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Nick Clegg (almost) on the Gospel

After watching the election debate on immigration last night, it struck me that Nick Clegg’s policy on immigration is the perfect illustration of our attitude to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Why did Clegg have to backtrack on his rhetoric of ‘amnesty’ for illegal immigrants? Because it was so offensive to ordinary people. No one welcomes the idea of people being accepted despite breaking the law; it is patently unfair. When challenged publicly on this policy, Clegg naturally realised this and backpedalled ferociously. The current Lib Dem policy on immigration states that it is not an amnesty, but rather an ‘earned route to citizenship’.

Isn’t this precisely the offense of the gospel? The gospel speaks of GRACE. What is grace? It is essentially an amnesty; it is people being accepted despite being law-breakers. This is the highest offense to those who consider themselves ‘law-abiding’ citizens of the world. It is offensive on two levels:

1) It is unfair for God to accept law-breakers without punishing them
2) It is unfair for God to accept law-breakers when ‘the rest of us’ have been following the law all along

What we propose instead is that religion shouldn’t be based on grace, but rather on works – in other words, an earned route to citizenship of heaven. Talk to the average person in the street and you will find that the vast majority believe (even if God is nothing more than a hypothesis to them still) that God, if he exists, should accept people on the basis of works and not grace.

When it comes to God, therefore, the average person is like Nick Clegg. We want to avoid the offense of the cross – the offense of God’s amnesty through Christ’s sacrifice – and instead we want to focus on what man can do to earn his own citizenship. This seems more civilized, more acceptable to the law-abiding man.

Yet what we do not realise is that we are all illegal immigrants.

None of us are law-abiding at heart, obeying least of all God’s command to love him with all our heart, mind, strength and soul.

As Romans 3:10 reminds us, “There is no-one righteous, not even one.” If God really did treat us according to our works rather than according to an amnesty, then no one would be granted citizenship at all.

It is those who feel smug about their chances of earning their citizenship – or at least those who prefer this option – who do not understand that they are one of the very same ‘illegals’ that they themselves look down on and call for God to punish. What they – and we – desperately need is this offer of an amnesty, extended by God to us, where we can be accepted despite our legal status as law-breakers.

I cannot tell you who to vote for in this election, but I can ask you to consider the most important election of them all – the election by a loving God of undeserving rebels (us). His vote entailed sacrifice – in death and blood – as his own Son went to the Cross to pay for our amnesty… so that justice could be done and we could be accepted.

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