I Think God Counts Deeds

You would deny it if somebody put it to you directly, and you would be sincere.

If a man at your church said, do you think God thinks less of you for renting, you would say no. Immediately. And you would mean it, because you know the doctrine and you could teach it and you have taught it.

And underneath the doctrine there is something else, and it has been there a long time, and you have never once said it out loud in any form.

It came up again on Sunday, when a family in the church closed on a house, and there was an announcement, and everybody was glad, and you were glad, and something in you went very slightly cold at the same time.

Not envy. You have checked. It is not that.

It is closer to standing. As though a line had been crossed by them that has not been crossed by you, and as though the crossing were recorded.

Here is the shape of it, as near as I can get it. Somewhere in you there is a ledger, and it has names in it, and next to each name is a column, and in that column is what a person has arrived at. And you believe, in a place well below your theology, that God is the one keeping it.

Two floors in one man

Let me describe what is happening in you, because it is very common in careful people and it has almost nothing to do with what you believe.

There are two floors. On the upper floor is the theology, which is correct and could be defended tomorrow. Grace, not works. No accumulation of property recorded anywhere. All of that has been said to other people and meant.

And below it there is a much older floor, laid down long before the theology, by a family and a town and a decade, and on that floor a settled man owns and an unsettled man does not.

The upper floor does not reach the lower one. That is the whole difficulty, and it is why the doctrine has not helped you, and it is why you would deny this sincerely.

You have a lower floor that your theology has never once reached, and holding both of those at the same time has never made you a hypocrite. The Holy Spirit is the one who has been on the lower floor with you, and it is written in 2 Corinthians 5 that we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.

And notice what the ledger does to a Sunday.

A family closes on a house. And instead of one thing happening, two things happen. There is genuine gladness, and something is scored, and the first one cannot be had cleanly because of the second.

That is a good Sunday spoiled by a column that does not exist.

You have been paying a tax on other people's good news, and a Sunday announcement has never once been able to cost you anything you actually had. The Holy Spirit is the one who put the having in the present tense while the tent is still a tent, and it is written in 2 Corinthians 5 that we have a building of God.

You have been grading a Sunday by a column nobody is keeping, and a family closing on a house has never once moved a line that anybody drew. The written word says we have a building already and puts it in the present tense, and the Spirit of God is the one who wrote it in that tense.

We have a building of God

Here is the verse, and the tense is the whole argument.

For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. (2 Corinthians 5:1, King James Version)

We have. Present tense.

Not we will have. Not it is being prepared. Have, now, currently, while this body is still doing what it is doing and while whatever you live in is still rented.

And look at what he calls the thing you live in now. A tabernacle. A tent. Paul uses the same word for a body and a temporary dwelling, and he does it without any anxiety at all, because the permanent thing is already in hand.

You have already been handed the house that is being counted, and the deed to it has never once been a thing anybody on this earth could grant or withhold. The Holy Spirit is the one who put it that way rather than in the future, and second Corinthians 5 says we have, in the present tense.

And notice not made with hands.

That phrase is doing something specific. It rules out the whole category. Everything made with hands, every house anybody has ever bought or built or inherited, is a different class of thing entirely from the one being described.

So a deed is not a small version of what God gives. It is not on the same ledger at all. There is no column where those two are compared, because they are not the same kind of object.

You are holding something in a category that no paperwork on earth has ever once been able to enter, and a title deed has never been a smaller version of it. The written word says not made with hands and rules out the whole class, and the Spirit of God is the one who drew that line.