Pregnant With Grace

We’ve been talking about the mysteries of God, about good and evil, about the mystery of godliness and the mystery of iniquity. And in that context, we’ve been looking at grace, a subject of great importance to the Christian yet something we find vaguely unsettling. It elicits strong emotions—joy, for one; but also anger and confusion. Of all Christian beliefs, nothing engenders emotions like grace. 

Moreover, it is the single most questioned belief by those who are not Christian. The freely given pardon, the lavish gift of forgiveness without paying anything for it just doesn’t seem right. Don’t I have some responsibility? Isn’t there some accountability for my actions, my behavior, my conduct? It can’t be that I just get off scot free! It just doesn’t seem right. 

Somebody, it seems, has to pay something, some way, somehow. There is no free lunch. The concept of a pardon, a free gift, without payment, just doesn’t add up. I’ve got to do something—shape up at least, repent, return, reform. 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer coined the term cheap grace—grace without consequences, without paying something. I can’t just shrug away all my faults and my shortcomings and my sins, can I? Don’t I need to work hard at being better? Why should I be good if I’ve already been forgiven? Why try to be just as God wants me to be when he accepts me just as I am? 

This is the scandal of grace. This is grace unhinged. Can it really be true? 

A 2017 article in an online publication called Catholic Chemistry reported, ahead of the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, some Pew research showing the majority of Protestants—52%—believe that both good deeds and faith are necessary for salvation and that Christians need the guidance of the Church and its teachings and its traditions in addition to the Bible. 

According to the Pew poll, only 30% of Protestants believed in both sola fide (faith alone is what matters) and sola scriptura (scripture alone is what matters)—the hallmarks of the of the Reformation. Another 35% believed in either sola fide or sola scriptura alone, but not both. The remaining 36% believed that neither was necessary. In comparison, 81% of US Catholics believed that both good deeds and faith are necessary for salvation, while 75% believed Christians need the Bible and tradition.

Religion is all about paying the price for our sins. Much of the practice of religion is about paying it back in our rituals, in our habits, and in our procedures, prayers, fasting, and almsgiving. All of these are, at root, forms of penance. But grace is not like that. Biblical grace requires no payment, no quid pro quo. It is full and it is free. In his book  What’s So Amazing About Grace, Philip Yancy concludes:

“I freely admit, I have presented a one-sided picture of grace. I have portrayed God as a love-sick father eager to forgive, and grace as a force potent enough to break the chains that bind us and merciful enough to overcome deep differences between us. Depicting grace in such sweeping terms makes people nervous. And I can see that I have skated to the very edge of danger. However, I have done so because I believe the New Testament does so as well.” 

Consider this pointed reminder from the grand old preacher Martyn Lloyd Jones, a Welshman who was a physician and also Minister of the Westminster chapel for 30 years: 

“There is thus clearly a sense in which the message of justification by faith alone can be dangerous, and likewise, with a message that salvation is entirely of grace. I would say to all preachers: If your preaching of salvation has not been misunderstood in that way, then you had better examine your sermons again and you had better make sure that you are really preaching the salvation that is offered in the new testament to the ungodly, to the sinner, to those who are enemies of God. This is a kind of dangerous element about the true presentation of the doctrine of salvation. Grace has about it the sense of a scandal.” 

Still, it must be true that grace does something to us. What do we expect of grace? The apostle Paul must have anticipated this objection, this argument that somehow grace cannot be free. He must have anticipated the scandal of grace. In the first five chapters of the book of Romans he establishes the sinfulness and the depravity of all mankind. In Romans 3:23, he makes the categorical statement that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. But in Romans 6 and 7, he puts the scandal of grace to rest, and he begins in Romans 6:1 by asking the question on everyone’s mind: 

“What shall we say then? Are we to be continued in sin, so the grace might abound? By no means.”

God forbid! Absolutely not! Pick the phrase you like, depending on the translation, but the answer is emphatic. 

He goes on to make three arguments using the metaphors of life and death, slavery and freedom, and marriage: 

1. Grace liberates you from sin, just as the resurrection liberates you from death. In the spirit, by grace, you died to sin and were raised to a new life in the Spirit. You would no more persist in choosing sin over grace than you would choose death over life.

2. He makes the same argument with the illustration of slavery: Being freed by the bonds of slavery to sin by grace, why would you go back to a life of bondage? “Embrace your freedom,” he says; “Who wants to be a slave?”

3. Finally, he uses the metaphor of marriage: Love, he emphasized, is the binding element of grace. 

Yancey wrote: 

“Would a groom on his wedding night hold the following conversation with his bride: ‘Honey. I love you very much, and I’m eager to spend my life with you, but I need to work out a few details. After we’re married, how far can I go with other women? Can I sleep with them? Can I kiss them? You don’t mind a few affairs, do you, now and then? I know it might hurt you but just think of all the opportunities you’ll have to forgive me after I’ve betrayed you. 

“To such a Don Juan, the only reasonable response is a slap in the face and a “God forbid!” Obviously, he does not understand the first thing about love. Similarly, if we approach God with a ‘What can I get away with’ attitude, it proves we do not grasp what God has in mind for us. God wants something far beyond the relationship I might have with a slave master who will enforce my obedience. God is not a boss, or a business manager, or a magic genie to serve at our command. Indeed, God wants something more intimate than the closest relationship on Earth—a lifetime bond between a man and a woman. What God wants is not a good performance, but my heart. I do good works for my wife not in order to earn credit, but to express my love for her. Likewise, God wants me to serve in the new way of the Spirit, not out of compulsion, but out of desire. If I had to summarize the primary New Testament motivation for being good in one word, I would choose ‘gratitude.’ 

“Paul begins most of his letters with a summary of the riches we possess in Christ. If we comprehend what Christ has done for us, then surely, out of gratitude, we’ll strive to live the life worthy of such great love. We will strive for holiness—not to make God love us, but because he already does. As Paul told Titus, it is the grace of God that teaches us to say “No” to ungodliness and worldly passions and to live a self-controlled and upright life. This passage is from Titus 2 beginning in verse 11: ‘For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men, instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires, and to live sensibly and righteously and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and savior Christ Jesus, He who gave Himself for us, and he might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for Himself a people for His own possessions, zealous for good deeds.’” 

There’s one more story I think sheds light on this discussion. It’s found in the story of the Annunciation, the calling of Mary to be the bearer of grace, to give birth to Jesus:

 Now in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city in Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the descendants of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary. And coming in, he said to her, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.” But she was very perplexed at this statement, and was pondering what kind of greeting this was. And the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. (Luke 1:26-30). 

The Annunciation of Mary is her calling of grace, and it is to be seen as if we are all like Mary, called to bear good for the world, each of us in our own unique and special way. We can see this as the birth of the Word with a capital W in the soul. Notice that what is born in us is not of mankind’s devising. What is born is holy and divine. The fetus in Mary’s womb is not man-made; the Immaculate Conception is of heavenly origin. So too for us: God seeks by his grace to make us instruments of the Immaculate Conception of his divine grace. 

We see here universal applicability. We are all called to grace, to bear the Word of God to others. “Hail Mary, full of grace,” the angel says, “the Lord is with you.” This is the greeting to Mary, and this is the greeting to you and to me. Luke says that Mary is greatly troubled at what the angel says, We are doubtless troubled by our capacity for evil, and for aggression, or even more afraid, it seems, of our capacity for goodness. Mary is greatly troubled to hear herself be proclaimed as full of grace and that the Lord is with her. And so too, I think, are we.

Far more threatening than the fear that we are capable of doing evil and harming others is the truth that we are blessed, full of grace, and have a capacity to bring Jesus into the world in a special and individually specific way. It is frightening to know that we all have a unique task and an assignment before God. We are called as a consequence of the gift of grace. It is as if God says “My grace takes care of you. You’re absolved. Your salvation is taken care of by my grace.” But you’re called to a different mission, a mission of bringing Jesus to the world, not a mission of self-righteousness, but to bear the word of grace to others. We must be faithful to the call, to give birth to the Word at the core of our being. 

Do we struggle to give voice to the Word that God will speak through us? We, like Mary, are vessels of grace and beloved by God. The Lord is with us. We have been created to bring Jesus to the world in a way that no one else can. This is the responsibility of grace. While it may be terrifying, it is our calling. And God assures us, as He did with Mary, that with God all things are possible. To accept that we are full of grace and that the Lord is with us, is our mission and our calling. It assures us that God is willing to help us, that we have his covering of grace, and that it puts us into this situation of being a source of grace to others. 

So I’d like your thoughts this morning on the scandal of free grace, of responsibility and grace, of living a life of grace, of seeing your calling as linked to your grace. 

David: I’m a little concerned about going back to the idea that we have an active responsibility to go out and evangelize and proselytize and witness. I really don’t think we do. I don’t think that’s the message I read in the Bible. The message I read is that grace is there for everybody, whether they have heard of Jesus or not. Indeed, you can see grace in the ancient Daoist sages, who lived good lives. They did not hurt anybody or anything—or they tried not to—but not out of any feelings of guilt or fear of damnation. There’s no guilt or fear in Daoism. There is simply an acceptance that life is what it is. Enjoy it, but don’t fight it, because it is ultimately stronger than you. Daoists don’t call it God, but essentially it’s the same 

I hear Paul saying: “Put aside all of that guilt. We are what we are.” True, he spends five chapters pointing out how bad we are, but then says: “Put that aside. There’s nothing we can do about that. All we can do is have faith.” Or as the Daoists put it: Go with the flow, accept it. When you do that, then the goodness will emerge of itself.” It does not mean that you should then jump on a bus and go to Karachi and start preaching Christianity to Muslims. That’s not what it means at all. It simply means you become a good person, and by virtue of being a good person, others will see it, and you will be passing on the grace that you have received. 

But you don’t have to do it actively. You don’t have to open a Twitter channel to spread the Word.

Donald: I think it is important to distinguish the difference between evangelize and proselytize. We see the Great Commission as being to evangelize, to spread the Good News of Jesus Christ, the gospel. Proselytism includes the good news but it is also to bring people into our way of thinking. It goes beyond what the gospel is about—its doctrine, specifically. Couple that with the idea of goodness: It’s pretty easy to be good to people we like, but what about being good to total strangers? 

Robin: There’s a difference between “thumping the Bible” and engaging in discussion of something brought up by another person We not only have to demonstrate, but we also must be prepared to answer such questions as “Why do you seem to have more peace?” or “Where did you learn kindness?” To not speak of it, I think, would be certainly a way to hoard grace…”I don’t have to worry about you; you’ll find out somehow,”… when sometimes we are the vessels through which they discover the love of God that exists for them.

David: Mother Teresa passed on her grace to me. She’s never met me, she’s never spoken to me. I simply heard about what she did in India and it affected me. She was witnessing, in a way, but she never had any intention of being famous. She simply wanted to help poor people, and she did that without fanfare. (The rest of the world provided that.) So she passed on the grace directly to the poor people she served and indirectly to the whole world simply by being who she was and doing what she did. 

The call for Adam and Eve was to remain selfless—not to develop a self. Eating the forbidden fruit gave them a self. Before that, they were basically a part of God—selfless. Once you have a self, the problems start. You feel you have a responsibility to justify your self by going out and preaching and so on, but that’s really not the point. What you should be striving to do, as I read the Bible, is to become selfless. 

If you are selfless, you don’t even think about having responsibility. You don’t need any responsibility. In giving yourself back to God you also give back all responsibility to God. You don’t need to do a thing. Lose your feelings of guilt—you don’t need them if you’re capable of becoming selfless.

Robin: But don’t we see discussion as part of communication? It’s not only example. It’s also sharing, otherwise, why do we have this class? Why do people write books, and so forth? Communication involves more than just example.

Jay: Often we want to attach everything we hold dear to a couple of things: One is knowledge and the idea that we understand it and can articulate it and can even debate it; the other is control of our own destiny, which is difficult to reconcile with grace. Americans used to be taught they had a God-given “manifest destiny” to expand, to take and control territories and make the world in their image. 

But the grace of God is completely out of our control. I think we know that we need it, and we appreciate it, but I’m not sure that we always like it. It’s tied to words like “responsibility,” and we don’t then know what do I do with it. Could we just accept that grace is grace, that it’s for us, and it’s here? I think that if you can become selfless, you won’t worry about what you have to do but will nevertheless end up doing a lot of what you should do.

Michael: I was raised up Catholic, and did not hear much about grace. I lived in a majority Muslim country and never heard grace being used to attack Christianity. The more orthodox Catholic Church is perhaps too short on grace to be attacked for it! The Protestant church talks about grace, which then seems to lead immediately to talk about cheap grace. Yet I don’t recall that concept being raised by Paul or anywhere in the Bible itself, so it seems to be just a human—and possibly wrong—concept. 

Don: My position is that cheap grace is grace that we have to augment with our responsibility and with our works. It is the very opposite of what the term “cheap grace” was coined for. I think cheap grace is man-made grace, or it’s feeling that you have to add something to God’s grace. I think you’re right. I don’t think it’s a biblical concept. 

C-J: As I see it, there is no such thing as cheap grace. Much was paid and much is required. And not because I bought my stairway to Heaven but that I am selfless. Thy will be done. It’s a high calling. It’s not easy to be a person or a Christian with that kind of conviction about the level of humility that is required.

Reinhard: Indeed, much is given and much is asked. It’s our duty as Christ’s followers, but I don’t think it means everybody has to undertake the Great Commission to go to the ends of the earth to spread the gospel. Jesus said if we help people—especially those who are the least, the outcasts, the have-nots—then we also help Jesus.. We all have God-given talents but as in the parable of the Talents, some are given more than others, but even if we only receive a single talent, we must use it. But sometimes people don’t want to do what God wants, and for that, there have to be consequences , 

In Eden, we acquired the capability to discern, to select and filter information, especially the spiritual information that we need to carry out our duty. God gave us brains to discern and to execute things he wants us to do—worldly and (especially) spiritual things. Christians know it is their duty to do what he wants them to do, without reservation. When we know God, we have to do his will. It is inevitable.

Don: Is it possible that evangelism or proselytizing is the opposite of what Jesus calls us to do? If we were to take simply the gospel of grace, what kind of effect would that have? I’m not talking about doctrine, beliefs, reformation, behavior, and so on, but simply a gospel of grace. How effective would that be? It seems like it wouldn’t it wouldn’t be very effective… right? We have to break it down: “You should do this, you should not do that.”

David: In a sense, I’m arguing that Daoism is esentially a gospel of grace. That would explain why the Dao De Jing—the Daoist “Bible,” is so (blissfully!) short. It says “We are who we are, it is what it is.” It is the Way (the Dao) and you can be on it or off it. But if you’re off it, you’re on your own and it’s not the right place to be. The best place to be is on the path and let the path take you where it will. In other words: Accept the grace. 

So yes, I think if Christianity were simply to adopt the gospel of grace it would be much more acceptable throughout the world because it already exists in most religions. There is a gospel of grace, I think, in all the great religions, but many of them have become bogged down, like Christianity, by all the accretions that humans have added to the fundamental philosophy of grace over the years. We can’t resist tinkering with it. Even through this class we are adding to it, producing a weekly transcript to add to the bloated literature. 

It is not really necessary. It’s inside us. I agree there has to be some accountability and some punishment for shirking it, but if you if you do bad things, punishment is automatic. If you step off the Way you will hurt yourself in some way. At least, your conscience will prick you. That is punishment. Your conscience is pricked. Maybe you won’t feel it for 10 years, you might smother your conscience until your dying day, but in the end, it will catch up with you. 

That is the message of Daoism: In the end, the Way will win. Just as any Christian would say: In the end, God will win. There are no two ways about it. Any of the great religions would say the same. Thus, the gospel of grace is present already throughout the world. I don’t think it needs to be evangelized and taken out to the ends of the earth, because it’s already out there.

C-J: I think Paul speaks to that: Let grace be its own witness, and may it abound. The rest of it can be clutter that can get in the way. Look at all the compromises the first 300 years of the Christian church had to make and endure to get the message out in terms of grace—real grace, not just “I forgive you” but the understanding. I agree that sin has its own reward—it does great damage to the soul of the person who’s inflicted it as well as to the person who was impacted by it. It’s a very simple message.

Anonymous: My mind is on overdrive! The goodness of God is a strange concept to human beings, and the evilness of Man is a strange concept to God. Yes, we know how to be good, but it’s a pale imitation of God’s goodness. Maybe we don’t understand that the goodness of God is the only way to bring people to God, to bring them to obedience, worship, surrender, love. 

It’s not like I have to do something; it’s like, with all my heart, with all my desire, I want to be near him, do his work, please him. I don’t want ever to do anything to make him angry or make him sad. At the same time, God knows that we are dirt, that we don’t have anything good in us. That’s why he’s not going to compare our badness with his goodness. If he were to do so, there’d be no salvation because we deserve to die; however, it is his way to be unusually, extremely, out-of-this-world good—by giving us grace. It’s much higher than we can imagine or understand. It’s his goodness that saves us. 

Today’s analysis of Mary I found overwhelming. On February 13, 2008 I wrote in my Bible, on the blank page separating the Old and New Testaments, essentially the same analysis: That the same grace of God that made Mary pregnant when she had no experience with man also fills us up and impregnates us. And when we’re full and pregnant with the Holy Spirit, it’s like a physical pregnancy: It has to show. It has to. 

You can’t miss a pregnant woman. It’s obvious both from the bump on the outside and the glow coming from inside. Inside, the soul recognizes, it knows. The new thing that happened in the heart and the outside is the good deeds and the love of people and humility and the mercy and all the good things and the service that everybody sees, like they’re seeing the pregnancy of a woman. It shows. We don’t have to say anything, but that’s evangelism. 

This display of truth, of real change, of a new heart, is evangelism. From this point of view, evangelism is different from what we’ve been practicing. It’s telling the people the good news of what grace has done in my heart. It’s not telling them stories from the Bible or how to live. It’s just telling them how great, how fantastic, the work that God’s grace did in me. It changed me completely, inside and out. This evangelism, this testimony, glorifies God, telling the world: “Look what he did to me! Look where I’ve been, and see where I am now!” 

Just as Mary became pregnant through the grace of God without the experience of sex, so might a person become spiritually pregnant through the grace of God without the experience. 

David: Mary didn’t go out and evangelize, yet she got to save the world! 

Anonymous: Exactly. Mother Teresa did not tell the world anything. She did not teach. The world saw her actions. It’s just like the world looking at a pregnant woman: There’s no way they can miss that. It’s obvious. 

God puts his grace in an unlearned person. As with the act of sex, an inexperienced person does not know anything about God, does not know about how to get spiritually pregnant. But God’s grace does the work and then we know—we know—not from some outside source but because of the grace of God that rests in our hearts. We understand it, we experience it, without being taught it. 

We may read the Bible from beginning to end and think we know it. In 2008, I wrote these words, yet I did not come to understand grace until now. It’s the experience in life. It’s God’s work. It’s God’s goodness. It’s God’s way—the only way. There is no other way for us to be saved, if it wasn’t for the goodness of God. 

Long before Jesus came, Isaiah said “Emmanuel”—God is with us. It’s like God was reminding people: “I have been with you right from the beginning. You forgot me, but I never forget you.” Just as Jesus came in person to this earth for us to see that God is with us, walking on the earth and living with us, we have to understand spiritually that God was with us even before we saw him with our eyes.

Reinhard: It has been said that the gospel has already been preached to the ends of the earth, but remember, Jesus said that when that happens, the end of the world will come. In the jungles of Papua New Guinea there are still indigenous people who have probably never heard about the gospel. The Christians who brought the gospels came from various denominations but the grace of God was their main topic, I would say, but doctrine was also embedded in their teaching. 

Indonesia is a majority Muslim country but the Dutch Reformed Church and Jews are also present. So although the gospel has been preached, it has not saturated the country. When it has, then I think the end will come.

Ben: Many clever and wise things have been said today. I especially liked the pregnancy analogy, because I have experienced moments in my own life that felt as momentous and could not be hidden. I am reminded of a song from the 90s called “Teardrop,” by a British band called Massive Attack, whose first lines are “Love. Love is a verb. Love is a doing word.” I’m thinking it may also be a Being word.

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