Complaining seems to be the unfortunate benchmark of Christianity. We are never known for what we stand for – only what we stand against. We hate our suffering, we hate our circumstances, we even hate people. And sometimes we blatantly accuse God of giving us more than we can handle, ultimately forgetting His promise in Deuteronomy 30: “For this commandment that I command you today is not too hard for you, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven, that you should say, 'Who will ascend to heaven for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?' Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, 'Who will go over the sea for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?' But the word is very near to you, it is in your mouth and it is in your heart, so that you can do it.” In fact, Jesus reaffirmed this promise to His disciples, reminding them that the burden He required them to bear was easy and manageable (Matt 11.30). Similarly, God does not allow us to undergo temptation greater than we can handle (1 Cor 10.13), and a quick perusal of the Psalms reveals the fact that not only is God our protector, but He also fights the battles for us. In fact, the war we are required to fight is not one which we cannot win. It has already been won.
In other words, we have nothing to complain about. We have been given the greatest gift in the world: grace which saves us from ourselves. We did nothing to earn it, and for this reason I use the passive voice intentionally: chosen by God, we have been called to the office of discipleship – following in the very footsteps of Jesus. When we complain – when we forget how easy our responsibility is in comparison to Jesus' – we choose to ignore the fact that with discipleship necessarily comes suffering and persecution. In fact, the circumstances we find besetting us were given in the job description of discipleship: “If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you” (John 15.18-25).
Often, we mistake the “if” for a possibility and find ourselves miserable when things don't go the way we expected, but this is not an indefinite statement. It is an absolute.
As Bonhoeffer was keen to observe, we cannot mistake God's free calling as “cheap grace,” what he defined as a self–bestowed grace – one which equates to the “preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism, church discipline; communion without confession, absolution without personal confession; without discipleship, without the cross, without Jesus Christ living and incarnate.” In other words, Bonhoeffer is cautioning against embracing an ideal of grace which costs us nothing. Grace is certainly “cheap” in the sense that we do nothing to earn it, but it is costly because it required our Savior to lay down His life in order to dispense it freely, and it will require us to do the same in response. It requires suffering, and it requires sacrifice. It requires every facet of our lives. “Just as Christ is Christ only in virtue of his suffering and rejection,” Bonhoeffer continues, “so the disciple is a disciple only in so far as he shares his Lord's suffering and rejection and crucifixion. Discipleship means adherence to the person of Jesus, and therefore submission to the law of Christ which is the law of the cross.”
In the Old Testament, the Israelites were given a conditional covenant – that God's provision would be a direct and concurrent result of their obedience to His law. Although our covenant today is not a conditional one, it still requires obedience on our part – not an obedience which leads to salvation, because we cannot achieve that of our own volition, but a willing submission which is a response to saving grace. The principle of faith and works (Jas 2) is that they are dependent upon one another: faith should drive us to obedience, and submission in turn should increase our faith. In this manner, discipleship is a process of walking through suffering in obedience and faith, trusting that because the Son of Man suffered and endures all these things, He knows and understands our pain.
As a Christian, don't be known by your negativity, but by your willingness to lay down your life (literally and metaphorically) in the name of discipleship. Ultimately, the burden we bear as believers is lighter by far than the one we would otherwise be carrying, and the suffering which comes as a result is not a cause for sorrow but for joy (Jas 1.2). Complaining is only a sign of a hard and ungrateful heart. It is a response which cheapens the incomparable gift we have been given. We owe everything to the Lord for what He has done. It is for this reason that King David, when offered oxen to sacrifice by Araunah, refused to take them without payment, insisting, "No, but I will buy it from you for a price. I will not offer burnt offerings to the Lord my God that cost me nothing" (2 Sam 24.24).
Grace is a free gift, so let us give ourselves freely for it in return.
Grace is a free gift, so let us give ourselves freely for it in return.
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