“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Matthew 11:28-30
For of His fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace. John 1:16
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. Ephesians 1:3
One of the great truths of the Christian gospel is that salvation is by grace through faith. It comes not by our good works or by cleaning up our act, but by placing our trust in Christ’s redeeming work on the cross. Again, this is the bread and butter message of the gospel. And Christians believe it at least theoretically.
Here’s what I mean. This wonderful gospel truth of a grace-based salvation is often infected with the spiritual virus of “more.” This “more” virus is expressed on one of two ways. First, is the growing sense that you need to do more in order to be and/or stay in right standing with God. It’s more Bible study, more prayer, more giving, more serving, more, more, more.
Certainly, there’s nothing wrong with any of these things. In fact there’s nothing wrong with doing more of them. It’s the reason for doing them that’s the problem. Somehow we struggle with the notion that our relationship with God is founded on grace alone. It seems too simple. It also takes away any sense of spiritual pride if we can’t do anything to merit it.
So without even realizing what is happening, we allow the “more” virus to infect us. That takes us down a road that increasingly crushes us with a sense of obligation to do more in order to be right with God. It’s no different than the heavy burden of the law that the New Testament talks about. And it’s simply not needed.
Remember, Jesus said that we should come unto Him and that His burden was light. Why? Because it’s relationship-based not performance-based. We aren’t called to do more in order to be right with Him. Instead we’re called to release our lives into His loving care. Along the way we will be doing a number of things that help strengthen the relationship. But it’s not a call to more duty. Rather it’s a call to deeper relationship.
The other way we get infected with the “more” virus is being hooked into thinking that there’s some illusive spiritual blessing that we’re missing. Although we have a saving relationship with Christ, we become convinced that there is more that is being withheld from us. So we need a second blessing, or an anointing, or some kind of addition to what was received at salvation.
But such is not the case. In Ephesians 1 Paul indicates that God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in Christ. Notice that this is past tense. It’s not that someday God is going to give us more of a blessing. He has already blessed us fully and completely in Christ. As we grow in our relationship with Christ, our understanding and appreciation for these blessings grow which blesses us again. But it’s not an additional blessing. It’s more of a deepening of the blessing that has already been received.
So let me encourage you to move from the language of more to that of fully. Hear this. You are fully forgiven, fully accepted, fully blessed. You don’t need anything more.