Tag: Grace

Grace in Imperfection

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No one who is born of God continues to sin (1 John 3:18).

Matthew 5:48 ‘Be perfect even as your Father in heaven is perfect.’

We don’t strive for imperfection. It is a natural occurrence. Imperfection is our failure to succeed in our goals or it may be the undesirable qualities in our character such as flaws or inadequacies or such.

When I buy reading material online I sometimes look for Christian books or bibles that are ‘slightly imperfect’ meaning there is something wrong somehow but whatever is flawed doesn’t change the content. It might alter the cover or something about the book that is not essential.

We tend to think of our imperfections as failings or even sin but in truth they are part of the maturation process that God is working in our lives. We made be made righteous in God’s judgment when we are in Christ but for the rest of our lives remains the process of sanctification or becoming more like the God in whose image we are made.

The image of God is not completely erased in humanity though it has been defaced even sometimes to the point of being unrecognizable. It is under the shadow of sin whereby we see dimly as in a dirty mirror. Yet in Christ, by placing our confidence in Christ, we are ‘new creations.’ (2 Cor. 5:17) Accordingly the letter to the Hebrews reminds us that God remembers our sin no more under the new covenant. (Hebrews 8:12)

Creation in the Fall of humankind has distanced itself from the creator but through Christ we are finding our way back. And the way back is sustained by the Grace of God in Christ.

I think of Christians as slightly imperfect in their walk, in that sin is still a part of our lives though God doesn’t see us as our sin but through the work, the sacrifice of his Son Jesus. Slightly imperfect means we don’t have it all together, we are not as mature as we could be. We are a work, God’s work, in progress, ever moving forward. In some respects our lives might even be a mess but we are God’s mess delivered from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God’s son. (Colossians 1)

While some people might even not find value in us, God does. He loves us immensely even to the point where the hairs on our head are numbered indicating his intimate value and knowledge of us.

But here’s the think. Our flesh, our ego, that natural part of us still sometimes affects deeply our relationship with God. We say we trust God but we worry. We are greedy. We are fearful and rebellious. But by God’s grace we are ever more steadily making our way into the rightful Kingdom. Luther once wrote that we are sinners and saints at the same time. Jesus tells us to be perfect and our life’s work is in understanding that perfection and living into it.

Let’s take a modern example to illustrate what this all means. If we have an addiction problem we go to the ‘rooms’ where others are dealing with the same struggle. And the only requirement to be there is the desire to stop the addiction, the behavior that is ruining us. One can actually go to an A.A. meeting intoxicated if he or she really wants to stop drinking.

Now I figure it is not less meaningful for the sinner who goes before God, most especially at worship to be able to say, ‘I want to stop sinning and follow Jesus more closely. That’s my greatest wish. I desire forgiveness and new life’. That is an imperfect Christian on the right path to perfection. Much as Paul meant when he wrote ‘work out your salvation in fear and trembling because God is at work in you to bring about the best according to God’s will.’ (Philippians 2:12,13)

The imperfect Christian is allowed by GRACE to struggle without shame and doubt but is transparent about these issues before other trustworthy brothers and sisters. They believe their sins are forgiven but their memory of their sins is better than God’s memory of their sins.

The imperfect Christian is willing to engage in the disciplines of the Christ life. Prayer, reading scripture, worship, helping others and more are exercises that will help the follower f Jesus strengthen his or her faith, trust and confidence. The imperfect Christian will seek knowledge not for its own sake but so that such wisdom will help them grow.

Christ’s gracious call is to take his yoke upon ourselves for the purpose of training us to live our lives with him, by him and through him.

There is a bumper sticker, which proclaims ‘Not perfect just forgiven’. That is a loophole for not trying our best. It is a statement that we are forgiven and going to heaven; but there is a lot of life to be lived in the meantime.

Recall Jesus words in Matthew 5:48. ‘Be perfect even as your heavenly Father is perfect.’ Jesus spoke those words with regards to loving our enemies; those who annoy irritate or even abuse us. Being perfect means being the best we can be. For example if you are a carpenter just starting out you want to frame a house as best you can. Taking shortcuts is not an option. And while you may not be as good as a 30 veteran you still do your best. That is if you are going to stay in business. The same would go for a teacher, a mom or a dad or anyone with any integrity. And as Christians we strive for our best but do not feel shame when our best might not on par with say, wait for it, ‘Jesus’.

We are on a path of following the Son of God who has called us to place our confidence in him. It was late Christian songwriter, Keith Green, who sang the words, ‘you give God your best and he’ll take care of the rest’. The Christian is called to strive for the prize. (Philippians 3:14) We are urged to press on. And when we fall we pick ourselves up and get back in the race. (Thank you Frank Sinatra)

But we don’t beat ourselves up. We don’t live in guilt and wallow in shame. And if our fall is, in our own mind, a sin- then we confess that to God and know, really know that we are forgiven and thus freed to live for Christ.

I want you to imagine a relationship between two people in love where neither has expectations for the other, where neither keeps score of any wrongs that occur. This is the state of the person who is ‘in Christ’ and thereby in union with God. And this position of salvation and life is sustained and maintained by the grace of the Father. The bible says that we are already seated with Christ in the heavenly place. (Ephesians 2:6) which I take to mean, ‘out of harms way’ in terms of any kind of judgment and so we are truly freed from having to ‘feel’ like we should be better than we are trying our best to be.

Or let’s consider the analogy of an electrician who is mentoring an apprentice. The mentor states that all that is needed is the apprentices’ trust and best effort. At their first meeting it is agreed that the degree and job are guaranteed. Of course there will be direction and even correction and warnings here and there but the covenant has been established and will not be broken. So too God is not breaking his covenant with us because it is Jesus who has sealed that covenant in his own blood.

All this gives us the freedom to live for Christ because at the heart of it all is the truth that it is not we who are living this life as Paul writes but it is Christ who is living it in us. (Galatians 2:20)

ORDINARY GRACE

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So there was the day I was walking through the kitchen and noticed that the dishwasher had not been emptied.  My first thought? That’s not MY job. Didn’t I mow the lawn yesterday?  I kept walking through the kitchen and suddenly stopped. “What did I just say?”  This is how it goes when you talk with yourself, which may well be conversation in the Spirit with God.

Anyway after stopping and turned and looked at the dishwasher door partly open and noticed all those clean dishes inside and remembered that Jesus once told his disciples upon washing their feet, ‘as have done this for you, you are to serve others in the same way.’  I am not sure that Jesus literally meant to always wash each other’s feet, though it IS a beautiful act of love.  He meant that we should serve one another with the same kind of love he had for us and what better place to practice that service than in the kitchen, cheerfully, thoughtfully, and with much gratitude that we have a dishwasher.

So I emptied it thinking ‘here I am actually practicing a spiritual discipline to draw closer to the character of Christ.’

Until now I told no one so my deed could be done in secret but now that the secret is out let it shine on a hill for you husbands who have walked on by those light and momentary chores in the Kitchen.

I call this ordinary grace because grace can become a normal part of the changed heart life of Christ. For Jesus, grace just happened.

 

SOME THOUGHTS ON BAPTISM

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I am of the reformed tradition where as part of covenant theology we baptize children of believers. Sometimes it’s call ‘paedobaptism’.

I believe that children are a part of the new covenant in Christ as much as the children of Abraham are part of that original covenant of identifying God’s people. And even though some turned their back on the Abrahamic Covenant the children were all baptized.

I realized there is little if any evidence in the New Testament of a child being baptized. The faith of the first century was an adult faith amidst an adult society and there is no particular reason for children being mentioned. Or is there?

Jesus took the children into his arms and blessed them conveying I believe God’s particular grace upon and within that child.

Jesus told people that unless they had faith like a child they would not enter the Kingdom of God.

When we see John the Baptist graced by God (filled with the Holy Spirit) (Luke 1:15), while still in the womb I would say he is part of the new covenant in Christ Jesus.

When Paul writes that the children of believers are holy, separated to God (1Cor. 7) I believe they are part of the covenant.

See if God’s covenant is a covenant of grace and not works and none of us deserves it then children most of all are the trusting recipients of God’s love and thus candidates of baptism.

As far as faith, confession, belief are concerned they are all part of the process of the new covenant, covenant theology. No one is saved without grace through faith. Children at birth are forgiven, not innocent. They too can come under the understanding of dying and rising with Christ through baptism and then faith.

And I love the passage in Psalm 139:

You are the one who created my innermost parts;
    you knit me together while I was still in my mother’s womb.
14 I give thanks to you that I was marvelously set apart.
    Your works are wonderful—I know that very well.
15 My bones weren’t hidden from you
    when I was being put together in a secret place,
    when I was being woven together in the deep parts of the earth.
16 Your eyes saw my embryo,
    and on your scroll every day was written that was being formed for me,[b]
    before any one of them had yet happened.[c]
17 God, your plans are incomprehensible to me!
    Their total number is countless!
18 If I tried to count them—they outnumber grains of sand!
    If I came to the very end—I’d still be with you” (CEB in Gateway)

If this is how God’s grace impacts and surrounds the unborn then it is my humble opinion these little ones should be baptized as a was of showing they belong to Christ.

Children in the early church were part of the family’s interaction of faith and community. Most likely in the first century at least they would grow up to be believers. The problem today is that we practice ‘cheap grace’ willy nilly baptizing anything that moves. Parents who are not faithful have their children ‘done’. I had one woman tell me that her child’s baptism had to be on a certain date because the great grandmother’s dress would not fit otherwise. I have been guilty of that cheap grace, God forgive me. There should be strenuous testing of the faith and fruits of parents who want their children to be baptized.

Some ask ‘Why not baptize all children into the covenant?’ It’s a good question that could be answered in the affirmative if we sought to disciple people. Jesus said go and baptize all nations and ‘disciple’ them.

Well, I expect to hear from some folks and that’s good. I can always learn.

Grace and peace

george

 

WAS BEN FRANKLIN RIGHT IN WRITING THAT GOD HELPS THOSE WHO HELP THEMSELVES?

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I think so. First of all it is a great doctrine of the Reformed Faith that our salvation, meaning a relationship with God, is by GRACE ALONE through CHRIST ALONE. We cannot earn grace. But we can make the effort to cooperate with grace to make progress in our Christian life.

I think it’s what Paul meant when he wrote to the church in Philippi for the folks there to work hard on their salvation because God was at work in them to live for God’s will and pleasure. (See Philippians 2)

Make no mistake. God acts first in our lives while we are absolutely helpless to do anything for ourselves in the way of a relationship with God. This is all affected through the sacrifice of Christ for our sins.

If we though want to learn the scriptures to draw inspiration and direction in our lives from God we make the EFFORT to open the Bible and carefully read. These words will not come by placing the Bible under our pillow and waiting for the scriptures to somehow radiate into our minds.

If we need and want to forgive someone we first depend upon God’s grace that has forgiven us and then we make a determined effort to forgive the other perhaps in some small first steps moving to cooperate with God in God’s desire to pardon and free us and the other. And while we do so we will experience GRACE at work.

Like in sports, grace is the invitation to be on the team. Grace is making the cut. Effort is like practicing, sharpening the God-given skills and sometimes you discover just how great grace can be through efforts that you make.

Effort is the opening of the door for the Holy Spirit to affect God’s will in our lives.

Effort is making the decision to decline so much of the world’s invitation to conform and thus work towards allowing God to transform our minds through disciplines such as prayer, reading, fellowship in order that we can better know the will of God. (See Romans 12)

I think of Abraham called by God (grace) and then leaving his homeland (effort) to find out what God had willed for him. Sometimes we won’t know the full measure of God’s grace until we step into the abyss and abandon ourselves to our Lord. And if we find that we cannot make that effort, no worry. God’s grace is full of patience, understanding and another door WILL open.

By the way, I read that Ben didn’t originate that phrase but as a deist he perhaps did not understand the full effect of God’s saving grace in his life.

WHY GOD WON’T FORGIVE US

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Recall that after Jesus teaches his disciples about prayer he concludes that if we don’t forgive others their sins, God won’t forgive us. Is that really true or was Jesus just using hyperbole to encourage this band of students to keep their community alive in love.

I want to throw this idea out there. It’s probably from someone else because that’s where all good ideas come from. Forgiveness means letting go of someone as though you were holding him or her by the neck for their debt to you or their trespass against you. It’s hard to hold out your hands to receive from God if you are preoccupied with payback from another.

You may remember Jesus telling the parable of the unforgiving debtor, one who having himself been pardoned by his master subsequently finds a debtor to himself out of whom this man almost literally chokes the life. Jesus concludes by saying that the first debtor was locked away for good.

Here’s the thing about forgiveness. It’s grace. It means doing for another what they cannot do for themselves. Grace means that you and I take the debt on ourselves as Jesus did for the whole world. If we cannot issue grace to another then it is evidence that we do not receive the grace of God and if we do not place our confidence in the grace of God we are left alone, removed from God as it were.

Amidst all the evilness of the world there is no one who does to us what we did to Christ. And make no mistake. He willingly took all that upon himself. He did it to make the world right with God. And anyone who wants to stand in that new world needs to do the same work with the help of God working in and through us.

Certainly it is possible to desire to forgive when the action comes with difficulty. God understands that. How hard was it for Jesus to take action to bring forgiveness to the world. Towards the end he would have like to escape such self-denying love.  So when it is difficult for us to forgive the best place to go is in the arms of our Savior to rest with him and abide with him and let him do the loving within and through us. Maybe it’s a little baby step at first but baby steps are good when we look to the growth they will bring.

So think of someone who needs your forgiveness even someone who has died. Think of someone far away or maybe in your own household. Then go to school with Jesus and let him teach you…and me the essence of his Grace.

And if we won’t forgive? Well, what we are saying to God is ‘no thank you.  We will handle life in our own way’, and we won’t want God anyway.

Many will come in those last days to Christ saying, ‘Lord Lord’ but Jesus will say that some will have to depart because they really didn’t want God’s will anyway.

But I would submit that forgiving another will be one of the greatest christian spiritual experiences of your life when you …and I let go of another to embrace God. That is the good life. So let’s be students of the good life.

 

 

GRACE ON MAIN STREET

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For a long time I have wanted to write a book or a study guide called ROAD GRACE. It’s a counter title to what is otherwise known as Road Rage. I am thinking that my life on the roads and highways of life can actually be a training ground for my life with Jesus. Stay with me now. I believe that most of what Jesus told us to do in living the life of a disciple can be practiced out there on the streets of my town, the interstates, and just about anywhere my car can travel. So I have decided on this blog to begin my writing in hopes that maybe some of you will respond, offer suggestions from your own experience, or make a critique of the content.

Let me give you one example of what I am thinking. There is a little road in my village called Love Lane, aptly named for this experiment. Remember that Jesus told us not to make a show of our good deeds and not to let our right hand know what our left hand was doing. These are his instructions for having a humble attitude about our works and our giving. You can find this in the Sermon on the Mount. So I am riding down Love Lane and this person starts to cross the street in front of me. Mind you, there is no crosswalk where he is but I stop and gesture to him to go ahead and cross. I want to be kind. I then wait for some type of response, some acknowledgment or thanks for my kindness. And then it hits me. Was I doing my good deed to be kind or to be noticed? Why do I need to feel rewarded? Jesus said to do things in secret and my heavenly Father would reward me in secret. It is sort of between God and me.

That day on Love Lane I learned a valuable lesson about my ego, my pride, my need for attention. I confessed my sin and made a vow that from now on when I come to a similar situation I will simply do what I think is a kindness and not wait for any response. I am not owed that. See? In relationships of caring for another I want to do my best to love without thinking the person owes me anything for my action or words. I do what I do because I love God and want to love my neighbor, the one who is crossing the street or the one I live with. I want to empty the dishwasher in my house without needing a pat on my back for my kindness. God loves me. Jesus walks with me and I am doing just fine. Ok, there are times when I look to see if someone acknowledges that I let him or her cross the little street. Hey, I fall. But I get up and try again by the grace of God. And I will get it right eventually. So there you go. Road Grace. Every day there is some opportunity to practice the Christ life on the highways of life. More to come. Thanks for reading.