Gilbert Meilaender:
“That in these gray and latter days/There may be men whose life is praise,” Martin Franzmann’s great hymn says. But how easily we forget it. Forget that the gospel means freedom from the tyranny of good works — so that we may serve God in the whole of our life with good work. Work which in its quality and character would be an offering of praise and thanksgiving to God and would, therefore, serve our neigh-bors.
In its simplest and least complicated sense the word of the gospel announces that God is pleased with us, that God is on our side. Hence, anxiety about our fate, anxiety that might cripple our spirit and distort our work is dispelled. The energy that might have gone into trying to be sure that God is pleased with us is released for service to others. Freed from incessant introspection about our own fate, we may for the first time see rightly, see the tasks that God sets before us. Now we can do more than talk about freedom from sin and guilt; we can live as people who are really free. […]
Faith brings God’s acceptance and our security, not that we may simply bask in it but that we may live.
Not that we me complicate it, not that we may simply bask in it, but that we may simply live.