The Christian Grace of Thankfulness (Colossians 3:15)...Continued from page 3

The Characteristics of Christian Thankfulness

How do we express our gratitude to God? How can you and I tell if we are really thankful?

Obviously, we praise God with our lips. The author of Hebrews says that through Christ we should "continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name" (Heb. 13:15). Words, nevertheless, are notoriously cheap, and the gratitude that contents itself with "Thank You's" to God, however piously and eloquently phrased, is cheap and insincere.

Real Christian thankfulness is a life-transforming dynamic. What, then, are its marks? Let us look at several of the most important ones.

If we are thankful to God, we shall obey Him. In nothing does Christian gratitude reveal itself more clearly than in obedience.

We tend to forget that God's great purpose for us is not merely to rescue us from hell. His ultimate goal is to mold us into the image of His Son, to make us altogether Christlike.

If you were to sum up the character of Jesus in a single word, what word would you choose? Love? Trust? Humility? Purity? Self-sacrifice? He, of course, embodied them all, and in perfect measure. But the word that best sums up the character of our Lord is the word obedience.

"My food," He said to His disciples, "is to do the will of Him who sent me, and to accomplish His work" (Jn. 4:34). That was His life-motto. With absolute truthfulness he could claim, "I always do what is pleasing to Him" (Jn. 8:29).

In everything He ever did, our Lord perfectly and completely fulfilled His Father's will. He obeyed to the letter all the demands of God's law, so that no fault or blemish could be found in Him. Then, in that same spirit of obedience to His Father's will, He offered Himself as a sacrifice for our sins.

God has redeemed us in order to make us like Jesus. If we are grateful for all that He has done for us, especially for our redemption through Christ's death on the cross, we shall express that gratitude by our obedience to His will. Out of our gratitude will be born the determination to live a yielded life, the desire to please God in all things. A thankful Christian is an obedient Christian.

A second, and closely related, mark of Christian thankfulness is service.

To be a disciple of Christ is to be a servant of Christ. If we live under the Lordship of Christ, you and I will devote our whole lives to Him and will labor steadily for His glory by ministering to the needs of others in His name. The supreme motive for this service will be our gratitude to God for His undeserved favor and goodness to us in Christ.

What a wealth of opportunities for service our Lord gives us! It may be teaching a church school class, or conducting a children's Bible club or youth group. It may be working in a church day-care center. It may be delivering meals to the homebound elderly, or running errands for them, or visiting in hospitals and nursing homes. It may be helping with the physically handicapped or the mentally retarded. It may be ministering to alcoholics or drug addicts, or befriending prostitutes or prisoners.