Saving Private Ryan Meets Grace
If you didn't take the time to watch this video, let me give you the short version of it. Tom Hanks, the leader of a squad was sent to make sure private Ryan doesn't die. While accomplishing this, a number of men in the squadron die including Tom Hanks. His last words to Matt Damon/private Ryan are "Earn This". We pan to an older version of private Ryan, maybe 75 years old where he is standing in the cemetary with his wife, children, and grandchildren and he talks to the tomb of Hanks and says with a distraught, pensive face, "I hope I've earned this - I've tried to be a good person- Honey, have I been a good person?" and his wife assures him he has been a good person. His whole life, from his rescue on, has been influenced, and I would submit - traumatized by those dying words "earn this".
" It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery." Gal.5:1
Christian freedom can be divided into two categories - conscience freedom and motivational freedom both of which go hand in hand. Conscience freedom or the lack of it is illustrated in this video. Private Ryan has no joy on his face as he reflects on his life wondering if he has been good enough. Christianity is the only religion that offers this kind of freedom because right up front it gives the answer to that question and the answer is an emphatic "no"!We aren't good enough. This is why the law was given, to show that we can never be good enough to reach God's standards. That would be a cruel burden for God to put on mankind except that He put that burden on His son, Jesus, who came to Earth and was good enough. He took all our shortcomings (sins) on Himself and paid the penalty for them on the cross so we can live a life of freedom standing boldly and confidently and with peace and joy in God's presence saying, "I am good enough through Christ's goodness on my behalf." That is grace.
So conscience freedom is freedom from guilt of an imperfect performance. Motivational freedom is freedom from a drive to perform. Everything Private Ryan did from that time on was motivated by trying to earn the sacrificial death of Tom Hanks. Here is how most Christians including me, at least for the majority of my Christian life, live. We see Christ on the cross and His last words to us are "earn this"!
Our whole motivation to perform becomes our effort to try to somehow pay for the life He gave up for us. What a burden. But yet that is our default mode. If we are given something we want to pay for it. We want to earn it. Rewards, honors, promotions, monetary gifts, trophies are given because we work for them. So we go to Church three times a week, sing in the choir, work with the youth, go on mission trips, go on visitation, memorize scripture, go to Sunday School, Bible studies in hopes to "earn this" which number one, we can't, and number two, we don't have to - it's already been given.
What if Tom Hank's parting words would have been different? What if we see those same words coming to us from the cross? Picture Jesus saying this ... "you're welcome"
What would we say in response to those words, how would our life, how would our motivation be different? Rather than trying to somehow perform all our lives to "earn this", we would go through life saying "but I never said 'thank you'". All our life, all our good deeds would be saying "thank you" to the one who gave His life for us. We would live lives of thanksgiving. We would live lives joyfully honoring the One who gave His life for us, telling people "I am doing this in honor of, to say 'thank you' to Jesus. I live because He died." There is no bondage there - only freedom - freedom to serve, freedom to love, freedom to live life knowing that we don't owe anything, it's already been given to us. Receive it and spend the rest of your life saying "Thank You". That's grace.
No comments:
Post a Comment