The Problem of “Grace, but…”
Awhile back, Russell Mann wrote something on grace that I commented on. He and I probably have the same sentiment about grace right now. As someone who has recently been hit full in the face by grace (an experience where I was a complete jerk and the response was to love me in a powerful action, which undid me and redeemed my life in the momen), I wanted to continue this conversation. Or perhaps simply ramble mindlessly about something I am truly unqualified and unworthy to comment on.
I’ve written on grace before — it’s a powerful thing, you know — and I’ve even been called someone who “gets it”, high praise indeed. I’m simply someone who desperately needs it all the time. This is about my own need for grace.
The doctrines of grace are tricky, at least to me. But I wonder if my own problems with grace stem from a very particular problem, a confusion of the duties of my role as a Son of God with the duties of the Church, or my role in the Church.
My own duties must take Pastor Visky’s lessons to heart: “God’s will is not my business: my business is to change God’s will!” I cannot look at my own life and judge whether or not I am living up to some standard. That’s simply stupid. For I am never good enough for the Law. I stand condemned in even my finest moments, in desperate need of something that I do not deserve. Me getting grace? Only because God has chosen to give me gifts I do not deserve. I cannot use the Law to see if I am one of the Chosen. Nor can I evaluate someone else’s life and determine whether or not, by their actions, they have experienced the grace of Christ, whether they are experiencing the grace of Christ. There is no “grace and…” in my life: I can have only grace because only grace alone will be sufficient.
And yet there is prevenient grace, where I work out my salvation and ongoing sanctification (increasing holiness) with God. I have found that as I grow I only see more areas that show a distressed image of the Increate, places I had not seen that are in even more desperate need of unmerited favour of the Lord God Almighty, the One True Living God.
I cannot reconcile these points. I hold them both and acknowledge that they make no sense together for me.
Yet I may also have a role within the Church as a body, whereby we must work with each other to work out our salvation in fear and trembling together. If I believe my brother or sister in Christ to be living in such a way that they could feel God’s grace in that area, I am duty-bound to go to them privately and discuss it. If they say that I am in error, I am duty-bound to bring a wiser and more experienced Christian with me to discuss this with my brother or sister. This provides an opportunity for the Elder to tell me that I am wrong, that I have made a accusation that is false and that I must seek forgiveness and have this worked out with God and this other person. Otherwise, the Elder can work with that person, allowing me to pray for us all.
Of course, this then opens me up to having people come and help me with areas of sin in my own life. Which I would prefer that they do not do, since I live as though the Law was my righteousness rather than Christ, rather than the Gospel.
As a corporate body, the Church may indeed need to evaluate whether or not someone has been deceived and knows not Christ, or is deceiving us as a “false prophet”. The only real case I recall from the New Testament is where Paul tells the church in Corinth to send out from the community the man who is sleeping with his father’s wife (apparently not his mother). In his case, Paul has them send him out from among them for the saving of his soul, that he might be saved like a brand snatched from the fire. I do not recall anyone saying that he is not of the elect, or that they are evaluating whether or not grace is in his life. This sin of his, unacceptable for the community before God, is dealt with through the escalating process of concern, culminating in the “excommunication” (that is, the putting outside the community, denying the hospitality of the community to the man, both physically and spiritually). But when he repents, he is to be let back in and restored to fellowship, as Paul writes in the second epistle to the church at Corinth.
Much of the time when we talk about grace, we confuse the private and public roles we have. Our private roles are those of our own faith, worked out within the community. Our public roles are those that are of the community, roles that will live beyond us, roles of membership and leadership.
Perhaps, too, we should differentiate between the member who is actively unrepentant of some sin against God (as opposed to even repeatedly sinning and repenting; this requires more space to discuss than I wish to take) and those in leadership who are unrepentant and advocating sinning for others. Including those who say that we should “sin so that grace may abound”. Should I abuse my fellows so that I may experience the grace of reconciliation? “God forbid!” Leaders, however, are always held to a higher standard. They must be weeded out, and we must be very careful and ever vigilant against what the Neew Testament calls “false prophets”, those who would bring a gospel different from the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
I am required to be wary of the false prophets, to seek out the scriptures to see if what the prophets in my community (those who bring the word of the Lord) speak truth. But I cannot live my life trying to determine whether I have been saved or not. I would simply live every moment crying out “Please save me!”, which some Christians would advocate. I cannot: I have to work and live. There must be some time where I can fall back on God’s grace, knowing that is by His will that I am save and not by my will to live rightly.
And yet I must increase in living rightly, which isn’t easy because life is full of hard things that must be done.
James, brother of our Lord, is right that we must not believe that we can live in a haphazard way and say that we have faith. It is interesting that we concentrate on this part of his epistle and not the other parts, such as where he says “Mercy triumphs over judgment!” [2:13, NIV]. He’s saying more than it seems if you read only parts of it. For he closes thus:
My brothers, if one of you should wander from the truth and someone should bring him back, remember this: Whoever turns a sinner from the error of his way will save him from death and cover over a multitude of sins. [5:19-20, NIV]
In one moment, he is condemning the rich among the twelve tribes scattered abroad; in the next, he includes them in “brothers” and tells them to wait patiently for the Lord’s coming. It is not a well-argued book but a series of thoughts, mostly simply placed together. A series of “ands” rather than a long argument like Paul’s letter to the church in Rome. He advocates our looking at our lives and living according to the Perfect Law, which seems to be the grace of God in Jesus Christ.
All of which led me to read James epistle again.
And grace frustrates me. It also saves me, in a way that is both simple and complex, easy and hard. If I could earn it, I would. If I could make the Law my righteousness, I would. I would prefer anything to my desperate need, my awful emptiness apart from God’s action. Last week, I got hit with grace from someone. I was being a jerk and couldn’t get out of it, somehow. Maybe you know what that’s like. And here came grace. Something I didn’t, couldn’t earn. A gift to me that wasn’t about me, although given to me. And it crushed me.
The situation was, is complex. I have no easy answers, no answers, still. Boxed on one side by the sky being blue and told it’s green. And still, this.
As a guy who spends most of his time dissembling (a politispeak for dishonesty), I probably need grace more than I want to admit. Even that sentence reeks of how much I need something I don’t deserve, how bankrupt I am apart from Christ’s richness. In Him I am whole. In Him I am rich, given every spiritual blessing. My years of hiding have proven debilitating: years of trying not to say what I think, trying not to piss everyone off. I say “80% gray” and they say “Black! You’re saying ‘Black’!” Well, it looks pretty black but it isn’t. It’s 80%. This sounds like what Chris Argyris refers to as skilled incompetence. I say that I need to unilaterally control the situation and thereby create the self-fullfilling prophecy of the unaccpetance of my beliefs. Broken and beaten, I stumble back into the night, back into Plato’s cave.
I yearn for something I do not have. Or is it that I am afraid to touch? Grace, in its finality, brushes aside my fears. There is only the gift. My efforts are not only useless; they do not enter into the picture. They not only make no result but they have no meaning to it. As much as I want to avoid God and his grace, to live and die by the law that condemns, he keeps pouring it on. Can I be within the community and hold beliefs that differ, while still clinging to Christ? Can I sustain my practice of my faith with only Christ, with only grace?
