I
think most people’s beliefs fit along the lines of what could be called
“prevenient grace”. It goes something
like this. God loves you and Jesus died
for you. You didn’t earn it. This is God’s grace. All you have to do it accept it. These ideas were popularized by John Wesley,
and it is at the heart of a lot of fundamentalist and Baptist and Methodist
theology. There are Bible verses to back
up this idea. We read the ever famous
John 3:16 earlier, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so
that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal
life.” You can easily understand that
God gave and we accept.
While
this is a common way of understanding grace it contradicts a stronger message
in the Bible about grace. We saw a bit
of that in the Ephesians 2 reading, “For by grace you have been saved through
faith…” And whose faith is the author of
Ephesians referring to here? Is it your
faith? That’s what many people believe,
but that is wrong. It is Jesus’
faith. More clearly it would be
translated, “For by grace you have been saved by Jesus’ faith and this is not
your own doing; it is the gift of God – not the result of works, so that no one
may boast.”
Paul’s
writings champion this idea of grace. It
is what St. Augustine called “irresistible grace”. It goes something like this. God loves you and Jesus died for you. You didn’t earn it. And, your ability to accept it is actually
not your own decision. Your decision to
accept it is also God working in you.
In
other words, God is working both sides of the fence. God does both the act of saving you and God
does the act of making you believe it.
If
you think about that for a couple minutes your mind will run into all sorts of
problems. Do we really have a choice at
all? What about free will? And, what about those who don’t believe? Does God also choose not to let them believe?
If
you have these thoughts, they aren’t new.
Let me read Romans 9:14-22. Paul
writes:
What then are we to say? Is there injustice on God’s part? By no
means! 15For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I
have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” 16So it
depends not on human will or exertion, but on God who shows
mercy. 17For the scripture says to Pharaoh, “I have raised
you up for the very purpose of showing my power in you, so that my name may be
proclaimed in all the earth.” 18So
then he has mercy on whomever he chooses, and he hardens the heart of whomever
he chooses. 19You will say to me then, “Why
then does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?”
This is irresistible grace.
It is the heart of all Lutheran thought.
It is very significant in Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Presbyterian
and other churches. It probably doesn’t
seem fair at all. But Paul isn’t
done. Listen on:
“But who indeed are you, a human being, to argue with God? Will
what is molded say to the one who molds it, “Why have you made me like this?” 21Has
the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one object for
special use and another for ordinary use? 22What
if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured
with much patience the objects of wrath that are made for destruction;”
Maybe
this doesn’t seem fair. Maybe it makes
your head spin. Maybe it makes you angry
because it means you really have no choice.
You may say why don’t we just keep it simple, just believe in Jesus and
tell others to also and be done with it.
Indeed
that is tempting, but there are problems.
It can deeply impact what drives your life. Those who think it is their choice can become
haughty and self-righteous. They think
their choice to accept God’s grace is a work worthy of salvation. When the evangelize they push hard that
people must accept Jesus as their personal Lord and savior or perish in
hell. They insist that you believe with
all your intellect and drive away all doubts; for doubts are dangerous. That is the life of someone who lives by
prevenient grace.
The
person who accepts irresistible grace – what the Bible’s real teachings about
grace are – lives a much more accepting and authentic life. They actually trust God more deeply because
they know the root of their beliefs rest in God, not their own force of intellect. They know they are held securely by God even
when they have questions and doubts. In
fact they know they can explore those doubts more fully because God won’t let
go. They know that if they suffer a
brain trauma or develop dementia or some other catastrophe happens, God’s grasp
of them is even greater.
Remember
what Paul says in Romans 8, “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life,
nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor
height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate
us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Paul
is excessively emphatic here because that’s grace! That’s an understanding of God’s never
failing love that simply won’t let go.
The
person who realizes this irresistible grace knows it has logical flaws – but so
does prevenient grace. So do all
philosophical systems! The person who
realizes this recognizes that they can’t control it and can’t fully understand
it. But that isn’t ultimately
important. The fact that they’re caught
up in God’s love is ultimately important.
Then
life truly becomes a response to that grace.
You can truly be generous because you are safe. You can question and doubt because you are
safe. You can show weaknesses and
vulnerabilities because you are safe.
Your evangelism is not about convincing others so they by their own
power can also intellectually believe.
It is simply an authentic witness that God is good.
I
want to end with two quotes from Martin Luther from his writing called, “The
Bondage of the Will.”
[Destroying
free will doubtless gives] the greatest possible offense to common sense or
natural reason, that God, Who is proclaimed as being full of mercy and
goodness, and so on, should of His own mere will abandon, harden and damn men,
as though He delighted in the sins and great eternal torments of such poor
wretches. it seems an iniquitous, cruel, intolerable thought to think of God;
and it is this that has been such a stumbling block to so many great men down
through the ages. And who would not stumble at it? I have stumbled at it myself
more than once, down to the deepest pit of despair, so that I wished I had
never been made a man. (That was before I knew how health-giving that despair
was, and how close to grace.)"
And
also, "I frankly confess that, for myself, even if it could be, I should
not want ‘free-will’ to be given me, nor anything to be left in my own hands to
enable me to endeavor after salvation; not merely because in face of so many
dangers, and adversities and assaults of devils, I could not stand my ground …;
but because even were there no dangers … I should still be forced to labor with
no guarantee of success … But now that God has taken my salvation out of the control
of my own will, and put it under the control of His, and promised to save me,
not according to my working or running, but according to His own grace and
mercy, I have the comfortable certainty that He is faithful and will not lie to
me, and that He is also great and powerful, so that no devils or opposition can
break Him or pluck me from Him.
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