Grace is not an Alley-Oop

In honor of March Madness, I will write this essay with a thoroughly basketball metaphor! I have good news and I have bad news for sinners striving for better. I’ll start with the bad news.

Grace is not an alley-oop. We tend to think of the good news of salvation in Jesus as a collaborative effort in practical terms. We think of ourselves as active agents and responders to the good news. We know on some level that we can’t do it on our own. We’ve experienced enough life to know we’re not independent agents, but we tend to think of our salvation commentated as a “Jesus with the assist” type moment. We view ourselves incredibly positively. We’re in the gym of holiness, striving toward goodness, and just need that perfect pass at the right time from Jesus the MVP to allow us to dunk the ball, or get the goal, or score the touchdown… (enter your own sports ball metaphor here.) But I have bad news: grace is not an alley-oop.

Ephesians 2:1 says “You were dead in your trespasses and sins.” Not ill, not under conditioned, not without the right coach, not even mortally wounded and on life support, but dead. This is the bad news. Those who are dead are not active agents; they cannot receive the pass no matter how perfectly timed. They cannot receive the assist, dunk the ball, or contribute to their own salvation.

But now we arrive at the good news: grace is not an alley-oop. Yes, the very same news is delightfully good. Because we were dead in sin, Christ is the active agent, not just entering with the assist, but He ensures the entire play succeeds in its purpose! A wise man once told me, “Have good enough theology to use bad metaphors.” Every metaphor involving God breaks down at some point, and here is where this metaphor no longer serves its purpose because it is far too narrow to represent the whole image. Grace is not an alley-oop; salvation is not an alley-oop. Justification is not an alley-oop. Nor is mortification of sin, or regeneration, or atonement, or sanctification. None of these can happen without the power of the Trinitarian God at work from beginning to end. Our alley-oop image is too small: Christ is not just the teammate in this play of salvation, but he is the coach of the entire team, the designer of the play, the referee ensuring fairness, the air in our lungs and in the ball, and the reason we exist to play at all. No, grace is not an alley-oop, because grace is not just the moment of justification in the individual tale of salvation, but the metanarrative of God’s plan from creation to eternity to call a people His own and bring glory to Himself.

Two of the best words in scripture are “but God” they indicate that just when something is as wrong, dark, and broken as it can possibly be, God enters the story and changes everything. These are the words that change the gospel entirely and make its non-alley-oop state remarkably good news. We read these words as we return to Ephesians 2:4-10:

 “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, ⁵ even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— ⁶ and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, ⁷ so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. ⁸ For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, ⁹ not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” 

This grace is a gift of God. We don’t have to work for it, in fact, we can’t work to earn it. We are unable to work to make ourselves worthy of this gift of God. We cannot train to catch the ball or receive the assist because in our sinful state, we don’t just need a leg up on the competition, we need resuscitation. Salvation is not an assist, it is new life.

A grace-filled life is not filled with effortless relaxation; the grace-filled saint is given a new goal to work toward. Instead of wanting to make our own name great by highlighting our own efforts and minimizing Jesus’ salvific work to just an alley-oop, we can instead minimize our contribution and thereby rightly glorify and praise Him more knowing this life would be impossible without His life, death, and resurrection. We receive the grace of God as a gift not, as a result of works (vs. 8-9) and then we expend effort to walk in the good works prepared for us (vs. 10). This new life and our drive toward sanctification and holiness does involve effort. Philippians 2:12 calls us to “work out our salvation with fear and trembling.” When we separate passages like Ephesians 2:8-9 from verse 10, we do ourselves a disservice because we lose the connection of gift and effort. We work toward holiness, we train in godliness and strive and work out of our sanctification not FOR salvation, but BECAUSE of it. This is a crucial difference because that is the good news, friend, that should change the way we view ourselves, broaden our awareness of the bigger story, and should change the gratitude we have for Jesus. Grace is not an alley-oop. Let’s live and train like people who have been given new life, not just an assist.