“Man’s Part” in Salvation?

“Then I set my face toward the Lord God to make request by prayer and supplications, with fasting, sackcloth, and ashes. And I prayed to the LORD my God, and made confession, and said, “O Lord, great and awesome God, who keeps His covenant and mercy with those who love Him, and with those who keep His commandments, we have sinned and committed iniquity, we have done wickedly and rebelled, even by departing from Your precepts and Your judgments… O Lord, righteousness belongs to You, but to us shame of face, as it is this day…”  from Dan. 9:3-7 NKJV

From the time I was a boy, I heard many sermons about “God’s part” in salvation vs. “man’s part”.  Generally the context had to do with the grace on God’s part and the faith plus obedience on man’s.  How many invitations have you heard that go like this?  “God has done his part through Christ and the cross.  Now it is up to us to do our part in obedience to him.”  Now while there is an element of truth in this, and many proof-texts can be quoted, Satan can quote scripture too, and many preachers and gullible saints have been led off into the most shameful ideas following this reasoning.   

We can easily begin to think of God’s part and man’s part as if we are equally responsible for our salvation.  Often it might even be expressed that “we must meet him half-way”, or “it has to be 50-50.”  Even where it might not be stated exactly that way, the underlying assumption is often that we are “doing our part” to get the job done.  The idea is “God fulfilled his end of the bargain, now we will accomplish the rest by our obedience…”

Bite your tongue! Fall on your face! We achieve NOTHING! We accomplish NOTHING!  We have no “part” in salvation but to submit to his will.  And even that is only possible because of HIM!

Think of the prodigal son - crawling back to his father, begging forgiveness and asking to be taken on as a servant.  See the father weeping, rejoicing, welcoming him, reinstating him to the family.  Now suppose a few weeks later the son is talking with his friends and they ask how he was able to enjoy all the blessings of home again. Imagine the son saying, well “Father did his part, and I did my part to get things back to normal”?  Say what?

Or imagine a drunken man staggering along a rocky coast on a stormy night.  He stumbles into the ocean and is swept away by the waves.  He is helpless and hopeless. He cannot last long.  A crew risks their own lives going out into the storm in a boat, to rescue him.  Finally they find him, draw near, throw him a lifeline, which he is barely able to tie around himself.  From the brink of death, he is pulled to safety.  Suppose the next day he is being interviewed in the hospital, and he says proudly, “Well, I am grateful to the crew.  They did their part, and I did mine - in the rescue.” 

You get the picture. That is arrogance and ungratefulness in the extreme.  We only escape the bondage of sin by the grace and mercy of God.  We only continue in walking in the light and receive cleansing by the grace and mercy of God.  We only take our next breath by the grace, mercy, and providence of God. In this light, it is ALL the grace of God.  “Man’s part” is to lay hold in humble and grateful surrender.  Everything we have is of Him.  God makes it possible.  Christ reveals it.  Our spirit in fellowship with His Spirit is the reality in us.

The concepts we have about grace, faith and obedience muddy the water on this issue.  We have accepted the denominational definition of faith as “belief” - as a mental exercise of acceptance, distinguished from any action.  And on this assumption, then the Baptist preacher says that’s all there is to salvation – faith without works; just believe and mentally accept Christ into your heart.  Eager to combat this idea, the “Church-of-Christ” preacher proceeds to emphasize “man’s part” and so he requires “faith plus something else”.  Both are wrong. The Bible concept of faith (in Hebrews, e.g. but also everywhere else) is trusting SUBMISSION to Jesus Christ.  It is the "surrender of the will based on conviction" (GC Morgan).  It is that disposition of heart/will that is the plane on which we connect to the invisible (spiritual) realm.  By faith in Christ we relate to God; this surrender of our wills to His is the ground of our justification.  It is the deliberate choosing to give ourselves to follow him on the basis of the conviction HE makes possible; it is the opposite of “shrinking back” in fear (Heb. 10:38).

So faith is a trusting submission to the will of God through Christ.  It is, by definition, obedient.  But there is no achievement in it, no “accomplishment”, nothing to be proud of, nothing to look at and boast, “I did my part!”  God designed it all, executed it all, and made it all possible.  It is all of Him!  “Our part” is to willingly surrender to him and fall on our faces before Him.  “Lord, what would you have me to do?” 

Larry Walker, February 2014