Obedience - out of love

From slavery to sonship - this is the message of Paul's letter to the Galatians. It is also the transition the Tuyuca people made when they first encountered that message. The Tuyucas live in the eastern jungles of Colombia, along the border with Brazil. As they worked with the missionary Janet Barnes to translate Galatians, they had trouble understanding salvation by grace. "If all we have to do to be saved is to believe," one of them asked, "well, then what? How do we live after that?"

The answer, the Tuyucas learned, is that Christians live out their faith by obeying the will of God. They do this not because they are slaves who must satisfy their Master, but because they are children who want to please their Father. "I understand now," said one of the Tuyucas, finally grasping the gospel message of Galatians. "My grandfather said it is better for a son to obey his father out of love than out of fear of being punished. That is how God wants us to obey him - out of love."

P Ryken

Galatians

P&R

p168

Luke Short

God's reward for faithful ministry is beautifully illustrated by the story of Luke Short, converted at the tender age of 103. Mr. Short was sitting under a hedge in Virginia when he happened to remember a sermon he had once heard preached by the famous Puritan John Flavel. As he recalled the sermon, he asked God to forgive his sins right then and there, through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Short lived for three more years, and when he died, the following words were inscribed on his tombstone, "Here lies a babe in grace, aged three years, who died according to nature, aged 106."

Here is the truly remarkable part of the story. The Sermon that old Mr. Short remembered had been preached eighty-five years earlier back in England! Nearly a century passed between Flavel's sermon and Short's conversion, between the sowing and the reaping. Sooner or later, by the grace of God, faithful work always has its reward.

P Ryken, in:
DA Carson, Ed
Entrusted with the Gospel
IVP
p41

God's love

No figure of speech can describe God's extraordinary affection toward us, for it is infinite and various: so that, if all that can be said or imagined about love were brought together in one, yet it would be surpassed by the greatness of the love of God.

J Calvin, quoted in:
P Ryken
Discovering God
P&R
p189