from continuing on to medical school - in essence, weed out those who were not worthy to the high calling of the medical field.  Those who made it through, earned it, they worked hard to maintain a high grade and do better than the rest.  Everybody started equally, with an A, a perfect score of 0/0, and either stayed close to that ratio or fell short.

Can you imagine a professor ever saying this: "Welcome to my classroom.  Because you are willing to attend and take my course, I will give you an A.  No matter what happens for the rest of the year, you have already received your A for the course.  I would like you to keep coming, however, so I may help you learn and lead you in reaching your fullest potential in the subject matter.  I will work with you to do well on the tests, succeed on the quizzes, and complete exceptional projects.  But I will give you the passing grade simply for being here and letting me instruct you."  It sounds almost absurd!! Yet, God, in His infinite wisdom, decided to do that for us in the course of Human Life 101; consequently giving us the grade we need for admittance to heaven.

In a college, everybody started the course with a perfect score of 0/0 and fell short from there, but before God we start life with a grade of 0/Eternity which gives us a failing grade of Hell.  God, in an amazing feat of mercy and grace, decided to give the only One who deserved to pass, Jesus Christ, a failing grade and its consequences in order to award us, by faith, with the passing grade. Jesus Christ, the perfect Son of God, failed for us so that we may have his perfect score.  When we turn our lives over to Him and are willing to sit before Him, He teaches us and helps us through the tests, the quizzes, the projects - not in order to make the grade to graduate to Heaven, but to thank and glorify Him!

Yet so often we view God as one of these professors who lives to make their students fail, drop out, or be discouraged from achieving great things.  When we stop and look at the cross, we see that God is in fact more like the professor who gives His disciples the passing grade (by trading His passing grade for their failing one) and then blesses them as He helps them through the tests of life, guiding them in His projects, the work of His kingdom prepared specifically for them.  His disciples are not rewarded on the basis of their performance in the class, but only that they attend and be directed by Him.  Unlike graduate school or medical school where admittance is based on performance, our admittance to heaven is based completely and solely on Christ's love for us demonstrated on the cross!  What a hope! What a Savior!

For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith.
Romans 3:22-25

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
Ephesians 2:8-9

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person--though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die-- but God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by His blood, much more shall we be saved by Him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by His life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.
Romans 5:6-11

In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent His only Son into the world, so that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
1 John 4:9-10