Oh, the sun runs its course from the east to the west
With the best of our motives illumined,
Then it sinks with a sigh in the dusk of the heart
And our virtue lies worthless as rumor.
You can be what you like if you like what you are—
We reflect but the sum of our creeds;
But we don’t seem to seize on the tenets we hold,
And they slip through the sieve of our deeds.
When we see our mistakes, we ache with regret
And the pain makes a lasting impression,
But we are stoics at heart when the time is at hand
To beat our breasts and make a true confession.
Mark Heard for the win, as usual. The poet laureate of the Christian struggle knew well that human beings are desperately in need of grace, because left to our own efforts and strength, even our best starts will not end well. This is the problem that all human religions try to solve with rules and structures and authorities and consequences; but they cannot solve it, only lessen it, because none of those things can touch the heart. Only God’s scandalous solution can do that.
And the grace of God is scandalous, make no mistake. That’s why there have always been so many arguments about it through the centuries. As we move through this series based on the work of John M. G. Barclay, whose books Paul and the Gift and Paul and the Power of Grace have transformed the study of Paul’s letters, we can see that one thing Dr. Barclay’s work does is deepen our understanding of why God’s grace is such a scandal to the world. As he recognizes, the concept of grace is rooted in our understanding of gifts and gift-giving—what qualifies as a gift? What are gifts for?—and before Jesus, the world’s understanding was clear: you give gifts to those who are worthy to receive them with the expectation that you will receive a benefit in return. Whether you define that benefit in material terms or not, you expect it to be appropriate to the size and value of your gift.
That was even true among the Jews, for all that God’s word taught them to define both worthiness and benefit in different terms than the rest of the world; and then into that came Jesus, and then his disciples, teaching something profoundly different—and in the process, presenting a grave threat to the human ego. We want to believe we have earned the praise we get and the good things we have. We value success because we can take the credit for it, because our accomplishments are just that: ours. We want to believe we are worthy, we are good enough, we are capable of saving ourselves. We don’t want gifts that make us feel inferior or inadequate—we want gifts we could repay, if we needed to. So that’s the kind of world we build. And then along comes Jesus, and along comes Paul, and along comes all this talk of grace, and suddenly things get really uncomfortable. Maybe we don’t feel that consciously, but dig down in our souls and you’ll find all kinds of resistance.
That’s one reason legalism is an ever-present temptation and tendency for the church; it’s also why, as I said a moment ago, we argue about grace so much—and why we so often argue about it without defining it, because that allows us to neuter it without admitting we’re doing so. Emily said last week that we aren’t trying to define grace in this series, and that’s true, but one thing we are doing is helping each of us come to recognize our own working definition of grace. Barclay’s greatest gift to the church is in his description of six separate “perfections” of grace, which expose the reality that most arguments about grace are really just people talking past each other, because they’re not really talking about the same thing.
As a refresher, let’s take a moment to run over Barclay’s six perfections of grace. The first is superabundance: “exceedingly abundantly above all we can ever ask or imagine,” “full measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over,” in the words of Scripture. The second one he calls singularity: the idea that the giver is motivated only by goodness and benevolence. The third, he calls priority—it’s not a good word for it, because we tend to hear that word and think importance, which isn’t the point at all; but I’m not sure there is a good word for it. The point here is one of time: the idea that God’s gift is prior to any human initiative. Fourth, incongruity: the gift is given without regard to the worth of the recipient. It’s the “what, them?” response. Fifth, efficacy: the gift has the effect the giver wants it to have; it fully achieves what it’s intended to do. Sixth, non-circularity: the gift is given with no expectation of response.
As a note of clarification, if the word “perfections” seems strange to you, think about the phrase “a perfect storm”: everything that makes a storm stormy taken to its logical extreme, with nothing left out or moderated in any way. These are aspects of the concept of grace which we can understand as absolute and absolutely essential—or not. Our understanding of grace depends on which ones we perfect—and perhaps to what degree—and which ones we don’t.
Now, of the six perfections Barclay identifies, I think there are a couple we especially tend to resist because they present a particular challenge to the human ego, and I think one of these is the question of the priority of grace. Does God initiate, or does he give his blessing in response to human request or human offering? Many Christians would say no, God’s grace is not prior—human freedom requires that it not be. There’s a song by the Southern Gospel songwriter Alfred B. Smith called “The Whippoorwill Song” which ends by putting these words in God’s mouth: “And if you want Me to, I’ll make you whole;/I’ll only do it though if you say so./I’ll never force you for I love you so;/I give you freedom; is it yes or no?” God extends the offer, but only gives grace if we ask for it. It’s a popular position and has been for a very long time; but I don’t believe it’s a biblical one. What we see expressed poetically and through parables in the teaching of Jesus, and then expanded and developed logically and propositionally in the teaching of Paul, is the truth that God’s grace is prior to any human initiative.
One passage where we see that clearly in Ephesians 2:1-10, which we read last week; another is here in Romans 8. In everything that happens, no matter what, God is at work for those who love him—and who are those who love him? Those whom he has called according to his purpose. Then Paul unpacks this: those whom God foreknew, he predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son; those whom he predestined, he called; those he called, he justified—he made right in their relationships with him; those he justified, he glorified. At no point does God hold up the process and make it conditional on anything anyone else does—it moves with the massive inevitability of an avalanche.
Indeed, that’s the point, as we see from the phrase I skipped: “that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.” If God’s grace is only given in response to human request and acquiescence, then in theory, Jesus could have died for nothing and no one. It would have been possible that no one would respond. God the Father isn’t here for that. He makes it certain: Jesus will have many brothers and sisters who become children of God through his death, resurrection, and ascension.
Some argue that “those God foreknew” makes his grace conditional on some human action. I used to believe that, until I realized that that interpretation doesn’t work because “foreknew” is followed by “predestined,” which is a really strong word. God’s action in choosing us precedes our own existence. If he foreknew that we would make choices that he predestined us to make, what is that? What would be the difference between God foreknowing that he was going to do something and just doing it? No, God foreknowing us doesn’t mean that we did anything to make him choose us or that we were required to do anything before he would choose us. So what does it mean? I think it tells us God’s choice is not capricious. He didn’t just line up all the names of everyone who would ever live and throw darts to choose people until he ran out of darts. We don’t know the basis of his choice because he doesn’t want us to, lest we make it the basis for spiritual pride (which we would), but he had his reasons, and we can trust them.
Along with this, we can trust his choice, and we can trust his grace, precisely because his grace is prior to anything we do—and everything we do. This is why Paul can say, “If God is for us, who can possibly be against us? He gave up his Son for us—is there anything else that could be too much? Who could bring a charge against us when God has justified us? Jesus who died for us and was raised for us is now standing next to the Father as our advocate, and who or what could possibly make him stop loving us? Neither death nor life can do it—no spiritual powers, good or evil—nothing in the present, and nothing yet to come—not a single reality of creation can make God stop loving us.” He chose us before all of it—he foreknew all of it, including everything bad we haven’t done yet. The worst we have yet to do will come as news to us, but not to him; he knew all about it already and still chose us. What can possibly overcome that?
Put another way, because of God, we have been saved. Because of him, we are being saved. Because of him, we will be saved. None of it depends on us, for good or ill. None of it is on our shoulders. None of it is still up for grabs. He has already done it, he has done all of it, and it’s as certain as this morning’s sunrise. His grace comes first, and nothing can undo it. We have nothing to fear. We can rest in him, in the grateful assurance that we are his—forever.
Wonderful, right? Yes, absolutely—but the sinful ego begs to differ, because this leaves us no reason for pride, and nothing for which we can take the credit. Our salvation is none of our own doing, and it doesn’t make us any better or any more special than anyone else. We live only by grace, and Jesus calls us to live as a people of grace. Our posture to the world should not be one of spiritual or moral superiority—that’s spiritual pride, which is the deadliest of all vices. Instead, we should stand in a posture of humility.
In saying this, I’m indebted to the French-Canadian Catholic philosopher Fr. Ernest Fortin, who taught that humility is the chief and definitive Christian virtue. (If you’re sitting there wondering, “What about love?” I would say that love—like the other two so-called “theological virtues” of 1 Corinthians 13—isn’t a virtue, it’s something else altogether.) The idea that humility is a good thing at all is distinctive to Christianity (which is why the German nihilist Nietszche despised it as a “slave religion”); as Fr. Fortin noted, humility is “a virtue that stands in stark contrast to any classical ideal: humility first of all of a God who would humble Himself to take on our humanity and give His life as a ransom for the many. But humility as well for the believer—to understand that all is grace; that we have no right to claim anything as our own—not our life, not our gifts, not even our faith. We are at every moment God’s creation.”
That’s the bottom line for us. All is grace; we are at every moment God’s creation. It is only by grace that we draw our next breath; it is only by grace that we live this moment and the next. We are utterly dependent on his grace to hold us up, every step we take. This is our only reason to boast—not in ourselves, never in ourselves, but only in the grace and goodness of God, who knows us better than we ever will and still loves us more than we ever will. This is our freedom to show grace to others, born of the knowledge that we need it just as much as they do. And this is our assurance, that the grace of God is a firmer and surer foundation than any this world can build, and that wherever we may go, from the sweetest moments of victory to the darkest nights of the soul, his grace will find us—indeed, it will be there waiting for us. Let’s pray.
Photo © 2009 Rennett Stowe. License: Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic.
