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Hebrews 12:14-17   Make every effort to live in peace with everyone and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord. See to it that no one falls short of the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many. See that no one is sexually immoral, or is godless like Esau, who for a single meal sold his inheritance rights as the oldest son. Afterward, as you know, when he wanted to inherit this blessing, he was rejected. Even though he sought the blessing with tears, he could not change what he had done.

These verses encapsulate, very helpfully for us, the way the Bible holds in tension the relationship between God’s sovereignty and Man’s responsibility.

It speaks very strongly about our responsibility to live in a way that pleases God, using words like: “Make every effort’ to live in peace with everyone and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord”, “See to it that no one falls short of the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many”, “See that no one is sexually immoral, or is godless like Esau”.

All these commands assume our responsibility to act in obediece, and so to realise our need to accept blame for disobedience.  But we notice that all this is given in the context of ‘the grace of God’ (not getting what we deserve) and ‘inheriting a blessing’ (an inheritance is something we receive as a gift because of who we are, rather than a reward for what we have done).  We are reminded of Jesus’ words in the ‘Parable of the Sheep and Goats’: “Then the King will say to those on his right [who had lived their lives in consistent active obedience to his teaching], ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.’” (Matthew 25:34), and of the Apostle Paul’s instruction: “Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyd, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Philippians 2:12-13).  Jesus himself could not have made the reality of God’s sovereign electing grace any clearer than when he said, “you do not believe because you are not among my sheep” (John 10:26) rather than “you are not among my sheep because you do not believe” – a very significant difference!

Spiritually dead people are no more capable of making themselves spiritually alive than physically dead people are capable of making themselves physically alive, which is why Paul wrote, “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked … but God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ – by grace you have been saved” (Ephesians 2:1-5).  There can be no doubt that dead Lazarus’ response to Jesus’ command at the tomb: “Lazarus, come out” (John 11:43) could not have happened without the sovereign internal work  of God’s Spirit in him to make this obedience possible!

Let us give up the false thinking that God’s saving grace is a response to our ‘work’ of faith, and gratefuly and humbly accept the opposite: that our faith is an undeserved gift of God’s grace, that we receive by faith.  And let us express the depth of our love and gratitude for this undeserved grace by ‘mak[ing] every effort … to be holy” – exercising obedience because we have been saved and not so that we might be saved. 

– Bruce Christian