He Thinks the Good Stretch Is What Is Keeping God In

He is nineteen days into something and he is more frightened than he was on day one.

Day one he had nothing to lose. Nineteen days in there is a run, and a run is a thing that can end, and he can feel himself starting to protect it in ways that are not really about the thing itself.

He checks it. That is the tell. He does a kind of mental inventory in the shower most mornings, and the inventory is not about how he is doing. It is about how much credit is currently in the account, and whether it would survive a bad Wednesday.

If you told him he believes God is only in this because of the nineteen days, he would say no, and he would be sincere.

Then ask him what he expects to happen on day twenty two if it goes badly, and watch the answer arrive before he can stop it.

Paul rules out the good works by name

There is a sentence in a letter to Titus that closes this off, and the phrase people skip is the important one.

Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost. (Titus 3:5, King James Version)

Works of righteousness which we have done.

He is not ruling out bad behavior. He is ruling out the good kind. The nineteen days kind.

That is a strange thing to have to say, and Paul says it because he had met people doing exactly this: reading a good stretch as the thing holding the arrangement up.

And then he names the mechanism, and it is a washing and a renewing done to somebody rather than by them.

You are not held up by the works of righteousness you have done. Titus 3 rules out the good ones by name, and it is the Holy Ghost, named in that same verse, who is credited with the renewing.

The branch is told to stay, not to produce

There is a picture in John where Jesus describes the arrangement, and the instruction He gives is not the one people expect.

Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me. (John 15:4)

Abide. That is the verb He gives.

He does not say produce. He does not say maintain. He tells the branch to stay attached, and He describes the fruit as something that follows rather than something the branch achieves.

A branch counting its own apples in the shower has got the picture backwards, and the anxiety in it comes from carrying a job that was never assigned.

You are given one instruction and it is not a production target. John 15 puts abide in the imperative and the fruit in the result, and it is His Spirit who makes an old picture take a job off somebody's shoulders.

Paul asks the question directly

There is a sentence in Galatians where Paul asks something blunt, and it is aimed at exactly this.

Are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh? (Galatians 3:3)

Having begun in the Spirit.

He is pointing out an inconsistency. Nobody thinks they got in by their own effort. Everybody knows that part was a gift.

And then, almost immediately, people start running the rest of it on a different system, and Paul says that is not a small drift, it is a change of engine.

You are not being kept by a different power than the one that started you. Galatians 3 puts the beginning and the continuing side by side and asks whether they match, and it is the Holy Spirit who is named as the one who began it.

Paul makes a list of what cannot separate

There is a long sentence at the end of Romans 8, and what matters is what is on the list and what is not.

For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:38-39)

It is deliberately exhaustive. He runs it out to the horizon and then adds nor any other creature to close off whatever he missed.

And a man is a creature. That includes him, on day twenty two, in whatever state he arrives in.

The list does not have a clause about performance, because a nineteen day run is not on the list of things that were ever holding it.

You are covered by a list that runs out to the end on purpose. Romans 8 closes it off with nor any other creature, and it is the Spirit, named twelve verses earlier as bearing witness, who makes an exhaustive list feel like it includes a Wednesday.

And God told a nation why He picked them

There is a sentence in Deuteronomy where God explains the reason, and He rules out the obvious answer first.

The LORD did not set his love upon you, nor choose you, because ye were more in number than any people; for ye were the fewest of all people: But because the LORD loved you, and because he would keep the oath which he had sworn unto your fathers. (Deuteronomy 7:7-8)

Because the LORD loved you.

That is a circular reason and it is circular on purpose. There is no quality named. He does not point at anything in them that made the difference, and He goes out of His way first to rule out the one thing they might have pointed at themselves.

You were chosen for a reason that has nothing in you in it. Deuteronomy 7 rules out the obvious answer and then gives a circular one, and it is His Spirit who makes an ancient explanation reach a man doing inventory in a shower.