Monday, May 18, 2009

The 'So What?' of Grace

Years ago, when I was sharing with my wife some theological nuance I had learned that day in seminary, she looked at me and said, “So what? I’ve got three children, two of whom are in diapers. If your theology can’t help me on Tuesday morning when I’m changing diapers while you’re off at seminary, then I don’t have any use for it."

I tire of theology for theology’s sake. Deep down I want to please God and the older I get the more convinced I am that God is far more pleased with people who live well than with correct theology. He keeps reminding me of Paul’s words in 1Co13:2, “…if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.”

So what do we do with the theological treatise we know as the first 11 chapters of Paul’s letter to the Romans? (Which I’m spending the first part of the summer studying). What’s the relevance of Paul’s concept of Grace (his central tenet)? How does it impact the one changing diapers on a Tuesday morning?

When it comes to Grace, Paul is trying to say essentially two things. First, by his own definition, Grace is God doing what only God can do in order to make/declare people to be righteous. Grace is God giving us right standing before Him; making people whole and free; doing for us what we cannot do for ourselves. Which is what distinguishes Grace from works and from anything we might do to try to accomplish these things for ourselves. Paul’s primary premise is that righteousness has to be something God accomplishes and imparts.

Secondly, if Grace is God doing for us what we cannot, then Grace is received when we come to the end of ourselves. We experience Grace when we abandon any effort to somehow make ourselves acceptable to God; when we confess our helplessness and ask Him to do for us what we have come to realize we can never do for ourselves.

This is where Paul most completely echoes the Lord Jesus. Jesus was adamant that it was the poor in spirit, the one who beats his chest and cries out ‘Lord, have mercy on me a sinner,’ the repentant prodigal who has rehearsed his confession of unworthiness - who experience mercy and forgiveness.

Often God will orchestrate our lives for the express purpose of bringing us to the end of ourselves. A bankruptcy, a personal failure, a marriage in crisis, a ministry that seems to be going nowhere, all can be used by God to bring us to our own “Bruce Almighty moment.” (Jim Carrey kneeling in the street, crying out to God.) Which means that blessing a cash strapped seminary couple with three children, two in diapers, may have purposes beyond simply the building of the Kingdom. It could be that through all of that they abandon all confidence of handling things themselves, and for the first time cry out in a sustained dependence on God, opening themselves up to the 'much more' of God.

Those who experience God do in them the most, have always somehow, someway, first come to the place where they have abandoned all hope of ever doing those things for themselves. Which may be the most relevant ‘So what?’ of Grace.

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