The past is valuable......
......but it can never hinder the future.
I remember I saw this cartoon or joke in a book entitled "Dare2Fail". The author tries to emphasize that even thought the past is memorable and valuable, but we should always look into the future and move on. And it is also from this small cartoon I wrote this line in my second post,
回忆是美好的，但回忆却是个叫我回去的诱饵。
人应放下回忆，张向未来，因为新天新地即将到来。
I retold this to someone, and he replies, "It is very true, but we mustn't forget that the antique car is the foundation of the future modern car." Indeed it is very true, the past is the foundation of the future. 昨天的我造就今天的我。
So in the very same way, this is how the grace of God works. Someone wrote this, "Out of love and gratitude for all God has done for him, a christian does good work to please and glorify God, but he does not trust in his own works for salvation." What is person wrote is quite true, as creations of God we want and we should glorify God, and we trust not in ourselves, but we trust in the power of God.
Before we continue, don't get me wrong. Yes, gratitude is a virtue, and if a christian doesn't have gratitude, I think we can hardly call him 'christian'. But we don't do good work out of gratitude for what God as done for us. If we think in such a way, it sounds like we are debtors and we try to pay of the debt that we owe God by doing good work, and this will make the salvation from God a work-based salvation. No, it doesn't work that way, because Christ has pay the price or the wage of our sins, we shouldn't and we can't pay off our debt that we owes by doing good work.
So since our sins are paid off by Christ's work on the cross, are we off the hook and can do whatever we want, even sinning? "What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?" (Romans 6:1-2).
John Piper describes the christians' faith very well:
Faith is God's forgiveness does not merely mean a persuasion that I am off the hook. Saving faith cherishes being forgiven by God, and from there rises to cherishing the God who forgives - and all that He is for us in Jesus.
If gratitude of the past is not the answer, then what is the driving force that push us to move on? What is the thing that drives us do good work? What is the provision that God provides for us to continue to live a purified life, to be sanctified?
We can answer this question by asking another question, How the people in Old Testament were saved, since Jesus Christ haven't come and die for them? By obeying the Laws? Obviously no, because All who rely on observing the law are under a curse, for it is written: "Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law." (Galatians 3:10)
The answer is the same for those people in New Testament, by faith in Jesus Christ. All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country - a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them. (Hebrews 11:13-16)
But the difference is that they, as believers in Old Testament, they are justified by looking forward into the future, and put their faith in the grace that God will provide in the future, which is Jesus Christ, and they continue to live on by banking on the future grace that God promised.
We, as believers in the New Testament, on the other side of the cross, also justified by looking backward and putting our faith in Jesus Christ, but still we continue to live on by banking on the future grace that God promised. This is the answer, this is the driving force, that is to live by faith in future grace.
Westminster Confession of Faith 1674 says:
Faith, thus receiving and resting on Christ and his righteousness, is the alone instrument of justification; yet it is not alone in the person justified, but ever accompanied with all the saving graces, and is no dead faith, but worketh by love.Living by faith in future grace doesn't nullify the bygone grace, because it is this bygone grace that gives us this faith to believe, so that we can be justified. This faith continue to work, so that we can produce fruits, that testify this faith. The reason we can continue to press on and live on as christians because of the future grace that God has promised.
Note: when I say 'bygone grace' and 'future grace' I am not trying to say that they are two different grace. The same grace that justify us, is the same grace that sanctify us, so maybe I can say that the bygone grace, will continue to work in our life, as future grace.
Just like the analogy, we continue to move on not by driving the antique car, but by inventing new car to drive. In a similar (but not exactly the same) way, we continue to live, not just by gratitude to the bygone grace that God pour out for us on the cross in the past, but by continue to put our faith in the grace and promises of God in the future.
However, I repeat again, living by faith in future grace doesn't nullify the bygone grace. Remember the antique car is the foundation of the modern car. So in a similar way, the bygone grace that God pour out for us on the cross in the past, is the foundation of the future grace that we put our faith in.
He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all - how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? (Romans 8:32)
It is because of what God done in the past, it is because we know that God has fulfilled His promise in the past, by sending His one and only Son, to die for our sins, it is because of this bygone grace, we know and we can trust that this same God, will fulfill His promise for us in the future, we know and we can continue to live by faith in His future grace.
P/S: For further reading, please refer Future Grace by John Piper.
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Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith,
who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame,
and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
Hebrews 12:2
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