No, Paul’s intent was
not to denigrate human achievement or deny the validity of hard work. His was a
preemptive strike against a false gospel that he knew to be circulating among
the churches; a gospel that said one must do something in order to be in right
standing with God when the true gospel proclaims that it is all of grace and
right standing is possessed by faith alone. That being said, his declaration does
offer a helpful perspective as regards human achievement.
Human beings are capable
of remarkable things. Made in the image of God and empowered to manage the
affairs of his creation, men and women have harnessed the innate resources of
the earth and put them to use. The results have been mixed, to be sure, as all
of our efforts are tinged with the corruption of sin, but there is no denying
that we are capable of extraordinary achievement. Think of it -- we put a man
on the moon!
We need to put that accomplishment in perspective, however. When Neil Armstrong uttered
his famous prophecy after putting the first human foot on the surface of the
moon, it signaled the culmination of nearly a decade of human experimentation,
innovation, funding and flying, a harnessing of resources with few precedents
in the history of mankind. But if we measure the distance he traveled by the
scale that distances in space are commonly measured, light years (the distance
light travels in a year moving at 186,000 miles/second, the speed of
light), he traveled about one second! All that effort for one second’s worth of
space distance!!
There’s fruit to be
gleaned from this. While we want to have dreams and work hard to achieve them,
the gospel opens the vast reaches of eternity and puts our striving in proper
perspective. Knowing Christ tells us that we must never forsake eternal reward
for temporal gain for there isn’t any earthly achievement that rivals gaining
Christ, not even stepping on to the moon.
