No Savings Account

“When the righteous turneth from his righteousness, and committeth iniquity, he shall even die thereby. But if the wicked turn from his wickedness, and do that which is lawful and right, he shall live thereby. Yet ye say, The way of the Lord is not equal. O ye house of Israel, I will judge you every one after his ways.” (Eze 33:18-20 AV)

It is not hard to understand the principle above.  Albeit, a hard principle to accept and a hard principle to remember.  What the prophet is sharing with his congregation is if the righteous man does wrong, then all the righteousness he had done in the past does not absolve himself of the wrong which he just did.  However, if someone is living in sin, and gets right with God, then God’s grace will allow him to live.  This principle is oversimplified and one can make an argument to dispute this principle, but the principle still stands.  We will not take the time to explain the finer points of this principle because that is not the intended purpose of the message above.  The intended purpose is the assumed grace one feels he has because he has generally lived in the righteousness of the word.  He assumes that if he does enough good, then the LORD will turn a blind eye to the bad.  We have this false belief we can bank goodness so the LORD will give us a pass on that which is evil.  This is simply not the case.

There is an inherent flaw in our grading system.  At least as some teachers apply it.  Students know how to use the rules to their advantage.  Whatever assignments carry the collective weight of their grade, they will apply themselves to do their best.  When I taught Bible, I weighted grading heavier on homework, reading, and class projects than I did exams.  Exams really are not a good teaching tool in the sense of long term benefit.  The student can apply himself to studying for exams and then completely forget the subject matter shortly after the exam is taken.  Rather, I wanted them to read their material and do their homework.  If they worked through their material, they were far more likely to retain what they worked through rather than what they memorized.  However, there are unintended consequences which I had to correct.  One of them is, the student did not study too hard for tests because they applied themselves to homework and reading.  They banked all that hard work accomplished week in and week out so when exam time came, they could study other courses and cruise through Bible class exams.  All the good they did throughout the semester gave them a bit of room to relax the standard of academic excellence when exam time rolled around.

This is how we feel sometimes.  We feel we are entitled to a few missteps because we have faithfully walked with God in many other areas.  It is like we are banking righteousness.  If we do the right thing the majority of the time, then the LORD must look beyond the times when I failed Him.  Not so.  If one thinks about it, who would determine the value of those acts of righteousness and wickedness?  Exactly how are they weighted?  Who would keep score?  Now, the LORD does consider our faithfulness when exercising grace.  But He is not required to do so.  This is the misunderstanding of the people of God.  They didn’t understand grace.  They assumed grace was something someone earned.  If I bank some righteousness, then the LORD, by nature, will show grace.  When He shows grace to the wicked and not to me, that seems unfair.  There are a whole lot of more subtle details here to consider which we do not have the space to do, but suffice it to say, just because God shows grace to the wicked when the wicked repent does not mean they live a life free of consequences for their wickedness.  The point we are considering this morning is the erroneous thought of banking righteousness for the hope of future grace when we fail.  God is not obligated to show grace and will deal with sin.  He is fair whether we like it or not.