Meditations on Grace

The Greek word translated grace is charis. It shows up 12 times in Ephesians, 18 times in 2 Corinthians, and 22 times in Romans. As I attempted to write out a succinct meaning of the term, I was struck by the complexity of the ways it is used in Scripture. In short, it means loving-kindness, favor, or gift. But I’m afraid those three words don’t really plumb the depths of how Scripture uses it.

I looked up grace in Hebrew, Greek, and English dictionaries. Each gave really long definitions from multiple angles. But the common thread in each use of the term is that it is NOT about giving what is due. Consider these verses using the Greek word charis.

Romans 4:4 Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due.

Luke 6 32"If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. 33 And if you do good to those who do good to you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. 34 And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to get back the same amount. 35 But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. 36 Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.

When you give back what is earned or deserved, it is not charis—it is not grace. It is not favor or benefit and it is not credited toward you as anything other than exactly what you are expected to do. Instead, grace does what is unexpected, undeserved, and out of line with reasonable responses. Grace is an unreasonable response—unreasonably good, but unreasonable nonetheless. And when we give grace, this undeserving favor that does good to enemies and lends expecting nothing in return, then we give evidence to our relationship with our Father in heaven, because THIS is his calling card. He is good to those who don’t deserve it. He is full of grace.

Grace is one of the most often used words in Christian circles. I learned the acronym for grace, “God’s riches at Christ’s expense,” in Sunday school as a child. But I didn’t get grace. I understood that I didn’t earn my salvation, but my response was to start trying to earn it from that point on. If God was that good to me, then I needed to start being a better person so that I could pay him back a bit. But Jesus in Luke 6 sets a different criteria altogether to evidence our understanding of grace—our grace toward others.

Grace and humility are intertwined theological concepts. When we get grace, the only choice is humility. In Christian circles, we sometimes mistake other virtues for grace and humility. I know some Christian leaders who are diplomatic. Or maybe generally friendly. Or polite. But these are not the same as grace and the humility that follows it. Grace is an unreasonably lavish response to those undeserving of it. And it is based on our own understanding of God’s great, undeserved favor toward us. I am examining myself to make sure I don’t mistake personal politeness or good manners for this altogether different thing named grace to which God has called us.

I am looking forward to reading Prodigal God by Tim Keller, which uses the parable of the Prodigal Son to explore the depth of God's grace.

A life defining quote

If ever there was a quote that defined this blog or what God is teaching me right now, this is it.

Once you become aware that the main business that you are here for is to know God, most of life's problems fall into place of their own accord.

J.I. Packer

The Magnificent Defeat

Or "they that lose their lives shall find it" (Mark 8:35).

Here is a great article at Christianity Today entitled Here's to All the Losers. I don't know who the author is, but I found her words true and encouraging. I always like that combination.

Do I Really Know God?

I hold as a core belief that there are fundamental, unchangeable things about the character of God that Scripture reveals to us. These attributes of God are objective and knowable. However, that does not mean that I always understand these attributes correctly. I believe that I could quote the Westminster Confession of Faith complete with Scripture references and still miss the truth of what is communicated by the Scripture quoted.

Lydia Brownback talks about this in the introduction to her little book entitled Trust.

Perhaps the most faith-shaking, fear-generating experiences are those in which God provides a blessing and then seems to pull the rug out from under us by taking away the blessing as soon as we get a taste of it. The single woman who has waited years for a godly husband meets Mr. Right. God has provided at last! She feels God's smile as she prepares for her wedding and her new life as a married woman. And then two days before the wedding, Mr. Right changes his mind and calls the whole thing off. The grief-stricken bride wonders why God allowed her to get her hopes up, only to see them dashed to pieces. "Why would a loving God do that?" she asks, and her faith crumbles. God is not who she thought he was.

When we go through that sort of experience, our foundations can be shaken to the core. "I obviously cannot depend on God," we think, "so somehow I have to fix everything. And if God could do THIS to me, what other painful things might he do?" What we don't see at such times and in the swirl of such thoughts is the fact that we were resting on the wrong foundation in the first place. Our view of God has actually been wrong all along. We'd thought we'd been relying on God, but the truth is, we'd actually been relying on our idea of God and on what we were hoping God would do for us to make our lives happier.

I was struck by the phrase Lydia uses--"God is not who she thought he was." She goes on throughout the devotional book to expose various wrong views of God and replaces them with the truth of who He is from Scripture. This idea was reinforced to me today as I read a quote from A Grief Observed by C. S. Lewis, written after watching his beloved wife die of bone cancer.

My idea of God is not a divine idea. It has to be shattered time after time. He shatters it Himself. He is the great iconoclast .... The Incarnation is the supreme example; it leaves all previous ideas of the Messiah in ruins.

Iconoclast -- a breaker or destroyer of images.

Jesus spends a great deal of His ministry destroying the wrong images of Him set up by His culture. I am reading through the gospel of Mark, and I am amazed at how clearly Jesus teaches His disciples about His death and how they miss the point almost every time. I just reached his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, where the masses shout blessings on Him. But instead of accepting thier accolades and basking in them for a bit, Jesus immediately sets out to crush their warped image of Him--He cleanses the temple, curses a fig tree, and takes on the chief priests, teachers of the law, and elders. He refuses to cater to wrong views of Himself. He didn't do it during His life on earth, and He certainly doesn't do it now.

Fast forward 2000 years. I face a circumstance that doesn't fit my view of God or where I thought my life would be if I followed Him. God refuses to allow me to continue long term in my warped views of Him. He does not cater to them. Instead, He insists that I know Him correctly. And the process is both painful and beautiful. It's painful to have my naive, idealist notions of Him, His Body, and His kingdom crushed. But it's beautiful to see the truth as it emerges from Scripture as my wrong views falls away.

Phil. 3: 10 that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death,

Oswald Chambers on Enduring Insult

Profound and convicting words from My Utmost for His Highest

But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil; but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also." Matthew 5:39

These verses reveal the humiliation of being a Christian. Naturally, if a man does not hit back, it is because he is a coward; but spiritually if a man does not hit back, it is a manifestation of the Son of God in him. When you are insulted, you must not only not resent it, but make it an occasion to exhibit the Son of God. You cannot imitate the disposition of Jesus; it is either there or it is not. To the saint personal insult becomes the occasion of revealing the incredible sweetness of the Lord Jesus.

The teaching of the Sermon on the Mount is not - Do your duty, but - Do what is not your duty. It is not your duty to go the second mile, to turn the other cheek, but Jesus says if we are His disciples we shall always do these things. There will be no spirit of - "Oh, well, I cannot do any more, I have been so misrepresented and misunderstood." Every time I insist upon my rights, I hurt the Son of God; whereas I can prevent Jesus from being hurt if I take the blow myself. That is the meaning of filling up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ. The disciple realizes that it is his Lord's honour that is at stake in his life, not his own honour.

Never look for right in the other man, but never cease to be right yourself. We are always looking for justice; the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount is - Never look for justice, but never cease to give it.

A New Normal

I have had a few circumstances over the last 2 years that have grown me and changed me. Inevitably, it is hard, not easy, circumstances that change us deeply. When my aunt was murdered, my sister recounted the moment she had to tell my family. They were all on family vacation in the mountains. My sister got the call on her cell phone from another aunt. She said she just stared at the scene in front of her--everyone enjoying the mountain air and time together as family--knowing that the news she had to share would change everything. It was a surreal moment. She did tell everyone, and nothing has been the same. It's a new normal.


I've been thinking about this new normal. What has changed now? Mainly, it's my perspective. God has shaken the snow globe of my life and some truths that were obscured by complacency are now taking a more prominent place in my thinking. Here are some truths that are front and center now.


1) This world is not my home. I have to repeat this to myself regularly and it's foundational to understanding everything else.


2) Evil is very bad and we are not immune from it in this world. And rather than shaking my faith, this reminds me exactly why I desperately need a Savior. I need Jesus to save me from my own sin within me. And I long for King Jesus established on this earth as the sovereign authority who rules with complete justice. When God's kingdom is fully established, there will be no more murder.


3) Happy is a yuppie word. There is something deeper than happiness that God is working in our lives. In fact, happiness isn't even a fruit of the Spirit. Love, joy, and peace are not necessarily grown in our lives through "happy" circumstances. And that's okay.


4) Our need for God is better highlighted in hard circumstances. When life is good, I inevitably gloss over my need for Him. But His unchanging character is the only anchor for my soul when life gets messy.


If you've had a life-shaking, perspective changing event rock your world recently, I recommend spending some time in Hebrews 11-13. It reminds me that hardship, persecution, and endurance have been common to the Christian life since time began, and they will continue to be so until Christ returns. It also reminds me that despite it all, God's purposes can not be shaken. It teaches me that my new normal is really just the old normal with complacency removed.

Hebrews 12
1Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. 2Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. 3Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.

Absorbing Injustice

Absorbing injustice like Jesus. That was the theme of a sermon I heard last month. It's only about 30 minutes long, and I encourage you to listen to it if you have time. When the pastor read through Mark's account of the trial of Jesus, I was struck by the phrase he used to describe Jesus' posture during His trial.

Absorbing injustice.

Not just enduring injustice, but absorbing it. What is it about the difference in those two words that hit me so hard? As I thought back on it, the word endurance gives the picture of insults that run off like water on a duck's back. It's injustice, but it doesn't impact me deeply. I'm able to deflect it and therefore endure. But the word absorb paints an altogether different picture. Now the injustice inflicts me deeply. I feel the pain deeply--it cuts me and wounds me. But I absorb the injustice and bear it like Jesus.

This can not be done on our own. We can not absorb injustice done to us apart from deeply abiding in Jesus, staring into His face, and getting a clear vision of His trial and crucifixion. It isn't until I get a deep understanding of the injustice Jesus absorbed for MY sake that I can begin to absorb another's injustice to me.

Here is a link to some of Mark's account of the trial of Jesus. It has caused me to think deeply about how I respond to sins against me. When I am sinned against, I often feel completely alone. But that is a lie from Satan, because it is in suffering the sins of others against me that I most start to identify with the life and death of Christ. And there is something profoundly transforming in fellowshipping with Him in this way. (Phil. 3:10)