February 18, 2025

Dear Friends,

How do we understand a holy life? How do we understand grace?

These questions may be key to the joy of our existence. Let me explain.

This past Sunday, Tim did a great job of dealing with the subject of death as he took us through the last act of David’s life. There can be no denying it: David did not finish well. He died a bitter, frail, vindictive, and impotent man. But there can also be no denying that the bible refers to David as “a man after God’s own heart,” and that the title, ‘Son of David,’ was not only one of great honor but one reserved for God’s Messiah. So what do we do with all this? What are we to make of it?

One truth that we should draw from the life of David is that, while dying a good death in the Lord, is important, it is not the metric by which God evaluates a life. Another truth that we should draw from the David story is that holiness is not perfection. Arguably, it’s also not a life where the good outweighs the bad. David may have committed fewer sins than you and me; he may have achieved greater spiritual victories than you and me; but we don’t really know. What we do know is that most of us have never taken on a Goliath and triumphed but we’ve also never committed adultery or conspiracy to murder. In fact, if you are tempted to measure your holiness (or spirituality … or whatever you want to call it) by whether or not the good you’ve done outweighs the bad, you are considering a fool’s errand and you simply don’t understand either biblical holiness or grace.

Holiness has to do with what has first place in our lives. “You shall have no other gods before me,” thundered God from Mt. Sinai. “Seek first the kingdom of God,” taught Jesus. He added, “If anyone loves father or mother or sister or brother more than me, he is not worthy to be my disciple.” Whatever David was or was not, he had a heart after God. He worked out that God-focus, that God-trust in the mess that was the life of “an iron age chieftain.” His spirituality was formed in the wilderness, on the run, in the grip of lust, anger and disappointment. Perhaps that is why Eugene Peterson describes it as “an earthy spirituality.”

Grace is God doing for David what he could not do for himself — creating a clean heart in him; restoring the joy of his salvation; forgiving and overcoming his sin, empowering him to rule. David didn’t deserve all that, no matter how good he was in a given moment. He also didn’t deserve it in his worst moments — and neither do you or me. We receive grace because God extends it to us. Period. And, that grace is always sufficient for the need of the hour, good/bad, great/small. Our job is to live well out of that reservoir of grace extended to us.

So, wherever you are doing it, stop trying to earn God’s favour. Start living out of the grace he has already extended to you and will keep extending to you. Work at being holy, not because it is a requirement but because it is the appropriate response to this amazing grace.

Blessings!

Doug