In early 1990, retired Alabama dairy farmer Jack McWilliams and his family released a juice to consumers called “JOGGING IN A JUG” (Google it for a fuller story!). It claimed health benefits including improved cardiovascular health and reduced risk of heart attack, cancer, and other things – all without jogging one step or any physical exercise! Benefits without burdens, gain but no pain, a passive path to perfect physical health! The only problem – no proof claims made for Jogging in a Jug were true. The Federal Trade
Commission got involved and required each bottle to labeled with a disclaimer stating: “There is no scientific evidence that Jogging in a Jug provides any health benefits.”
Consider a spiritual application to all this. What is true physically is also true spiritually. There is no easy, effort-free, exercise-less way to maintain good physical health, and the same is true for good spiritual health. The apostle Paul wrote in Titus 3:4-7 that Christians are saved and justified due to God’s love and kindness and mercy and grace. He asserts it is “not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us,” and it all came “through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit … though our Lord Jesus Christ” (vs 5-6). Paul always argued forcefully and inflexibly against the notion men and women could ever merit or earn salvation through good works. The long and short of it is, we are washed from our sins when we trust Christ enough to repent and be baptized for the forgiveness of our sins (Acts 2:38; 22:16 * Galatians 3:26-27). That is “the washing of regeneration” and it is not a work we do to earn our way into heaven. Colossians 2:12 explains that when we are buried with Christ in baptism, we are also raised with Him through faith — not faith in water or any work of our own, but “through faith in the working of God, who raised Him [Christ] from the dead.” We bury dead people. Dead people don’t bury themselves, and they certainly have nothing to do with raising themselves from the dead! Neither Paul nor any other inspired writer ever had any hang-ups about preaching that salvation is by God’s grace through faith (Ephesians 2:8), not works of human merit, even as they proclaimed that baptism is the precise time and place where we experience “the working of God” to rid us of sins. Does salvation by grace mean there is some kind of spiritual “Jesus in a Jug” approach that provides perfect spiritual health with no effort or energy exerted on our part? Does grace mean there’s nothing for us to do except cruise on into heaven? Paul slammed the door on that wrong-headed idea in Titus 3:8 – “This is a faithful saying, and these things I want you to affirm constantly, that those who have believed in God should be careful to maintain good works. These things are good and profitable to men.” Verse 14 directs Christians to “learn to maintain good works, to meet urgent needs, that they may not be unfruitful.” The inescapable logic is that a Christian who won’t work at doing good is unfruitful and profits no one, including the non-working Christian! Theologian Dallas Willard remarked that “grace is not opposed to effort, but to earning.” The apostle Paul would have agreed. He declared, “By the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me was not in vain; and I labored more abundantly than they all, yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me” (1 Corinthians 15:10). God’s grace works — to save us from sin and then put us to work!
By: Dan Gulley, Smithville TN
