God saves us while we were sinners and helpless and yet he expects us to bear fruit.
We can do nothing to earn our salvation. It is a free gift of God through Jesus Christ. Here’s what the book of Romans 5:6-8 says, “For Christ, while we were still helpless, yet died at the appointed time for the ungodly. Indeed, only with difficulty does one die for a just person, though perhaps for a good person one might even find courage to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.”
When we were of no value to God and could do nothing for God, he sent his Son to die for us on the cross. This is the core claim of Christianity. We don’t earn our way into a right relationship with God and we don’t find eternal life by stockpiling a bunch of good deeds. As Andy Stanly says, “Good people don’t go to heaven, forgiven people do.”
You and I don’t have to try and earn a right standing with God, we simply have to receive the gift of his Son. Despite all our wandering from God and sinful ways, we can enjoy eternal bliss not because of what we have done, but because of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. This is absolutely vital to understand if we are to understand the nature of reality. It is an amazing claim of Christianity, but is not the whole Gospel.
The Gospels tell us Jesus died for us and we are to produce fruit. God expects a return on his investment. In writing those words and in using that analogy of God seeing us as an investment, that seems to crass and maybe it is. So maybe it is better to stick with the fruit analogy. Here’s what Jesus says in John 15:5-6. He says, “I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing. Anyone who does not remain in me will be thrown out like a branch and wither; people will gather them and throw them into a fire and they will be burned.” Jesus says if we don’t stay connected to him and produce fruit than we will be thrown in a fire and burned. Now as a Catholic I surmise that could mean the fires of hell or the purifying fires of purgatory. In either case, Jesus is pretty clear that his Father (who he references earlier in John) expects us to bear fruit.
What kind of fruit?
From the rest of John 15, I would say an ability to keep God’s commands, specifically a growing ability to really love the people around us. God expects a return of love as he loved us. The growing ability to love does not come from our own efforts, but from Jesus living inside of us. It is no longer us, but Christ living in us.
God loves us when we are helpless and cannot give anything back to him and then expects us to love people who can do nothing for us in return.
Which half of this paradox do you believe more easily: God’s unconditional love or the expectation to bear fruit?
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