Week 28 Sunday
Week 28 Sunday
The Way Is the Way of Grace
Romans 5:1-6
In the opening weeks, we talked about the fact that there is the Way and not-the-way. We looked at roads with dead ends and at some who had found the Way. We now turn to look at the various ways within the Way.
While we do this, we must remind ourselves that the Christian way is not a patchwork of ways; it is not an eclecticism, a lot of truths brought together from everywhere. The Christian Way is Christ, and Christ is the Truth. While Christ being the Truth is the Way, nevertheless, within that Way are many ways.
The Way is the way of Grace. I put that first, for it is first. What do we mean by grace? It is usually defined as “God’s unmerited favor.” Grace is shorthand for God’s redeeming love.
The gospel starts with God’s redeeming love, with grace. It is God’s initiative that redeems us. Deissman says, “All the religions of the world begin with man’s initiative—man searching for God. In Christianity, God takes the initiative.”* In other religions, we have humanity’s search for God. In the gospel, we have God’s search for humanity. “We love because God first loved us” (1 John 4:19 CEB). I once listened to an address in India by a visiting lecturer on “Man’s Search for God,” and at the close a Scotch missionary quietly said, “Have you read ‘The Hound of Heaven’? If not, go sell your coat and buy it.” The 1893 poem by Francis Thompson depicts the love of God pursuing us down the years. We speak of the initiative and the referendum as belonging to us. The initiative belongs to God. The referendum belongs to us. God initiates, and we decide what is referred to us. We decide whether we shall respond to that initiative. We do not find God; we put ourselves in the way of being found by God.
But the first thing is grace. The gospel is not good advice but good news. It is not primarily teaching us how to live, but an offer of Life. Jesus did not come to show us the Way, but to show himself as the Way. He did not come to preach the gospel, but that there might be a gospel to be preached.
O Christ, I bow my head and heart in deepest gratitude that I am responding to your initiative. For I am being pressed upon, gently pressed upon, by grace. It invades me, awaiting the dropping of barriers that Love might possess me, redeem me, fill me. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “The grace of God has appeared” (Titus 2:11 Moffatt). My eyes have been open to see it. I’ll see more today.
*This is most likely Adolf Deissman, professor of New Testament exegesis at the University of Berlin in the early twentieth century. No published source was located for the direct quotation.
Week 28 Monday
The Processes of Karma or Grace
Romans 5:17-21
We must continue our meditation of the Way as the way of grace.
We can live by grace, or we can live by law. Peter speaks of “heirs equally . . . of the grace of Life” (1 Pet. 3:7 Moffatt). If you will not take the grace of Life, then you must take the law of life. You can live by the grace of Life—you surrender to, and are ruled by, the processes of Love. You are receptive to this invading grace. You do not struggle and try, but surrender and trust and obey. Your little life is caught up into the purposes of Life; you are redeemed by Life, replenished by Life. Faith is a yielding to Love.
But if you do not live by the grace of Life, then you live by the law of life. You sink back into the processes of karma, you reap what you sow. You get back from life what you give to life. You are under law. Life becomes a give and take, a very strict bargain. You have to watch each deed, for you know you will get back an exact equivalent. Life therefore works on a strictly “cash and carry” basis; you lay down the cash of your deed and carry away the result or the consequences of that deed. There are no surprises in life, no going beyond on either side. It is all very just and all very dependable, and all very dead.
That is the gospel of the marketplace religion. You bargain with life and life bargains with you, and it holds you to the bond. There is no good news in it, for life is grim-faced and so are you. Religion based on give and take has no spontaneity in it, no bubbling joy, no freedom. It plods—it cannot soar. It sighs—it cannot sing. It is the religion of the elder brother, “You’ve never given me as much as a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends” (Luke 15:29 CEB). How could he? The elder brother was living by legalism, so when the scene closed, he was on the outside, living by law, and the younger brother was on the inside, living by Love.
In a home, if life were lived on the law of each insisting on getting what he or she gives, what a deadly, dull house—I cannot call it a home—it would be. In a real home, love reigns. You go beyond law and spontaneously express love in a thousand beautiful little ways, never thinking of anything in return.
O Christ, I want to live by the grace of Life, instead of the law of life. I want the gaiety of a life fully surrendered to Love. I surrender all my Pharisaic legalism and become a little child in your house. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “Never think, ‘I will treat him as he treated me. I will pay back the man for what he did’ ” (Prov. 24:29 Moffatt). God thinks grace—so shall I.
Week 28 Tuesday
A Dangerous Libertinism?
Romans 6:1-6
We considered yesterday living by the grace of Life or by the law of life. One produces the Christian, the other produces the Pharisee. One surrenders and trusts, and the other struggles and struts. One lives by an obtainment, and the other lives by an attainment. The one is an artesian well, the other is a force pump. The one is based on Christ, the other is based on self. One says, “Love God and do what you like.” The other grimly says, “I must do what I don’t like.” Yes, God has two hands: the hand of Grace and the hand of law. If you won’t take from the hand of grace, you must take from the hand of law. You can rise into a kingdom of freedom by the hand of grace, or you can sink back into the fatalities of the law of karma. Life can be a play-spell, or life can be pay-spell.
Isn’t this dangerous libertinism? Where is this discipline of life that modern discovery is so insistent upon? It is a universe of law, and you have to obey it or break. True. But in the grace of Life, you fulfill the law, plus. The law becomes the runway from which you take off to soar in the heaven of freedom.
But this grace of Life is the most exacting discipline. It disciplines you far more deeply than any law could discipline you. When you keep a law, it’s kept—kept in the outer conformities. But when you keep a love, it’s not kept by outer conformities—it’s kept only in the inner conformities. Love is ten times as exacting as law. When you fulfill a law, you are off duty, but you are never off duty from love. It’s got you every moment, impelling you to go beyond.
Consider this passage, “The grace of God . . . schools us to renounce . . . and to live a life of self-mastery” (Titus 2:12 Moffatt). The grace of God schools us! Here free grace puts us to school! And the severest of schools. It disciplines the inmost thought and the outmost act and everything between. You accept the grace of God, and by that very act, you accept self-control—rather, self-control through God-control. You are free to act within God’s control, which is perfect freedom.
O Christ, I know that your will is my deepest will, and when I do your will I do my own. For in you I come to my full stature. Out of you I’m stunted. I want to grow in the grace of surrendering to Grace, and in the love of surrendering to Love. For then I grow—and only then. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: Today I shall walk in “the perfect law of liberty”—a liberty that is a law.
Week 28 Wednesday
Grace and Reality
Ephesians 2:1-8
“But,” says the questioner, “is this matter of grace something imposed by religion on life, or is it inherent in life itself?”
If the Christian faith were something imposed instead of something inherent, then, of course, we could not take it. But the gospel says that grace is rooted in reality, “We have seen his glory, . . . seen it to be full of grace and reality. . . . Grace and reality are ours through Jesus Christ” (John 1:14, 17 Moffatt). Here “grace and reality” are connected. Is grace part and parcel of the makeup of reality? It is. If grace exists in certain stories about life, instead of being woven into the warp and woof of life, then it is precarious.
Jesus “brought life and immortality to light by the gospel” (2 Tim. 1:10 Moffatt). Life and immortality were inherent in the nature of reality, but they were “brought” to light, lifted up out of the nature of things, made overt where they were covert. Christ brought them to light in his own person. So he brought grace to light again in his own person. “The grace which he gave us ages ago in Christ Jesus and has now revealed in the appearance of our Saviour Jesus Christ” (2 Tim 1:10 Moffatt). This grace was “given ages ago.” It was written into the structure of reality, but has now been “revealed” in the appearance of our Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus was the revealer of the nature of reality, and in that reality the most beautiful thing revealed is grace.
We can see intimations, outcroppings of that grace amid the laws of nature. Parent birds grow lean in foraging for food for their little ones, and they will unhesitatingly sacrifice themselves to save them. The human mother goes down into the valley of the shadow of death to bring her child into the world, and then will do everything that love can do for that child. We see it in scientists who inoculate themselves with disease germs in order to find a way to relieve others of the danger. Life is shot through and through with this spirit. Someone asked a very successful chaplain how he achieved his success. He pointed to the cross on his lapel, saying, “I work by this, instead of this,” pointing to the military insignia on his shoulder. He worked by love rather than by law.
O Christ, I know that your power over me is the power of grace, for in you I am beaten to my knees by love. I can stand up to law, but I melt before grace. Here I find you irresistible. For love gets behind my armor, and I am defenseless before it. And I’m glad to be conquered by love. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: Today God’s grace toward me will make me gracious toward others.
Week 28 Thursday
The Cross Inherent
Matthew 25:34-40
We saw yesterday that “grace and reality” are connected—inherently so. “The Lamb slain from the foundation of the world” (Rev. 13:8 KJV). What does this mean? Is the cross built into the structure of things, built “from the foundation of the world”?
We have been taught that Christ died once and for all. He was “once offered.” It was a finished fact in a certain point in history. We agree. Something did happen there at the cross that doesn’t have to be done over again. But if the cross were suddenly imposed on history at a given point, something extraneous, then it would lack a cosmic validity. But if the cross is the scarlet thread that runs through the whole garment of existence, then it would have inescapable meanings. “The Lamb slain from the foundation of the world” points to the cross as inherent.
The cross is the ground plan of the universe. If so, we would expect to see intimations of that ground plan everywhere. We do—some of them crude, all of them unmistakably pointing to the cross. The foundations of houses and cities were often laid in ancient times in the blood of the firstborn. Life was laid in sacrifice. When the gods of Mexico had created everything except the sun, they sat around a fire trying to figure out how to create the sun. It couldn’t be done. They were in despair. Then one of the gods threw himself into the fire, and out of his sacrifice the sun was created. Siva, one of the gods of India, is depicted with a blue throat, “he drank the poison that we might ambrosia taste.” The seed dies that the plant may live. The mountains are barren that the valleys may be rich. The white corpuscles circulate through the bloodstream watching for infection. When they find it, they absorb it if possible; but when they cannot, they fling themselves upon the intruder and die that the rest may live. The cross is in our blood. In the building of Boulder Dam (now Hoover Dam), ninety-six men died and the memorial plaque says, in part, “They died to make the desert bloom.”** A young US soldier, seeing a live bomb about to explode among his buddies, picks it up, holds it high above his head, and lets it blow his own hand off that the others might be saved.
O Lamb of God, slain from the foundation of the world, suffering in the sufferings of humanity, taking eternally upon your heart our sins and sufferings—we see you everywhere. “We see [your] blood upon the rose,”* and we see it on the lintels of our beings. We thank you. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: When I am about to run away from my tasks, that Strange Man upon his Cross brings me back again.
*http://www.usbr.gov/lc/hooverdam/History/essays/artwork.html.
**Joseph Mary Plunkett (1887–1916), “I See His Blood upon the Rose.”
Week 28 Friday
Grace Did Much More Abound
Romans 5:1-11
The cross is inherent, lifted up in history that we might see in a point of time something that is timeless. If a spotlight from Mars were to be pointed at the most important place on our planet, it would fall upon a hill called Calvary. But there are lesser calvaries everywhere. Everywhere Christ is hungry in the hunger of the hungry, sinful in the sin of the sinner, he takes it all on himself.
That means that grace is everywhere, healing, redeeming, saving. “Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound” (Rom. 5:20 KJV). Where disease abounds, the grace of health doth much more abound. “The grace of . . . Jesus Christ overflowed far more richly” (Rom. 5:15 Moffatt). The grace was unrestrained, it overflowed, as Paul puts it again, “The grace of our Lord flooded my life” (1 Tim. 1:14 Moffatt).
A little girl, a refugee from bombed England, wistfully asked her American hostess, when a full glass of milk was placed before her, “How deep may I drink?” She wasn’t sure it was all for her. How deep may we drink of grace? Is it all for us? It is! “Take what you want,” says God, “and pay for it.” And the paying? It is not our goodness, but our gratitude. Not our worthiness, but our willingness.
The Way is not the way of karma, but the way of grace. And yet there is a truth in karma. The fact is that grace is in karma too. Karma says that you reap what you sow. This is true, but only partly true, for other people also reap what we sow. Bound up in a bundle of human relationships, we pass on to others the good and evil results of our sowing. The good results? Yes! So Jesus, standing at the center of existence, passes on to all of us his good karma—his deed of the cross lets grace overflow to everybody. The fact that others reap what we sow opens the way to the vicarious. So “the Lamb [was] slain from the foundation of the world” (Rev. 13:8 KJV). He is everywhere, even in the hard doctrine of karma. I see his cross in every telegraph pole with its crossbeam. And the message of grace is coming over every wire to us, many wires but one message, “Grace.” Grace is written in the Scriptures, but also in the texture of reality. It is written everywhere, in everything.
O Christ, I find your grace seeking, searching, saving. I open my heart, my inmost heart, to its gentle intrusion. I breathe deeply of your grace, take it into every fiber of my being, and I am healed and released. I am grateful—so grateful. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: Grace sought me, Grace bought me, Grace taught me, Grace caught me—now Grace has me.
Week 28 Saturday
Grace Produces Spontaneous Goodness
John 4:12-14; Philippians 1:9-11
There is a fear, a lingering fear, that this emphasis on grace weakens one. Said a Western missionary, turned Hindu, “I preferred to have my children grow up under karma rather than under grace.” He had the notion that grace weakens, and that karma puts iron into you.
But this notion is deeply mistaken. Paul puts it this way, “Much more shall those who receive the overflowing grace and free gift of righteousness reign in life . . . through Jesus Christ” (Rom. 5:17 Moffatt). Those who receive this grace “reign in life.” They reign not only in this little marginal victory or that sideline accomplishment but “in life.” Life centrally and fundamentally is under their control. They know how to live, life is theirs. Just as the pilot reigns over the sky because he or she obeys the laws of flying, so Christians reign over life because we obey the laws of life.
Grace binds you with far stronger cords than the cords of duty or obligation can bind you. Grace is free, but when once you take it you are bound forever to the Giver, and bound to catch the spirit of the Giver. Like produces like. Grace makes you gracious, the Giver makes you give.
Karma weakens you, makes you legalistic and bargaining. It produces the Pharisee and the proud Brahman. Both are discredited; life can’t use them. Grace strengthens you. “Be strong in the grace of Christ Jesus” (2 Tim. 2:1 Moffatt). The grace of Christ Jesus produces strength, strength of character and strength of love. Those who are swayed by grace do ten times as much as those who are swayed by karma. They have no limitations and no inhibitions. Their grace overflows to everybody.
Grace is not only the key to strength; it is the key to knowledge. “Growing in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ” (2 Pet. 3:18 Moffatt). Grace is first, and knowledge is second. You don’t know unless you know grace. Knowledge without grace is ignorance, you haven’t the key to unlock the mysteries of the kingdom. But when you start with grace, then everything is open to you. Life is one glad, glorious, opening surprise.
O Christ, I thank you that you come to me not as the teacher first of all. You come with grace, grace for my sins, for my weakness, for my health, for my lack of resources, for my ignorance, for everything. Now since I accept your grace, I can be taught. Teach me. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: Where sin has abounded in me Grace now much more abounds in me. I live by that “much more.”