Research by experts at Johns Hopkins University has found that half of all American adults take a multivitamin every day, spending a total of more than $12 billion a year. Yet these medical experts conclude that supplementing a healthy diet is not necessary. If the average person eats a healthy diet, a supplemental vitamin has no benefits long-term or short-term, with the only exception being pregnant women who need extra folic acid and iron (“Is There Really Any Benefit to Multivitamins?” Johns Hopkins Medicine, accessed December 15, 2017). [A Note to the Pastor: Hold up a bottle of vitamins while you talk about supplementing grace unnecessarily.] We don’t need to supplement Jesus’s work with our own work, striving to earn favor or right standing with God. What Jesus did is enough.
Because of Jesus’s finished work in his death and resurrection, believers can rest in the security of God’s grace. Our debt is paid in full. We don’t need “faith and”: faith and performance, faith and keeping the Law, faith and perfection. We can rest in the finished work of Jesus for ourselves by believing in what he did for us.
We can rest from performance-based acceptance because God accepts us completely through his Son.
