An Illustration of Faith as Grace, Not a Good Work

In his book The Mystery of Christ, a series of fictionalized pastoral counseling sessions (based on actual events), the Episcopal priest Robert Farrar Capon shares a number of helpful ways of understanding the nature of God’s salvation, including this helpful parable of how faith is a grace, not a [good] work:

Suppose I were to tell you that I had already buried, under a flat rock on a piece of property you own, $ 1,000,000 in crisp, new $1,000 bills. And suppose I were also to tell you that I have no intention of ever taking…