Life-long Grace (Part I)
Christianity shares the “Golden Rule”: “Love others as you love yourself” and “Love God as yourself” with many other religions, the Jewish faith in particular. It even shares this standard with all the ballads of classic rock (see Sean’s post on love). It’s often the default setting for Christians—God just wants me to love this person (who drives me crazy). When people disagree about religion and want to be nice to each other, we try to find common ground. We might conclude—at least we all just want to love people—Christianity has the “Law” of love in common with the world. Yet, all other religions say you should and can follow that law. Christianity says you should yet can’t. WHAT?!
Is that really what Christianity is all about? It is just another—rather far-fetched—reiteration of the Golden Rule? This standard of love is in Christianity, but it is not Christianity. Christianity is about a person (Three persons in One, to be exact) and the grace he gives. His love for us is so radical it awakens the dead.
“The Law says, ‘do this,’ and it is never done.
Grace says, ‘believe in this,’ and everything is already done.”[1]
The next three posts will introduce the faith he gives that holds us in his love.
PART I
The First Time and Every Time
We want to get love right, but we don’t. The French play, “Huit Clos” (or “No Exit”) by Jean-Paul Sartre, describes hell as eternity with eight other people… and no way out. (Sartre was certainly not making a case for the grace of Christ. But here he is featuring, in my take, what humanity does to itself without intervening grace!) We find a way to drive one another crazy or implode on ourselves. Our Creator (let’s assume we agree on that for the time being) could leave us to ourselves and eventually we would torture each other. Life, as it is right now, would be—as said by the Enlightenment thinker John Locke and demonstrated by the never-ending reality television show “Survivor”—nasty, brutish, and short. Life is hopeless if we are left to ourselves.
Christianity says God came to us. This would not be good news were it not for His Son, Jesus. God could judge us for all the big and little ways we haven’t loved him, ourselves, or anyone else. He could let us reap what we sow. He could simply not intervene. But he did come. He not only came but loved us at our worst.
I came not to be served, but to serve, and to give my life as a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:28).
I came to seek and save the lost. (Luke 19:10)
I did not come to judge the world, but to save the world. (John 12:47)
Jesus came for the lost, the least, the loveless. He came to save, not give us a pat on the back and say, you’re fine (or say, “you’re not” and electrocute us). He came to give his life as a ransom for many. God loved us by giving up his life for us on a cross. There he unleashed his full anger at hate. There he killed the lie that we are alone in the world. God took the judgment upon himself instead of us. He loved us first.
Jesus made us able to stand before God—in the face of the Golden Rule—and said, these are the ones you gave to me; they stand in my forgiveness, my holiness, my peace (John 6:39). This is called being “justified by faith” in Jesus Christ. My Christian tradition is the Anglican Church. The founders wrote this into its DNA in the XI Article of Religion, “Of the Justification of Man”: “We are accounted righteous before God, only for the merit of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ by Faith, and not for our own works or deservings. Wherefore, that we are justified by faith is a most wholesome Doctrine, and very full of comfort.” As a human, Jesus took our place. As God, Jesus saved us from all the things that separate us from him: the “sin” that causes death. Jesus accomplished that rescue.
The Holy Spirit makes Jesus’ rescue and God’s love real to us, personally. The Spirit gives faith to believe God even though we don’t yet see the fullness of that rescue. “In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it” (Ephesians 1:13-15). We are not alone. We were given the Spirit to seal up His promise and guarantee its fulfillment. Jesus sent his Spirit to be with his people when he ascended into heaven (Acts 1). The Spirit comforts us in all things: Jesus won’t lose us; he redeems everything; he keeps his promises.
That’s how we first meet Jesus. Somehow all of this matters to you. You realize God did it just for you. The Holy Spirit gives you faith. You might have grown up with him since infancy. You might meet him in your last breath. The Holy Spirit singles you out of the crowd and whispers into his microphone: because of what Jesus did, you are fully known, fully loved, fully safe, fully forgiven. Don’t be afraid; I’ve got you.
You met Jesus because he intervened. He showered grace upon you. He doesn’t say, now it’s up to you! He is for you and with you the whole way. He takes us deeper into his grace. We see how big it is.
“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.”
(Ephesians 2:8,9)
[1] Gerhard Forde, On Being a Theologian of the Cross: Reflections on Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation, 1518. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 107.
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