The Free Gift

I recently saw a little brochure—what we used to call a “tract” when I was a baby Christian—that said, “Eternal Life is a Free Gift.”

Well, yes. And no.

Romans 6:23 says, “For the wages of sin is death, but the gracious gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” And Ephesians 2:8-9 says, “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”

So yes, eternal life is God’s free gift for those who repent and place their faith in Jesus Christ.

But a gift normally comes with no strings attached, and this gift definitely has strings.

The first string is that God expects us to grow spiritually. Paul criticized the Corinthians because they had failed to grow in their faith:

And I, brothers and sisters, could not speak to you as spiritual people, but only as fleshly, as to infants in Christ. I gave you milk to drink, not solid food; for you were not yet able to consume it. But even now you are not yet able, for you are still fleshly. For since there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not fleshly, and are you not walking like ordinary people?[1]

The writer of Hebrews delivered similarly harsh criticism to his audience:

Concerning him we have much to say, and it is difficult to explain, since you have become poor listeners. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the actual words of God, and you have come to need milk and not solid food. For everyone who partakes only of milk is unacquainted with the word of righteousness, for he is an infant. But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to distinguish between good and evil.[2]

God wants us to grow up into spiritual adults:

As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of people, by craftiness in deceitful scheming; but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, that is, Christ.[3]

So that is the first string attached to our free gift: we must grow. But there is another. We must love. We must “love one another.”[4] We must also love our neighbor,[5] and even our enemies.[6] As the parable of the good Samaritan[7] shows, our “neighbor” is anyone in need of our help. So that second string is that we must love everyone—even the people we may not even like. Love in this context is not an emotion, but a choice. We choose to treat all people with kindness and respect because that is how God treats us, and because that is how he wants us to treat others.

Why are these strings attached to our free gift? C.S. Lewis used the analogy of a dog off the street. We may love that dog, take it in, and care for it. But we will still want to clean it up and teach it to behave. We will not be satisfied with the dog if he continues to bite and track mud into the house.

So yes, God gives us eternal life as a free gift, but the story does not end there. He also wants to clean us up and teach us to behave. And that requires that we grow in the Spirit and learn to love each other, so that we can one day “be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”[8]

For more on spiritual growth, see my book, Beyond Shallow Faith. You can read a description of the book here, and you can find a list of contents and chapter excerpts here. Or go to “Don’s Books” at the top of this page for more on all five of my books.

[1]. 1 Corinthians 3:1-3

[2]. Hebrews 5:11-14

[3]. Ephesians 4:14-15

[4]. John 13:34-35, 15:12, 15:17

[5]. Matthew 22:39, Mark 12:31, Luke 10:27

[6]. Matthew 5:43-44, Luke 6:27

[7]. Luke 10:30-37

[8]. Matthew 5:48