Friday, February 25, 2011

That’s not the way it works

Let Us All Press on in the work of the Lord,” goes the song, “that when life is o’er we may gain a reward”.

Um, no. Deity is not a vending machine. You don’t gain a reward ’cause you worked hard, you gain a reward because the grace of God is sufficient for your salvation. Sorry about that.

5 comments:

Carla Schmidt Holloway said...

Great post!

Heather the Mama Duk said...

Eternal life, yes. Celestial kingdom, eternal increase, etc., not necessarily. It kind of depends on which type of reward you and the song are talking about.

David B said...

Not even eternal life, actually—it’s not like we can do that ourselves, either.

Heather the Mama Duk said...

I meant eternal life, yes, that's a freebie due to the grace of God, not yes, that's the reward for work we do. It's the other stuff (Celestial kingdom, eternal increase, etc.) that you work for.

David B said...

So what do we do to merit salvation in the celestial kingdom? Or, more properly, what can we do by which we merit it on our own?

As i see it, that’s an impossibility—we can’t merit any of that on our own, and anything we do will fall short of earning such a reward. And besides, if we’re doing good just to earn a reward, well, then arguably we’re not actually doing good anyway.