Life-long Grace (Part III)

The life-long lover

Christianity is about God’s radical love for us in Jesus Christ. He tears down every defense, every lie, every fear we have to save us. Jesus did it once and for all. He also acts upon us our whole life long because we continue to suffer in this life, we continue to turn back to old patterns when we are stressed when the world is quarantined. He does not remove us from suffering; he meets us in it and redeems it. He loves us as only our Savior could.

How does The Lover love us?

Jesus tears down the prideful and lifts up the brokenhearted. He announced it as his ministry in his hometown (they threw him out just afterwards!). He strolled into his suburban synagogue, asked for the scroll from the Rabbi, found this spot in it and read it to the crowd:

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
    because he has anointed me
    to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
    and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
   to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
                                                            (Luke 4:18,19)

When he finished he sat down. Then he said, I’ve done all of this—I have already fulfilled these promises.

The crowd got so mad they threw him out of the synagogue and tried to push him off a cliff! They were offended! He had grown up in their midst yet he claimed to be God himself. Not only that, Jesus implied that they needed to be saved. He implied that they were poor, in prison, blind, and oppressed. He announced he came to save such people.

The first thing Jesus does is to flush out our pride. He kills what’s killing us. He exposes the thing that isolates us, keeps us away from him and others. He loves us by showing us a mirror. The mirror is the standard of love.

Jesus uses his standard of love, or even our own standard, to convict us, to get through to us. What is his standard? He said, “Be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). His standard is to love others as ourselves and to love God, as he does. All the time. Even when we are hungry, angry, lonely, or tired. If you have ever tried to do this (as I have and do on a regular basis), then you will know that you cannot. He holds up a mirror where we think we are loving just fine on our own and don’t need him or his grace. He convicts us because he loves us.

There was once a lawyer who thought he was following all of God’s commands pretty well. He asked Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life. His question showed he was quite confident that he would be able to do it. He could handle the “big” commands to love. Jesus listed a few of the 10 Commandments that had to do with loving his neighbor. The lawyer felt pretty confident and said, “I’ve done those.”

“Teacher,” he declared, “all these I have kept since I was a boy.”

Jesus looked at him and loved him. “One thing you lack,” he said. “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

At this, the man’s face fell. He went away sad because he had great wealth.

(Mark 10:20-22)

The danger was this man was justifying himself. He was trying to live by the standard of love instead of by Jesus’s grace. It is one or the other. We live either by grace through faith in Jesus or by the standard of love. Jesus saw his love of wealth. Thus, Jesus went right after his greed, exposed it, and showed that this man was not able to follow God’s standard or anyone else’s. The lawyer wasn’t as good as he thought. Jesus used love to expose the man’s lack of it. The standard of love will ask for more and more and you will never fulfill it. Jesus shook the man out of faith in his own abilities. He was driving him to love himself. He was driving him to need grace. Jesus knew that his grace alone gives us life.

Jesus might also use your own standard to get through to you. Have you ever yelled at someone texting while driving only to find your index tapping the screen at a red light? Have you ever made your child apologize for being rude when you used the same tone to your spouse? Or to them? He convicts us using the standard of love. He puts us to death. Why does he do this? He exposes us in order to heal us, not to condemn us.

Jesus’ love for us is a bold, shameless, humble love that finds us in our worst spot and claims us as his own. When we are loved like that, we can’t help but love back.

New Desires

Jesus raises the dead. He brings us back to himself, to his forgiveness, to his grace. Not just once. Over and over. Jesus won’t stop our whole life long. Lutheran theologian, Gerharde Forde described the effect of God’s action to us in his book, “On Being a Theologian of the Cross.” The way Jesus loves us—uncovering us where we want to remain covered—produces fruit, healing, new desires in us, but they are not our own. They are gifts—like flowers growing from a dead seed.

“The righteousness that avails before God is a being claimed by the crucified and resurrected Christ. It is not like accomplishing something but like dying and coming to life. It is not like earning something but more like falling in love. It is not the attainment of a long-sought goal, the arrival at the end of a process, but the beginning of something entirely new, something never before heard of or entertained.”[1]

That is why becoming a Christian and growing as a Christian are so similar. We were dead; he made us alive.

The grace of Jesus Christ changes our patterns. The place where we were prideful and isolated is humbled and forgiven. The place where we were wounded and alone is loved and redeemed. You know the change has happened because you start to tell on yourself. Things you hid become testimonies of his grace in your life. You ask for help where you vowed you never would. You make amends where you were defensive before. You are free to be just where you are because he is with you and for you. You risk being known because you are known by him. You want others to know him too.

We love others and him because he has loved us first (1 John 4:19). Love is fruit from a grace-fed root. When we are convicted by the standard of love—we read it in the Scripture, our kids catch us in our words, or some other mirror—we feel good guilt, the kind that cleans you from a destructive way and brings you back to yourself. The Spirit reminds us we are already forgiven by Christ. He gets into the nitty-gritty of our marriages, of our personal habits, of our parenting, of our childhood, and he saves. Once and for all - and over and over.

The New Testament is written by Jesus’ disciples telling on themselves. They are boasting in their weakness. They’re not ashamed. They invite us into this lifelong relationship. Perhaps it is summarized best by the Samaritan woman who met Jesus at the well (John 4). She had had five divorces and had a new man in the works. Jesus cut through her defenses in order to redeem her. After their encounter, she boasted to everyone in her hometown. She was isolated before; now she creates family because Jesus has made her his family. “Come see a man who told me all that I ever did! Can this be the Christ?” (John 4:29).

Being known, forgiven, and loved in our worst place frees us. We don’t like the old way. We have new desires. We find Jesus is making us more ourselves. We become more aware of our need for him, more aware of His grace, and freer to give it away.

The Lord said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.” (2 Corinthians 12:9)

[1] Gerhard Forde, On Being a Theologian of the Cross: Reflections on Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation, 1518. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 106.