To me, it is one of the great conundrums of life that the very things that God gives as blessings, both physical and spiritual, can be the things that become a snare and a trap. And we have been blessed with every spiritual blessing in Christ (Eph. 1:3), besides a whole host of physical and temporal ones. If there are traps in them, why does He do it then? Can we justly blame God for our failures even as Adam blamed God for the blessing of his wife? No. There are traps in blessings simply because they cannot be avoided – they are part of the inherent risk in life. Jesus was the Son in whom I am well-pleased. The Father gave the son power through the Holy Spirit but with that came the risk of misuse. Jesus was aware of that: imagine the temptation to turn stones into bread after a forty day fast! Imagine the temptation to skip the cross! (Matt.26:53).
The child that deserves praise may indeed let the praise go to its head, but it needs to be praised, nonetheless. In that it not only needs to learn to do well, it also needs to learn to accept praise, and receive it with a level head. Giving and receiving are both a part of the equation of life.
Would it be better if he did not bless us? That would be a pretty sour old world if there was no reward for anything. The fact is, every good gift can be abused. Let’s consider three blessings and their traps.
What about freedom? We love freedom. In the world order of things we call ourselves a liberal democracy and a freedom-loving people. People in certain other parts of the world envy our freedom. But we are losing our freedom. History, that graveyard of nations and civilisations bears witness to the truth that nations die when they forget God. Horace Greely once said, You cannot mentally or socially enslave a Bible-reading people. True, but what when you have a people who don’t read their Bible? They will pass laws and adopt behaviours that will enslave them and ultimately destroy them.
Israel was promised by God that if they would obey Him then He would bless them with every physical blessing, including freedom. He said, You shall be the head and not the tail. He did bless them and gave them a land flowing with milk and honey, with fields they hadn’t cleared, and houses and cities they hadn’t built. But they lost it all – they became the tail and not the head, and were driven from their land into exile and shame. Why? They couldn’t handle freedom. God warned them in such passages as Deut. 8:11ff. During the period of the Judges we see the principles being play out before their very eyes time and time again; they would forget God and be afflicted by their enemies and natural disasters. They would return to God and he would deliver them and bless them. But they never did learn.
Is there not a lesson therein for us? Undoubtedly. Not only for the nation but for the church. We are told to be aware of the traps of freedom. 1 Pet. 2:16 warns us not to use our freedom as a cloak of maliciousness. 1 Cor. 8:9 says do not let your freedom be a stumbling block to the weak. Gal. 5:13 says, you have been called to freedom, but don’t use your freedom for an occasion to the flesh.
Freedom in Christ is a theme often addressed in the N.T. We are free from the peculiar rites and observances of the Jews (eg. we don’t have to go to Jerusalem 3 times a year; we don’t have to tithe and so on. All these statements are true but they each have a higher spiritual counterpart in the New Testament).
We can get so carried away with freedom that we forget the spiritual disciplines of Christ. We are free from the Mosaic law but we are under law to Christ. We are free from the rite of circumcision but we must circumcise the heart. We do not have to go to Jerusalem 3 times a year but we are obligated to assemble with our local brethren on a weekly basis. No tithe is mentioned in the New Testament, but we are to grow in the grace of giving to be generous and cheerful givers. A tithe was not considered a generous gift.
Australia is a dangerous place to live in. How you say? I don’t mean because we have droughts and floods and bushfires and snakes and spiders and sharks and crocodiles and hoons on the street. I mean we are a free but worldly society where there are so many things that can get our attention away from what we should be doing. And the Devil is having a field day. There are plenty of things you could be doing rather than read this right now.
And then there is Grace. Let’s sin so grace may abound (Rom. 6:1ff). How prone man is to abuse grace. Grace is a grace that instructs (Tit. 2:11,12). The goodness of God is designed to lead us to repentance (Rom. 2:4). Robert Capon wrote about the rediscovery of grace in the Reformation when men got to read the Bible for themselves in their native tongue: The Reformation was a time when men went blind, staggering drunk because they had discovered, in the dusty basement of late medievalism, a whole cellarful of fifteen-hundred-year-old, two hundred proof grace – bottle after bottle of pure distillate of scripture, one sip of which would convince anyone that God saves us single-handedly. The word of the Gospels- after all those centuries of trying to lift yourself into heaven by worrying about the perfection of your bootstraps – suddenly tuned out to be a flat announcement that the saved were home free before they got started. Grace was to be drunk neat: no water, no ice, and certainly no ginger ale…..
Luther led a vanguard that opposed the Catholic doctrine of salvation by meritorious works and the payment for indulgences. If you don’t know what the sale of indulgences was, it was very much akin in principle to a modern version. There was a fellow who stole a neighbour’s car. He went to the priest and confessed the sin and the priest absolved him and told him to put $10 in the plate as restitution. The young man handed the priest $20 and turned away. When the priest said he had paid too much, he replied, Just keep it; tonight I’m going looking for another car.
Luther wrote, The more we know about the liberty that Christ obtained for us, the colder and more indolent we are in our office, whether it be to preach, to teach, or in any other ways to do good. After setting forth the good results he had hoped to produce from his doctrine he said, Unfortunately the very opposite is the case, and from this teaching the world grows steadily worse and worse. This is the malignant Devil himself, as one sees that people are nowadays more avaricious, more unmerciful, more unchaste, more perverse, and wickeder, than before under the papacy.
I was interested to hear a modern-day preacher of the Lord’s church, Gottfried Reichel, a German who had come from Lutheranism, quoting from another Lutheran, Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He said, Cheap grace will turn out to be utterly merciless to Churches of Christ. What had Bonhoeffer said? Cheap grace means grace sold on the market like a cheapjack’s wares. The sacraments, the forgiveness of sins, and the consolation of religion are thrown away at cut prices. Grace is represented as the church’s inexhaustible treasury, from which she showers blessing with generous hands, without asking questions or fixing limits: Grace without price; grace without cost! The essence of grace, we suppose, is that the account has been paid in advance: and, because it has been paid, everything can be had for nothing. Since the cost was infinite, the possibilities of using and spending it are infinite. What would grace be if it were not cheap? He goes on to talk about cheap grace and then costly grace and then says, We have gathered like ravens round the carcass of cheap grace, and there we have drunk of the poison which has killed the life of Christ…cheap grace has turned out to be utterly merciless to our evangelical church.
If he made these observations eighty or so years ago, what would he think if he could come back and witness the religious scene today with churches tripping over one another to be seen as the one who grants the most grace, with the assumption that the one who offers the most grace must be itself in the grace of God. Grace is God’s part of the salvation equation – and He’s an expert in it and we can safely leave it in His hands to extend it as He sees fit – our focus needs to be upon being obedient children and faithful productive servants in order that we do not fail the grace of God. With man’s propensity to abuse the gift, should God not give it? Well then there would be no salvation and what a sad world that would be. God must give it and we must treat it carefully.
And, of course, we must say something about riches. Riches (Eccles. 6:2) and long life (Prov. 3:2) are blessings of the Lord (cf. 1 Kings 3:11-13). These two blessings can be a terrible trap and many don’t know how to handle these twins: it is our culture to waste them in selfish pursuits (if you’ve got your health you’ve got everything). How many spend their retirement in nothing more than spending the kids inheritance? If they were spending it profitably instead of selfishly we might have something of honour. If God gives us longer life and good health with it, we must think of it in terms of serving Him more with extra time for spiritual growth. A Chinese man heard an Aussie say, You know we only work 38hours/week in Australia? He replied, Is all the work done in Australia? We may well ask if all the work has been done in the Kingdom of God. We are blessed with a thing called Retirement (a relatively new concept in the history of the world), whereby we don’t have to go to work till the day we die just to survive. Rather it’s a blessing that frees us up to serve the Lord in all sorts of ways. Eternity will not be kind to prodigals.
What must we understand about blessings? The goodness of the Lord brings blessings and privilege, but with increased blessings and privileges comes increased responsibilities. What does God want us to do with the blessings He gives? Blessings are not to be treated selfishly, but as benefits that have been bestowed for a purpose. Much like what a successful business man does with profits – he enjoys the profits, without them he wouldn’t be in business, but also uses them to invest in and grow the business. Those that skim the top off the business, frequently end up in trouble.
The answer for us is to accept the blessings of God, not selfishly as ends in themselves, but blessings that will enable us to grow and do greater things for the Lord (the 10-talent man gained the 11th talent because he had shown that he used his blessings well. What do you suppose he would do with the 11th talent? With the five he gained another five, and with the one he would no doubt gain another one).
We have been blessed as recipients of the grace of God, freedom from sin and political oppression, with a healthcare and retirement system that means we can look to the future with confidence. A life of service is what God expects, even as Christ came to serve.
The question is – if we lived a thousand years would we do any better with our time and talents for the Lord than what we are doing now? – if not, why then should the Lord bless us with such?