Grace and Our Problem with Love
“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” – Ephesians 2:8-9
We are beginning our blog by unpacking Dandelion’s vision statement. “Magnifying God’s grace in Jesus Christ to the skeptic and wounded.” It’s an odd thing to explain a statement that is “supposed to be” self-explanatory and capture what you or your organization are all about. But we live in a broken world and communication is often the first casualty to our sin, so we will do our best to expand upon this perfectly amazing vision statement.
Our subject is: God’s grace in Jesus Christ. What does that mean? Well, we could talk about grace in general terms because everyone loves the idea of grace. It’s often how we describe things we like that seem to have an innate goodness, an almost inexplicable quality. Legendary actors like Audrey Hepburn or Cary Grant had style and grace. Or amazing athletes like Roger Federer or Simone Biles moved with such power and grace. We like grace, and we like graceful things. The idea of grace is generous, understanding, creates space. All good things. Grace is something we can all get behind, but it’s not enough as just a concept or an abstract idea. When we leave it in that generic realm our definition of grace becomes too shallow, self-centered. We tend to think of it as unconditional affirmation of who we are. As Dr. Ashley Null says in his audiobook Performance Identity, “Your dog gives you unconditional affirmation…but a dog never challenges your right to be the center of your own universe.” That doesn’t work in human relationships, nor does it work with God. Relationships by definition always challenge your right to be the center of your own universe because you literally have to engage with someone else, another person.
Here is where the rub begins for us humans. Grace in the Christian faith is not just an idea, not just a concept that affirms us and makes us feel better about ourselves. Grace is a person, Jesus Christ. This rubs us the wrong way because it means that we don’t need just “a little help from our friends” to get by, as Lennon and McCartney wrote in 1967 and Joe Cocker made famous in 1968. For the record, it would have been a bigger hit for the Beatles if they didn’t have Ringo sing the lead vocals. Cocker puts him to shame! Oh Ringo. But I digress. We need more than a little help. We need more than just affirming words. We need to be saved. And only Jesus Christ can and has done that.
The issue for us is what we need to be saved from. We prefer to externalize our problems. We like the idea of salvation from some sort of outside oppressor or enemy. A bad boss or job. No job. A bully. A political party or leader you don’t like. An unfaithful lover. No lover. A pandemic. All completely valid and real problems with which we may need real help. But any external problem is a symptom of a bigger issue. Here’s where it gets more uncomfortable. Our biggest problem is not external, not something outside of us, but rather lies within us. An internal brokenness that we can’t fix with the power of positive thinking, or with education, or employment, or by going on Match.com, and that we cannot vaccinate away. In a word, our problem is sin.
There have been a lot of attempts to define sin in different ways over the centuries, but I think the best one I have heard is: sin is our inability to love the way that we should. We are broken lovers. It goes back to that idea of wanting to always be the center of the universe. Love certainly does not work that way. Jesus sums up God’s commandments saying: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:37-40). Even atheists and agnostics affirm this emphasis on love. We’ll stick with Lennon (a dreaming atheist) and McCartney, since we’re already on a Beatles kick, who sang “All you need is love. Love is all you need.” True enough…BUT we are broken lovers and are unable to do it. We do not love God, each other, this world we live in, or ourselves in the ways in which we should. We cannot give love, and we cannot even receive love in the ways that we should. The bulk of our pain and suffering in this world stems from this problem. The late writer and pastor, Robert Farrar Capon, said, “Love, as we so regularly mismanage it, is the largest single factor in making our personal worlds go down the drain: psychiatrists’ couches are not kept warm by patients complaining of the depredations of total strangers.” (Kingdom, Grace, and Judgment 214). (Read about being wounded here and skeptical here)
Though not a psychologist I have been in ministry for the last 18 years, and I’ve been pastoring churches for the last 9 years, and I can attest to the truth of Capon’s statement. None of the folks who came into my office for counsel over the years were there because of some impersonal issue. Every time it was a relational issue, whether that be their relationship with God, another person, or themselves. It was a problem with love or the lack thereof. I’m also a singer/songwriter and most of my songs have to do with this subject. In fact, it would be impossible to number the songs out there that have to do with falling in or out of love. We are broken lovers, and we cannot fix ourselves. This is a heart problem from which we need to be saved.
The good news is that Jesus came for this very reason. Remember that famous passage from John 3 that you sometimes see held up on a poster at football games? “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him” (emphasis mine). The act of true love that we all need, that transforms our hearts, that removes our sin from us as far as the east is to the west and saves us, comes from him. He is love. Jesus does not judge us. He does not condemn us. He forgives us. Hear that: you are forgiven. You are forgiven for all your failed attempts to love, and you are loved by him.
That’s where our problem with love points us…all those external problems that are symptoms of our broken hearts…point us to his cross. There he suffered for our lack of love. There he was condemned by people just like you and me, by broken lovers. And there he forgave our sins. He’s not just telling us that we need love and hoping we can figure it out someday with a little help. Jesus actually IS loving us, giving us himself…by conquering sin and death for us. The only hope for you and me to bear the fruit of real love for others in our life, to have new hearts, is if we believe him, if we trust him. And we will not believe and we will not trust unless we hear that he is God’s grace for us. You are forgiven in Jesus Christ. Believe him. Trust him.
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