Grace and the Unpardonable Sin

We’ve been talking about obedience and grace, and how good we have to be in order to be saved. We’ve learned that obedience (which is another way of saying doing things God’s way) is, in general, a better way to live. It brings honor to God. But it doesn’t eliminate the storms of life and is not, it turns out, the condition of our salvation.

As difficult as it is to understand the role of obedience in the Christian life, the concept of grace is no easier. Even though grace is offered for free, we want to pay for it. The idea that something as valuable as eternal life can be had for nothing seems too good to be true and even (for non-Christians in particular) seems utterly scandalous. Above all, it just doesn’t seem fair. It just feels not right not to get what you deserve or to get what you don’t deserve.

Grace is ubiquitous, relentless, and everlasting. It surrounds us, it envelops us. There’s plenty for all. And it’s free. So why won’t everyone be saved? Is it easier to be saved or easier to be lost? Is it possible to turn grace aside—to shun it? Is it possible to lose it? As Scripture puts it, how can we fall from grace?

Paul told the Galatians:

It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery. Look! I, Paul, tell you that if you have yourselves circumcised, Christ will be of no benefit to you. And I testify again to every man who has himself circumcised, that he is obligated to keep the whole Law. You have been severed from Christ, you who are seeking to be justified by the Law; you have fallen from grace. (Galatians 5:1-4).

Notice the condition of having fallen from grace. Those who fall from grace are those who are seeking to be justified by the law, Paul emphasizes.

There are apparently two poles for judgment; that is to say, we face judgment in two different ways: Either we place into judgment our own works, our own effort, our own prayers, our own piety, our own obedience, our own devotion; or, like the publican, we say: “God be merciful to me, a sinner!” We place ourselves in God’s hands and rely on his mercy. “God be merciful to me, a sinner! I accept your grace.”

To fall from grace, then, is to turn aside from grace and rely on our own justification by the law. Putting “works” into judgment is seen repeatedly in the teachings of Jesus, in stories such as the elder son, the long workers in the vineyard, Jonah and his prayer, Abraham at the altar, Cain and Abel, etc, etc. Grace will hound you, it seems, unless you insist on putting your works into judgment.

Not everyone will not be saved, although it could be argued that everyone could be saved. God devised a plan that invites everyone to be saved. But some apparently turn aside the initiative of grace. You might say that turning aside grace is committing the unpardonable sin.

We see this teaching of Jesus in the story of the man at the wedding feast:

Jesus spoke to them again in parables, saying, “The kingdom of heaven is like a king who held a wedding feast for his son. And he sent his slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding feast, and they were unwilling to come. Again he sent other slaves, saying, ‘Tell those who have been invited, “Behold, I have prepared my dinner; my oxen and my fattened cattle are all butchered and everything is ready. Come to the wedding feast!”’ But they paid no attention and went their separate ways, one to his own farm, another to his business, and the rest seized his slaves and treated them abusively, and then killed them. Now the king was angry, and he sent his armies and destroyed those murderers and set their city on fire. Then he said to his slaves, ‘The wedding feast is ready, but those who were invited were not worthy. So go to the main roads, and invite whomever you find there to the wedding feast.’ Those slaves went out into the streets and gathered together all whom they found, both bad and good; and the wedding hall was filled with dinner guests.  “But when the king came in to look over the dinner guests, he saw a man there who was not dressed in wedding clothes, and he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you get in here without wedding clothes?’ And the man was speechless. Then the king said to the servants, ‘Tie his hands and feet, and throw him into the outer darkness; there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth in that place.’ For many are called, but few are chosen.” (Matthew 22:1-14)

In the same parable as told also in Luke 14, we see the king sending out the invitation again after the first invitation was refused, and again when the second invitation failed to fill up the hall, and again. Here we see a parable on the fall of grace, on the unpardonable sin. Here we see the answer to the question: If grace is so abundant, how can we lose out on it? Here we see that the invitation is really the call to grace—the original, the second, and the third invitations are all calls to grace.

We see here two ways to fall from grace: The original group was busy its their own work. An invitation to the king, even to the wedding of his son, is no small matter. Such invitations don’t come every day. It is not a trivial invitation. To put one’s own effort ahead of the kings grace is to turn grace aside.

Like other stories we’ve studied, the demonstration of grace is so off-putting that it provokes anger; in this case, leading to murder. The invitation is broad and comprehensive. It is extended to the good, it says, and to the bad. But although the invitation is universal, it is also very personal. One man alone apparently did not have on a wedding robe. Everyone else who came—good or bad—had a robe for themselves. It was their individual robe, a personal robe, a robe uniquely for them.

Grace is widespread and singular, ubiquitous yet exclusive. We have a picture of this in this passage at the end of the Sermon on the Mount:

 “Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. For the gate is narrow and the way is constricted that leads to life, and there are few who find it. (Matthew 7:13-14)

This is a concept of a narrow gate. Although we have seen the narrow gate and the broad way as symbols of how easy it is to be lost in the broad way and how difficult it is to be saved in the narrow way, we need to re-understand the story of the narrow gate. We cannot see the narrow way as the way of limitation. We must see the narrow way as the way of grace.

It is, after all, the way that leads to life. It is narrow because it is personal. The way of grace is individual, everyone gets what they need, personally, one by one, through the narrow gate; the right kind of grace, the right amount of grace, the right size of grace. At the wedding feast, everyone is personally outfitted, appropriately for themselves.

The narrow gate cannot be simply to limit passage, because Revelation talks about a multitude who can only have come through it:

After these things I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no one could count, from every nation and all the tribes, peoples, and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, and palm branches were in their hands;… (Revelation 7:9)

Therefore, they have all come through the narrow gate. Here at the wedding feast, everyone is rounded up. Grace is not limited, it is abundant. It is for all. The narrow gate is after all Jesus Christ Himself.

There are, then, two ways shown here to shun the good grace: First, you can refuse the invitation—”I’m too busy with my own work”; Second, you can avoid the narrow gate where the robes are dispensed, individually, for size and shape. You got into the wedding feast by some route other than the narrow gate. John 10 says that the shepherd goes in through the narrow gate. Jesus Himself is the gate of the sheepfold. Robbers and thieves go over the wall.

To resist grace is to refuse the invitation. In the end, we see the picture we talked about last week: The grace party is on the inside. It’s on the inside of Nineveh, it’s on the inside of the Father’s house. It’s on the inside of the wedding feast. Those fallen from grace are on the outside. At the end of the wedding, two groups are on the outside: Those who refused the invitation initially, and the man who willfully ignored the narrow gate where the wedding garments were given.

To experience grace is to be on the inside of the house of grace. The prodigal’s father pleads with his elder son to come inside the house. But in the end, it is his choice to remain outside, putting his own effort, prayer, and piety in judgment, in place of God’s grace. It is a great irony, that when we see obedience is doing things God’s way, grace then comes clearly into focus. Doing things God’s way is the way of grace. It is not the way of the law. It is the way of grace.

Paul wrote about the way of grace as an adoption, as an inheritance; and puts us on the inside of the house of grace:

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, To the saints who are at Ephesus and are faithful in Christ Jesus: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.  Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us to adoption as sons and daughters through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will [The “good pleasure of His will” (another version tanslates: “kind intention of His will”) is another name for grace—DW], to the praise of the glory of His grace, with which He favored us in the Beloved. (Ephesians 1:1-6)

It seems we were chosen before the foundation of the world to be a holy and blameless people. But that plan went awry. It didn’t work out when we ate from the wrong tree in the garden. We needed a new plan, the plan of grace and adoption. The original plan for us to be holy and blameless and the backup plan to be adopted by grace both lead to belonging in the Father’s house, but only, in our case, by grace. We cannot establish residency by our own work. Only the father’s invitation gets us into the house.

Paul likens the road of life to a race:

Therefore, since we also have such a great cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let’s rid ourselves of every obstacle and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let’s run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking only at Jesus, the originator and perfecter of the faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. or consider Him who has endured such hostility by sinners against Himself, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. (Hebrews 12:1-3)

We don’t have to run the race alone. It is not a naked race. From start to finish. Jesus is the author and the perfecter of our race. Grace is our shoes for the race. Grace is our chariot in the race. Grace is the answer to Jeremiah’s questions:

“If you have run with infantrymen and they have tired you out, How can you compete with horses? If you fall down in a land of peace, How will you do in the thicket by the Jordan? (Jeremiah 12:5)

What is your risk of falling from grace? Is it easy or is it hard to fall from grace? Why is putting my work into judgment such a temptation for me? Why do we see over and over in the stories and the parables and the teaching of Jesus the inclination to put our works into judgment? If grace is so easy, then why is it so hard? What does the story of the wedding feast teach us about grace and about falling from grace? If doing things God’s way is the way of grace, why are we so inclined to rely on our own obedience?

What does it mean to live a life of grace? How do you live a life of grace? How do I live a life of grace? And how do we each of us avoid falling from grace? Is falling from grace the unpardonable sin? Is it deliberate? Can it be by accident? Is the unpardonable sin simply putting my works into judgment rather than relying on God’s grace, thereby turning aside God’s grace? What are your thoughts about the loss of grace, about falling from grace, and about how difficult it is to remain within God’s grace?

David: I would say that nonconformity is the unpardonable sin. The lone wedding guest’s sin was that he wouldn’t wear the wedding clothes everybody else was wearing. He wouldn’t conform. So the wedding dress is key. What does it mean?

I think it means that to be admitted we have to conform with the way God wants us to behave. How does God want us to behave? Jesus summed it up as: Love God and love one another. That’s all. The lone wedding guest thought he could get into the kingdom without loving God and without loving others. He was wrong, and he was thrown out. Failing to follow the Golden Rule would seem to be the unpardonable sin, as I read the Scripture.

Donald: The narrow and wide roads—the hard and easy road—remind me of logging into websites. We must first enter a password and then go through a second log in to get to access. Why isn’t accepting Christ as your personal Savior sufficient? Why does law have to be part of the process? Why do we call it law if it’s really love?

C-J: It’s always about relationship when it comes to God. I think religion and tradition are closely braided and imagery brings it into tradition. But I think that law is essential because it’s a measurement. And it’s flexible. A good law is flexible, it takes care of time and place, it’s protective. It must be able to adapt, it must be inclusive, a good law, because it’s a living law based on the Spirit and the Spirit is community and relationship. So I think that’s why we have to have law.

It’s always about relationship but we have to also acknowledge the braiding of tradition and religion. Religion is the glue. Religion or faith cannot be measured. That’s between you and your God, your Creator. But the law is measurable. Did I break the law? Did I break fellowship with this community? Have I done harm?

Donald: I never really see law as flexible. It can be interpreted, but it’s an absolute.

C-J: If you go into a court of law—you broke the law, you were speeding, you caused a homicide, you didn’t mean to kill somebody, but you did… The law looks at that and asks were you under the influence of something? Was it an icy road? Was the person that you hit driving erratically or not paying attention? That’s the grace factor.

Absolutes are very dangerous things. I do not like absolutes, I think none of us would survive childhood with an absolute. When we fall down and don’t break an arm we go, “Boy, that was the grace of God! It’s a miracle that I didn’t break my arm! I’m going 30 miles an hour and I’m landing on a pavement. The pavement usually wins. That’s the grace of God.” Absolutes are not good. They’re binding by definition.

Donald: Do you think the 10 Commandments are absolute?

C-J: I think there is so much grace in the 10 Commandments but humanity wants to make them absolute. It’s one of the reasons I love the story of the Samaritan woman, because I don’t see her as a fallen woman. That’s what we’re taught. But I think she was flawed by a set of circumstances in the framework of her culture’s tradition. I think that’s true with many of us. If you’re born into poverty, it’s not a level playing field. If you’re born with physical defects, it’s not a level playing field. And if you’re born with extreme wealth, it’s not a level playing field. There are expectations in each of those categories and limitations.

If we start with “There is one God” and worship none other, it goes back to what I said last time. If you’re born into a culture and the name of your God is different than mine, does that mean that you’re not worshiping the creator? Maybe your tradition is different, but there is but one God. Who am I to say that my traditions and rituals are better or more correct than yours? If it causes harm, then that speaks for itself, but who am I to say that the Creator has a different face?

And you work down the list: Do I believe in absolutely obeying parents? Do I believe that there’s headship in a family? Yes. But if you have bad parents, and they tell you to go out and sell drugs…? That’s what I mean by absolutes. We have grace, we have common sense, we have many levels in a given culture or society that are supposed to protect, and oftentimes women (or anything that doesn’t “normal”) are valued and seen as less and subject to—not necessarily protected by—their community.

Anonymous: We all here came from different cultures, and we have our own backgrounds. So maybe our behavior doesn’t always match living in grace but that’s not our mistake—it’s not our fault that we were brought up that way.

David: What is common in all cultures is that, in general, we all pretty much love one another. And in most cultures, they have a God, which they think is the one true God, and they love that God, they worship it. So everybody’s obeying the golden rule, by and large. Lots of us don’t, but the majority do, otherwise the world would fall apart.

I’m reminded of when Jesus overturned the moneylender’s tables in the temple, What seemed to infuriate Jesus was not that these people were simply hindering worshipers from following the law, from carrying out their rituals. The moneylenders were stopping some people from worshiping at all, from expressing their love of God. That’s what made him so angry. That’s what got him mad. The law was irrelevant.

I don’t recall Jesus making any kind of a big deal about the Scriptures—the home of the law. In the parables and stories like the rich young ruler he gives the law its due if it helps people to express their worship of God, but what really matters, he said, is loving God and loving one another. It’s as simple as that. If that is simplistic, so be it. I have to simplify this contradiction between law and the teachings of Jesus otherwise it would not make a lot of sense.

C-J: My understanding of Jesus in the temple and overthrowing the money tables was that he said “You shall not make the father’s health house a den of thieves.” You could only use temple money to purchase a sacrifice—a dove, whatever. And the exchange rate would be like a bank saying, Okay, I’ll exchange it. But there’s a duty on it, an additional tax for this currency because you can’t spend it anywhere else except in the temple.

“You will not make it a den of thieves” meant “You take from the poorest of the poor. They might walk for days to bring a sacrifice or only seasonally for a high religious holiday, and these people can barely afford a handful of grain.” So he was angry that it became a business instead of an offering.

That braiding together of tradition and religion can bind us instead of liberating us. One is the free-will offering of joy and faith and grace. And the other is if I don’t, I won’t get to the other side, I will have broken the rules, I won’t have community. I think it’s a very fine line that people of faith walk that if I don’t do this, I’m supposed to do this, I should do this, instead of going back to relationship. It is very simple. Do what you will and harm none. Be respectful, be authentic, and be in community.

Reinhard: The Wedding parable is different compared to the stories of the Ninevites and the Prodigal Son. In the latter stories, Jesus wanted to tell us that he is a forgiving God who loves everybody. He invites everybody to come to him and has grace enough for everybody. But the picture of God in the Wedding parable is a little bit different.

The first invitees, who didn’t come, I think also describes the Jewish people who didn’t take Jesus seriously when he came to minister to them. Then he invited even the Gentiles to receive him as Savior. Some were thrown out because they didn’t follow the Jewish rules. Although grace is for everybody, there’s law and order in everything, some moral law that has to be followed.

There was law in the time of the Israelite—ceremonial law, civil law, and moral law. Moral Law is what Jesus meant when he said he came not to abolish the law. So there are certain laws we have to follow even if we already have grace. We cannot do just anything we want. If we go over the speed limit on the freeway, of course the law must be applied. There is no freedom without law.

C-J: But the problem with law in a box is that it doesn’t work in a community in real life. It doesn’t work. The Bible is a story of the Israelite people in the Old Testament. It’s their story. They used to sacrifice their children. When we say: “Will it cost me my firstborn?” it came from the tradition of passing their children to the fire for rain, for good crops, for a war, a volcano…. Today, we think: “I was never taught that” but it goes back to the spirit of the law.

It’s really about living in community and love and kindness. If we disciplined our children with the rod every time they did something wrong, our children wouldn’t love us. But if we do a correction, teaching them how to think and process and understand that it isn’t that they were disobedient, it is that they didn’t recognize the harm that their decision made on not just them, but on others. Failing to understand community doesn’t make them bad people. They’re maturing. Some learn quickly, some don’t.

And what about the person whose brain isn’t wired right? Where’s the latitude for grace for the born sociopath? Grace is so intricately braided to the law by spirit. Why do we need this law? What is the intention of this law? How will we apply the law? Who does it consider in writing this law? Is it flexible? What is the language going to be? A good law to give consideration to all of that—hence, we have the Sanhedrin in the Old Testament. We don’t teach about the Sanhedrin, but we should, because we get into that 10 Commandment/bound by the law thing. The law is supposed to be done in a spirit of love.

Donald: Don and I were raised in the church at about the same time. It wasn’t “Whatever religion you’re in, it works for you.” That wasn’t the attitude. The attitude was our religion is right, we have the truth, and our job is to share the gospel, certainly within the culture and the context of being a Seventh Day Adventist. C-J and I were raised in the same city, but she wasn’t an Adventist and I was. Adventists kept to themselves. They didn’t reach out unless you became an Adventist.

Generally speaking, do other religions attempt to proselytize? The men’s group with whom I study the Bible chooses churches like you’d pick a restaurant. It’s not a big deal, it’s whatever you like, whatever works for you. That’s all in the Christian context, but I don’t think they see it as an important question. If that pastor doesn’t work, we’ll go over there. If this particular church group or community doesn’t work, we’ll go over to that community. So sgsin: Do other churches see proselytizing as important as I think we did?

C-J: I’ve been to a lot of different churches and put my toe in a lot of different faiths, completely different. I think you are born into your faith. It’s a birthright, where you begin, just like the rules of our house are, and they usually line up with the faith. So if you’re a Catholic, that means something different than if you’re an Adventist or Pentecostal. And they have different sects. In the Islamic faith, there are many spectrums, from the very conservative to the very liberal.

They do not proselytize like we do. They don’t go around the world like Christians. They don’t look for their people, the people look for them. That’s the difference. We’re going out to find converts and they’re saying “Why do that? If they’re supposed to be with us, God will bring them. They will agree with our way of being, our traditions.” Each sect has its own flavor, but they don’t do it like Christians do.

Some Moslems are very political. Some of them are very traditional, some of them are very spiritual. A lot has to do with how much money they have, if they’re educated or uneducated. Jewish community, same thing: Are they really orthodox? Even Wiccan tradition (people who practice what we would consider witchcraft): Same spectrum. I don’t know about the Hindu faith, Santorias (?): Same spectrum, a mixture of traditional West African religions coupled with Catholicism.

Christians proselytize in a different way, in terms of going out in the world. And the messaging is always focused on Christ, salvation, admitting I’m a sinner, asking for forgiveness, being baptized, and living according to the Bible.

Donald: Has Adventism matured to the point where we say “Whatever works for you”? To me, it’s one thing to have your faith, but to share my faith (or share the gospel)…?

Kiran: Ten years ago I think I would have shared my faith and my doctrine. Today, I will only share the gospel. For me, law is absolute. Jesus said people should not commit adultery. Every culture has adultery, so it’s a universal thing. In every culture, men abuse women. Jesus went so far as to say that if you only think about adultery, you are guilty of it.

How many of us do not break that law, when it seems like it is in our very nature to break it? We can go through all the excuses: Were you born in poverty? Are you hungry? Are you starving? You don’t have anybody? You can go through all the excuses and at the end of the day decide you don’t need God, you don’t need a law. But you know you’re wrong.

At that point, you have two defenses: One, you can continue to argue until you exhaust yourself and say sorry and ask for help. But when the help comes, accepting it does not mean you are free to go and do whatever you want. That’s what I define as cheap grace. It’s not a license for adultery. But it is a recognition that you may not have power to be faithful in your relationships.

So when you say you have accepted grace, you are saying you have recognized your problem. There is one person who can offer you a two-part solution: First, he takes away your punishment, and second, it is his job to fix you. I know for sure he can fix me. I know how much damage I can do and I know that only one can make me change. If I simply, blindly, follow this path every day, I know that I’ll be safe. And I’m not kidding myself.

As for proselytizing: Very close to the town in India where I grew up, there were some Buddhist pillars with pictures and the teachings of the Buddha on them. It was a form of proselytizing. Members of my caste in particular became early adopters of Buddhism. We were persecuted for that by Hindus. Today you find very few Buddhists in my caste, most of them are Hindus.

Hinduism is not one religion. We have multiple philosophies. Each proselytizes in its own way. Each has its own home God. My family has its own God and extolls its virtues to acquaintances. If they think their God is not working for them, they can add my family’s god to their shrine, then things will go well for them. But if not, they can shop around for another God. This is essentially how people choose a church here in the United States.

Hindu parents do teach their religion to their kids, like we do here. There is no regular temple attendance but it is done in a somewhat systematic way. There are festivals to attend, rituals to follow, some temple activities. No matter which culture you belong to, I think traditions are the way you teach kids the importance of God, and then they have a role to play.

Pastor Giddi: Proselytizing exists in every religion. But it is different in each religion. Hindu parents teach children to go to one God for wisdom, to another for strength to protect them from the demon, and so on. We were taught to pray to different gods for different needs.

As a man with a mission Christ told us (in Matthew 28) to go and teach to the world, to baptize people, to make disciples. How do we understand that in the context of grace? If I think “Who am I to go and tell people? They should come to us to be told!” then how can I do justice to the gospel commission? Jesus bids us to go. So go in grace, not to criticize the cultures.

The first four Commandments are about loving God. The other six are about loving your fellow Man. The children of Israel in the Old Testament are a representation of the children of Israel of the New Testament, the spiritual children of Israel. Therefore these Ten Commandments—the law—is not just given to the Israelites. There may be some laws specific to the Israelites, but the moral law applies to the entire humanity.

Jesus bids us to go. Jesus asks us to love God supremely, and also our fellow Man. He bids us to go and impact society. But if we sit at home, or in the mission compound, how will the people outside know about Jesus Christ? In the light of what we have been discussing, if I think “Why should I go and tell those people to leave their gods, to leave their practices? It is like I’m taking away their right.” and do nothing, how will they know about the truth of truth about Jesus Christ? How will they know about the judgment that is about to fall on this world? And how will they know the way of salvation?

God is asking every one of us to be a missionary. In the light of being a missionary, how can we present grace to people who do not know about it?

C-J: Paul was a Roman soldier for maybe 25, 30 years. He would have gotten his Roman citizenship just by 25 years of serving. He saw a lot of war. He saw what caused war and he saw the aftermath of war. He was living in a real hot mess in the Middle East. He saw what Rome had done, he saw other cultures completely decimated. So I think Paul in a way kind of jumped ship to the Gentiles. The Jews: “You’re gonna be okay, you’ve been going alright here for thousands of years. But what about these other folk who can’t decide who their God is, who’s gonna be in control, who has the power?”

I think he saw an opportunity to coalesce a broken world, the known world, through the act of faith, of a religion. When you look at the first established church—the catholic church, the church of Rome—there’s this compilation of faith, traditions, peoples, and how they spread out. At one time the Roman Church owned most of Europe and had control of kings and armies and what was gonna happen with specific people… everything! That was their mission. We call it empire building, but really, I think it wasn’t just about money, it was like if we can all get on the same page, we aren’t going to be fighting because most wars are fought over the policies related to economics, and religion.

I think part of Paul’s mission wasn’t just about his Damascus experience and being born a Jew, who was a Pharisee, a sect of Judaism. He began to look at the world and where he went and the harm that had been done through these wars and what was the impetus of those wars. He began to say: “If we could just kind of tinker with this a little bit, get everybody on the same page of one God and one way of government which was framed in those 10 Commandments, get a common denominator in terms of currency, weights, and free markets, we might be able to get ahead here and not be in war all the time.”

We’re talking about Christian faith. I watched a video called “Tares Among the Wheat” about how the Catholic Church was established. At one point, they actually believe the Roman Church was the Antichrist and I almost fell off the bed. We’re so used to looking at things in terms of what we believe, what we say is right or wrong. If you come here, we all have the same message, the same language, the same belief. And we don’t question it, we’ve embraced it.

Jay: Thinking of the narrow way as a personalized way really speaks to grace and equity, With equity, everybody gets what they need. We don’t all get the same, we get what we need. That’s a pretty powerful grace. If you’re given what you need, then you get something that may be very different from what somebody else gets, and this is where we have a problem. As fallen people, we don’t want equity, what we want is equality. I want what you got. I deserve what you deserve.

If God is a fair God, wouldn’t he give us all the same thing? We automatically go into this idea of fairness and equality, instead of really focusing on grace as being equitable. When grace is equitable, it is personal. There is a direct connection between God and me whereby God gives me what I need. At the parable of the wedding feast we see people making a judgment call on what they should have gotten. “I should have gotten this” or “This should have resulted from that.” What they are focusing on is equality and fairness, a quid pro quo. “This happened, so this should happen. This happened to me in the past, and then this happened. So if that happened to you, then the result should be the same.”

We try to determine what should happen. We make judgment calls on grace, which is really impossible. It’s impossible for us if grace is personal. If grace is giving you what you need, then for me to be able to determine what that should be for you is pretty impossible. But we so badly want to know that I’m getting what you’re getting, you’re getting what I got, and that it’s fair and there’s equality for all. If we can think about grace in the terms “I’m getting what I’m getting, Kiran’s getting what he needs, Reinhard’s getting what he needs, and we can be okay with that,” then that’s a pretty exciting place to be in my opinion.

Carolyn: If Scripture says go and tell—the Great Commission—thinking through grace, thinking through the law, and what we have been talking about today, what is eminent for us to tell? What do we turn to our children? To those who are looking for an answer? What are we telling? Our personal experience? Or what?

Don: We’ll talk about the gospel of grace, and how to tell it.

---