4 Grace
Years ago I experienced a moment of tender, life-changing grace. It changed me and the trajectory of my life. With a thankful heart, I have relived that moment again and again, wondering what I would be, where I would be, and what I would be doing without this moment of gracious interruption. I was proud and immature, and I had done many things wrong, but the onslaught of criticism and the questions of my character and qualifications had left me beaten, bruised, discouraged, and defensive. All I wanted to do was run, and I had made concrete plans to do so. But a bountifully loving God sent a tender loving man to interrupt my depressing private conversation with words of grace. I was in the wrong; words of rebuke would have been appropriate, but they would not have rescued me. I would have received them as just another verbal beating. What melted my heart and changed my life was grace, poured out in patient words of forgiveness and love.
I was confronted that day by a truth I have given my life to write and speak about: that God makes his invisible grace visible by sending people of grace to give grace to people who need grace. Grace is the most powerful force of transformation in the universe. It has the power to turn liars into truth tellers. It can turn the proud into the humble. It transforms heretics into biblical scholars. It makes selfish people loving and materialistic people generous. It turns rebellious men and women into those who willingly and faithfully obey. It gives sight to blind eyes and causes spiritually deaf people to hear. It reconciles shattered relationships and puts love where hatred once was. It alone has the power to make spiritually dead people to live again. It causes glory-obsessed people to live for the glory of another. It makes comfort-focused people willing to live sacrificially. It puts courage where fear once was, hope where despair lived, and peace where war once raged. It turns idolatry into worship, defeating in the heart what nothing else could ever defeat. The incalculable transforming power of grace should never be minimized or doubted.
As I scan my Twitter feed each day, I wonder if we have functionally lost confidence in the grace that stills lives at the very center of our theology. It seems as though we are placing our hope in another set of tools. If you are trying to fix something in your home and after some effort you drop the tool you are using and pick up another tool, you are doing so because you don’t think the tool you have been using is capable of getting the job done. The social media landscape is often seriously lacking in grace. It causes me to think often about the words of 2 Corinthians 10, where the apostle Paul explains that the weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. But on social media, we are fighting with the weapons of the world. Although the topics may differ, often the toxic reactivity of Christian social media does not look much different from its secular counterpart. Perhaps our willingness to use the world’s weapons reveals a functional lack of confidence in the rescuing and change-producing power of God’s grace. In life we all tend to pick up the tool that we think will get the job done.
It should get our attention that the Bible doesn’t tell us that the anger of God is what leads people to repentance. For all the gargantuan ferocity of the righteous anger of God against sin, it is his goodness that causes us to listen, to hear, to believe, to confess, and to repent (Rom. 2:4). Mercy triumphs over judgment. When it comes to the way we disagree with one another, debate issues, and respond to concerns, I wonder if we have forgotten the very theology we think we are defending. When you abandon a functional belief in the power of transforming grace, you give room for the toxicity of sin, which still resides in your heart, to shape your reactions to others; cruelty replaces kindness, harshness replaces gentleness, mockery replaces respect, vengeance replaces mercy, hate replaces love, dismissal replaces forgiveness, war-making replaces peacemaking, tribalism replaces a commitment to unity, defensiveness replaces humble approachability, and functional hatred replaces patient love.
This chapter is a call to recommit ourselves to a lifestyle of grace, no matter when, no matter where, no matter about what, and no matter who. Grace is more than a means of attaining a relationship with God and a promise of an eternity with him. Grace is also a welcome to a brand-new way of living. Grace welcomes us to humbly admit our limits and to humbly answer God’s call. The theology of grace that splashes across the pages of Scripture is deeply humbling. It requires me to admit that I am not capable of the deepest, most necessary kind of change, that I am a person in need of divine rescue. It also requires me to admit that I have independent power to change no one. If I had the power to fundamentally change another person by the force of my anger, by the power of my logic, or by guilt, shame, or fear, then the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus would not have been necessary. Change at the level of the human heart is always an act of God’s grace.
Yes, God uses instruments. That’s why we believe in the proclamation of the gospel, in biblical discipleship, in confronting error, in defending biblical truth, in honest discussion and debate, and in teaching, preaching, and counseling. But the vital question we must always ask is, “What is God doing in this moment and how can I be part of it?” It’s not about what has made me angry, what I think of the other person, what I want from this moment, what I think of this other tribe, or how I want to be viewed. I am never on center stage; God is. My will is never paramount; God’s will is. My hopes and dreams are never the controlling factor; God’s plan, purpose, and call are. A culture of grace is about recognizing that God is working out his plan, doing what I could never do, right here, right now, and calling me to be part of it. The theology of God’s grace always gives me a higher, grander purpose for my responses than I would otherwise have. Submitting my words to that higher purpose frees me from the reactive toxicity that is so personally and communally destructive.
God’s Way of Grace
The Bible is replete with calls for us to commit ourselves to a lifestyle of grace: “Forgive as God has forgiven you”; “Love one another, as I have loved you”; “Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful”(see Eph. 4:32; John 13:34; Luke 6:36). So, it is important to consider what this lifestyle of grace looks like and how it will shape the way we react and respond to one another. There is no better place to go for a description of a lifestyle of grace than Galatians 5. Paul contrasts this lifestyle, which is made possible only by the heart-transforming grace of the Holy Spirit, with the destructive toxicity of sin. “Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these” (Gal. 5:19–21). Paul puts enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, and envy right up there with sexual immorality and sorcery as unfruitful works of darkness. It should be sobering to us that while we decry the sexual immorality of the surrounding culture, we have permitted into our Christian social media culture many of the things that the Bible names as the “works of the flesh.” These things, according to Paul, are an alien culture to the culture of the kingdom of God. So they have no place in shaping the way we react to one another, no matter what the issue is or to whom we are responding.
Then in the verses that follow, God’s way of grace is laid out for us: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Gal. 5: 22–23). I call this list “God’s way of grace” because these character qualities are made possible only by divine grace. I have no ability whatsoever to turn myself into the kind of person described by this list. This is why we often refer to this list of character qualities as the “fruit of the Spirit.”
But these character qualities are also God’s means of extending his grace to others through me. Imagine if everything, from our social media reactivity to our personal responses to others, was shaped by this beautiful culture of grace. Imagine every post shaped by love. Imagine each reaction done in a commitment to peace. Imagine always responding in kindness. Imagine every interaction formed out of a gentle and self-controlled heart. Imagine patience keeping you from reacting too quickly. Imagine committing yourself to words that build up what is good. Imagine being so committed to a lifestyle of grace that nothing and no one could yank you out of it. These are beautiful character traits, and they hold out for us the hope that Christian social media and the Christian presence in society can become beautiful again. No, I don’t mean compromising or weak, but beautiful in spirit and manner. If we commit ourselves to the Spirit’s work of ongoing transformation, making his purpose our purpose, gone would be the vengeful response, the mocking reaction, the character assassination, the disrespect, the dismissal, the cruelty, and the toxic tribalism that has made social media such a dark place.
At its core the culture of grace is a Christlike culture. When the Bible calls you to Christlikeness, it doesn’t then talk about Christ flipping the tables in the temple. It doesn’t call you to take out a whip. No, it calls you to take up a cross and die to yourself. If your responses are in more of the flipping tables category, I am afraid you have misunderstood the ongoing plot of God’s grace and your part in it. I am deeply moved by John’s introduction of Jesus in the first chapter of his Gospel, but I am comforted and convicted by these words particularly: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). The last five words of this description of the incarnate Son of God should stop us, resound in our minds, and ring in our hearts: “full of grace and truth.” Jesus sits at the core of the gospel we hold dear. He is the one we have been called by grace to emulate. He is the one who must sit as Lord in our hearts. Submission to Jesus should shape everything we do and say. The unparalleled power and beauty of Christianity in a sin-darkened world is captured by these five words. If we are serious about following Jesus, they are the banner that we carry, they are our message, and they shape our character. It is important to note that Jesus wasn’t just full of truth. If that were all that filled him, we would have no hope. There would be no redemption, no rescue, no forgiveness, and no fresh starts and new beginnings. There would only be a standard too high for us and judgment too holy for us to sustain.
John presents Jesus as being filled not just with truth but also with grace. It is the combination of truth and grace that is our hope in this life and the one to come. If the Messiah would compromise his truth for grace, there would be no hope of satisfying God’s righteous requirements. If he would compromise his grace for truth, there would be no tenderhearted sacrifice for sin. In a consistent gospel worldview, truth and grace are never pulled apart, one is never valued more than the other, and neither is ever abandoned. If you speak truth in ways that are devoid of grace, you have, in fact, done violence to the “truth” that you think you are speaking. If you handle grace in a way that compromises truth, the “grace” that you are offering is not really grace at all.
If you commit yourself to being Christlike, you cannot use truth to shame, mock, dismiss, self-righteously judge, or disrespect others. Truth used to harm ceases to be the truth because it gets bent and twisted by other emotions and agendas. Yes, we are called to love and defend truth, but never in ways that are devoid of grace. Many of the reactions I read on social media are devoid of grace. Again and again, it is my assessment that truth, in its gorgeous, life-giving purity, is lost in the toxicity. What comes across isn’t deeply wise, illuminating, liberating, correcting, and life-giving. I compare it to trying to build the intricate mechanism of a fine watch with a hammer. What needs to be built is destroyed because the wrong tool is used. If you see a wrecking ball in front of a house in need of repair, you know that house is not being restored; it has been condemned and is about to be torn down. Wrecking-ball responses to the sin, weakness, immaturity, inadequacy, failure, and wrongs of others never build. When we are being Christlike, we will never use truth in ways that harm. Yes, there are strongholds of falsehood that need to be torn down, but always with the commitment to build a beautiful edifice of truth in its place. Sledgehammers that tear down may be exhilarating to use, but you would never want to live in a home that was built only with a sledgehammer.
It takes grace to invest the patience necessary to fully understand your opponent. It takes grace to answer him with calm wisdom. It takes grace to respond lovingly to personal attack. It takes grace to work so that your emotions and your biases don’t get in the way. It takes grace to be humbly approachable. It takes grace to speak the truth in love. It takes grace not to compromise Christian community in the name of truth. It takes grace to trust God to do what you are unable to accomplish in the life of another person. It takes grace to hold truth with humility and love. Godly reactions are always infused with grace.
Now, it’s important that we not misunderstand what responding in grace means. Here are some helpful points to consider.
Grace never calls wrong right. Grace is a way of responding to wrong. I often talk about the need to have our responses always seasoned with grace. But many people think I am talking about being nice, passive, or just letting things go. Grace never ignores wrong. Grace never calls wrong right. Grace is never passive in the face of evil. If wrong were right, there would be no need for grace. God’s recognition of and hatred for sin demands that sin be dealt with, but his grace demands that it be dealt with by mercy and not judgment. Grace always moves toward others with the desire to respond in ways that are redemptive. Grace is loving, hopeful, patient, and forgiving. It is this spirit that shapes the way grace responds to wrong.
Grace replaces condemnation with community. Jesus came not to condemn us but to provide what was necessary so that we could live in vibrant community with him and one another. By his life, death, and resurrection we are reconciled to God, and that reconciliation then enables us to be reconciled to one another. At the end of his life Jesus prayed that we would be one as he is one with the Father. God, who is a community, gave us his grace so we could dwell in such a rich community with one another that it would be comparable only to him. Ephesians 4 calls us to do everything we can to preserve the unity of that community. Whether on social media with a stranger or in a more personal interaction, our words must always be shaped by this community commitment. We must never react in ways that divide, damage, weaken, or destroy the community that Jesus suffered and died for us to enjoy. And we must recognize that God’s wise plan for our individual spiritual health is and will always be a community project.
Grace is humble. It is grace that keeps you from being impressed by your own insight. It keeps you from being proud of the size of your platform. It frees you from taking credit for what you could have never produced on your own. It enables you to be able to listen to those who have not achieved what you have. It means you don’t speak with the entitlement of a king but with the humility of a servant. Grace keeps you from a self-aggrandizing way of communicating. It keeps you from judging others as lesser and treating them as if they were. It keeps you from using truth to prove to others how smart you are.
Grace is shaped by sympathy and understanding. Hebrews 4:14–16 presents Jesus as a sympathetic and understanding high priest who is touched by the feelings of our infirmities and, because he is, we can turn to him in our time of need with confidence, knowing that he will respond with mercy that is form-fit for the moment. Grace is never cold and unfeeling. Grace never treats issues as being more important than people. Grace is caring, nurturing, and understanding. Think of the social media culture for a moment and consider how lacking it is in sympathy. Post after post essentially says, “I don’t care who you are, what you are going through, or how my words will affect you. I will react as I want to react regardless.” In a commitment to Christlikeness, Christian social media should be a beacon of sympathetic and understanding communication, that is, the kind of communication that actually communicates in a way that stimulates further communication.
Grace is patient and kind. The history of Scripture is a history of the patience and kindness of the Lord. Through every chapter of the biblical story we watch the mercy of the Lord poured out as he holds back his judgment. You cannot walk through the biblical story without being blown away by God’s kindness. He pours blessings down on both believers and rebels. Every day his grace restrains sin, making life livable not just for those who follow him by faith but for everyone. God is the definition of what is good, kind, patient, and loving because he is a God of grace. We are in desperate need of a culture of patience and kindness. We are too quick to react, and we are too comfortable with reacting in ways that fall short of any definition of kindness.
Grace willingly suffers for the sake of another. To commit yourself to be a tool of God’s grace as you react and respond to others (which, remember, is God’s standard for wholesome communication) is to be willing to suffer. I have had terrible things written about me on social media. I have had people who appreciated my ministry walk away because of what others have said about me, and videos have been made to mock me. My message and my words are often twisted for someone else’s agenda. Though these attacks can be hard to take, I have determined not to slug back but to commit myself to my heavenly Father, who judges all things justly. I don’t want my use of this powerful tool (social media) to be a war zone, but rather a place where people know they can find loving gospel insight and encouragement. The landscape of social media would be radically different if more people were willing to suffer, not jumping into the fight but responding with soft words formed by a heart of grace.
It takes grace to give grace. Where does God’s call to every believer to be a tool of grace in the hands of a God of grace leave us? Well, it leaves me crying out for grace. Being quick to give grace is not natural for me. It’s natural for me to be impatient. It’s natural for me to be argumentative. It’s natural for me to say what I want to say because I want to say it, not because I have considered whom I’m talking to and what it is that they need. It’s natural for me to hold on to hurts and let them shape my reactions down the road. It’s natural for me to treat members of my tribe differently than those of another tribe. It’s natural for me to be more concerned about the sins, weaknesses, failures, inadequacies, biases, hypocrisies, and fallacies of others than I am about my own. So, if I am ever going to react on social media or in personal conversations with grace, I need grace. I need the intervention of God’s grace to free me from what is natural for me and empower me to live in the way that God, who knows what is best, has called me to live.
Because of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, and because of the presence of the Holy Spirit living within me, this grace is mine for the taking. What good news! I invite you to confess that being a tool of God’s grace is unnatural for you, too, and reach out for the grace your Lord so willingly and generously gives.