God’s
Riches
At
Christ’s
Expense

(This one is the best because it both defines and spells Grace at the same time!!!)

And while I don’t really want to knock those definitions (except maybe the acrostic), I wonder if you’ve ever felt like me that such simplistic definitions do not do grace justice?

I should point out that I’m not saying that we can completely understand grace. In fact, as we discuss grace a little bit, I’d like to try to show that to understand grace completely, we would have to understand God completely.

The seed thought that I have for thinking about grace is this:

Grace is associated with the specific work that God is performing in any situation. What we identify as grace is the interaction of God with us as His creation to accomplish His purposes. Grace is tied up in the specific actions of God and in our perception of those actions (think revelation).

In this post, I want to focus on the specificity of grace in any given situation.
As I was growing up, I tended to think of the world as a complex system that God had put into place and that ran, machine-like with only occasional “intervention” needed by Him. And while this abstraction of the world serves quite well for some purposes, much like Newtonian physics, it is a severely flawed way of understanding both God and the world He has created. You see, Scripture defines God as omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and outside of time. It also says that he actively sustains the world. Because of this, any system that God has created is, by His very nature, constanly being intervened upon. Or to say it another way, God Himself IS the system (and therefore, is not a system at all.)

If we accept this, that a Sovereign God as described in Scripture demands a completely involved God, and that God’s involvement in our lives is of a personal nature, we begin to see how specific grace must be.

I should also state this: If you do not believe in a sovereign God, then it is not my intent with this post to convince you of it. The goal of this post is to bring previously separate concepts about God and His grace together into something of a cohesive whole (and, as with all my posts, to perpetrate excessive comma usage upon the world)

Let me give some examples that demonstrate my understanding of grace in action:

Example 1:
Let’s suppose for the purposes of this example that God’s ideal for a functioning home is some form of home school. This is for example purposes only. Let’s also say we have FamilyA and FamilyB. The Mom and Dad of FamilyA have been saved for about 6 years and are in a small Bible preaching church in a small town with no Christian schools. Several church members teach at the local public school and DaughterA and SonA both attend there. FamilyB attend a different church in the same town and the Mom and Dad of FamilyB have been saved for approximately the same amount of time. The elders at the church that FamilyB attends all home school their children and they have recommended home school to the members of the church. FamilyB decides to home school their children and do so for several years. At some point, the Dad of FamilyB decides that home school is costing them too much in terms of time and energy. He talks to his wife and they decide to put their children in the local public school for the last four years of high school. This part is the key: in this example, FamilyB’s reasons for stopping home schooling are carnal and are based on their own selfishness.

Based on what I know of grace in Scripture, it would not be unreasonable to expect that God would treat these two families very different for their decisions. He may very well bless FamilyA and protect their children from certain dangers while FamilyB and their children may have a very different experience in the same school during the same time period.

Example 2:
Two young Christians get married and have a couple of children. Because of the way they were taught, and the church that they are attending, and the best advice that they can get, they do not begin disciplining their children in earnest until they are three or four years old and they rarely spank them. Nevertheless, their children are relatively well behaved and respectful of their parents, their rules, and the Word of God. Over the next 14 years, the parents do not have any more children, but they do change churches and they mature quite a bit in their faith and in their understanding of Scripture. At this point, they have two more children in short order. Initially, they treat these children much as they did the previous two, but these children are much more unruly and do not respond to the limited discipline that they get.

In this situation, though there is only one family, the passage of time and the greater revelation of God is what has changed. We have every reason to believe that God would not bless their current actions where they have greater knowledge of him in the same way that he would when they acted through ignorance, but through faith as well. We also have every reason to believe that if they begin applying what God has revealed to them over the past 14 years they will see results (not perfection, not all their problems going away, but God will bless their obedience)

What I am trying to get at with these examples is not that we can control the actions of God or that works produce righteousness, but instead the idea that we cannot always compare two separate actions and understand why God chooses to bless or curse as He does. (In fact, we cannot always tell what is a blessing and what is a curse. I am also not saying that life is inscrutable and that we shouldn’t try to understand God or His ways.) Because grace is not some magic pill that fixes things, but is instead exactly how God as a Father/Judge/Triune God is working in the world both through His actions and through His revelation to each and every man, it is not something that we can just wave our hands at and explain away. Grace is complex because God is complex and grace is the work of God. But Grace is also simple because all we have to do to receive it, is to obey.

There is, of course, more to be said about grace and what it teaches us about God, but I think this is enough for now. I realize that this is a rather long post for this blog, but if you’ve managed to fight your way through it, I’d love to know what you think.

You are watching television, a crime-drama or a thriller, something like CriminalMindsBonesNumbers or CSI:MiamiNewYorkIdaho. You know exactly the sort of show I’m speaking of. On the screen there is a woman. She is at home and she is alone. There is a very good chance that she is attractive or even beautiful. If so, there is an even better chance that she is dressing for bed. Slowly, the music assumes a suspenseful tone and the camera pans back letting you in on the secret that she is not as alone as she might think. If you have watched these types of shows more than once, then at this point you know that something horrible is going to happen to this woman. The question is, what will it be? You lean forward in your seat. The camera moves closer and perhaps you are allowed to see the attacker or perhaps the woman hears a sound from another room and goes to investigate. Either way, the suspense builds further and further until it is at a breaking point. It is at this moment that someone calls you from the other room. Your wife, your husband, your mother, your child, it does not matter who. “Can you come here for a minute?” they ask. “Just a second you reply”, and to yourself you think, I want to see what they do to her.

Do you understand the significance of that thought? Someone has imagined an evil, and you would like to see it executed. Someone has sat and contemplated the horror that they could inflict upon someone else, and while it is not real, in fact, because it is not real, it will delight you to see what they have devised. You may shudder at what you see, but it will not compel you to turn the television off or to not return to it again.

Don’t think that I’m just making this scenario up, or that I’m just guessing at human behavior, because I’ve done this very thing. I’ve thought those very thoughts. I’ve done it so many times that it makes me sick.

Perhaps there is some part of you that resonates with the above examples. Perhaps you too know what it means to see evil and to be intrigued by it. Perhaps is too soft a word.

You have come face to face with evil. And if you are honest with yourself, you know that it’s occurred every time that you’ve beheld your own face in a mirror.

The shocking thing though, is not that we are so depraved, but that we pretend to be surprised when someone acts on that depravity. We listen to the nightly news and we hear about the murders and the beatings, we hear about the woman who abandoned her children in a locked car in a parking lot, and we can scarce believe it happened. “How could they do such a thing?” we ask, and in our black and filthy hearts a sharp-toothed little monster shakes its head in mock surprise and grins, “How indeed?”

I will sing of mercy and judgment: unto thee, O LORD, will I sing. I will behave myself wisely in a perfect way. O when wilt thou come unto me? I will walk within my house with a perfect heart. I will set no wicked thing before mine eyes: I hate the work of them that turn aside; it shall not cleave to me. A froward heart shall depart from me: I will not know a wicked person. Whoso privily slandereth his neighbour, him will I cut off: him that hath an high look and a proud heart will not I suffer. Mine eyes shall be upon the faithful of the land, that they may dwell with me: he that walketh in a perfect way, he shall serve me. He that worketh deceit shall not dwell within my house: he that telleth lies shall not tarry in my sight. I will early destroy all the wicked of the land; that I may cut off all wicked doers from the city of the LORD.
(Psalms 101:1-8)

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?
(Jeremiah 17:9)

Here’s a snippet:

God demonstrates intended goodness on the reprobate. God’s ultimate purpose is to display His glory and the men are objects of means wherewith God will draw all men to Himself. To paraphrase Jonathan Edwards the very fact that the rejection of this kindness heaps more judgment on the non-elect proves that it is actual kindness, else it would be of no consequence to the reprobate. The fact that wicked men abuse these good gifts and heap more wrath on themselves does not negate the intent of the gift. John Calvin states, “Proofs of the love of God towards the whole human race exist innumerable, all which demonstrate the ingratitude of those who perish or come to perdition.”

The system of truth is not one straight line, but two. No man will ever get a right view of the gospel until he knows how to look at the two lines at once.

I am taught in one book to believe that what I sow I shall reap: I am taught in another place, that “it is not of him that willeth nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy.”

I see in one place, God presiding over all in providence; and yet I see, and I cannot help seeing, that man acts as he pleases, and that God has left his actions to his own will, in a great measure.

Now, if I were to declare that man was so free to act, that there was no presidence of God over his actions, I should be driven very near to Atheism; and if, on the other hand, I declare that God so overrules all things, as that man is not free enough to be responsible, I am driven at once into Antinomianism or fatalism.

That God predestines, and that man is responsible, are two things that few can see. They are believed to be inconsistent and contradictory; but they are not. It is just the fault of our weak judgment. Two truths cannot be contradictory to each other.

If, then, I find taught in one place that everything is fore-ordained, that is true; and if I find in another place that man is responsible for all his actions, that is true; and it is my folly that leads me to imagine that two truths can ever contradict each other.

These two truths, I do not believe, can ever be welded into one upon any human anvil, but one they shall be in eternity: they are two lines that are so nearly parallel, that the mind that shall pursue them farthest, will never discover that they converge; but they do converge, and they will meet somewhere in eternity, close to the throne of God, whence all truth doth spring.

Follow up: If your answer to the previous question is that logic is a construct of the mind, made up by man, and is an arbitrary set of mutually accepted ideas, then please tell me this: If we use logic and reasoning to determine truth/knowledge, then by what means did we determine that logic and reasoning are true/useful ?

The heart of the idea that is being sold is that the scientist deals with the real world, with atoms and energy, with metals and chemicals, with universal laws and cold hard facts, while the Christian is left in the fanciful world of magic and fairies, of gods and miracles, of spiritual and invisible things that are only knowable through that slippery thing called faith. This idea supposes that the theologian who is studying the nature of grace is doing something fundamentally different than the astronomer who is studying the nature of the heavens.

The problem with this is that it is a lie.

The Christian is not barred from the world of the scientist, but quite the other way around. It is scientists (and here I am speaking of scientists who deny faith as an aspect of science) that are limited in the aspects of the world they can understand and address.

The Christian position is that the revealed Word of God is the basis for all that we know about the world and about God. It is because of this, that we take every thought captive and we bring it back to the Word to show us whether it is good or evil. Science is no different. It is not in a category all its own. It does not get a pass on this, but is instead subordinate to the Word of God in very way.

To suppose that a man who is trying to understand the nature of grace is doing something fundamentally different than a man who is trying to understand the natures of the heavens is absurd, for God is the central figure behind both of these pursuits and to remove him from either is to render not just grace but also the heavens, meaningless. For God is either the God of all or He is the God of nothing and His Word is either the basis for all revealed truth or it is the basis for nothing. It is because of this that we must declare both the supremacy and the excellence of God and his Word. To do anything else is to believe in another god altogether.

Bell uses this verse as part of his justification for the following statement:

As a Christian, I am free to claim the good, the true, the holy, wherever and whenever I find it. I live with the understanding that truth is bigger than any religion and the world is God’s and everything in it.

This quote is troubling to me, in part because I wonder where Bell is going with it, and in part because I wonder what he uses to determine what is truth. I honestly don’t know the answers to those questions though, as I don’t have the book.

I can tell you what I fear. I fear that because Christianity can be perceived as an incredibly simple thing, because it can be seen as the Bible taught in Sunday school with flannel graph and cookies, or as the Bible taught in the most shallow of churches, or as the “we wear culottes and dresses made of homeliness and our children are taught that 1 + 2 = the Trinity” brand of religion that the world likes to portray and unfortunately does exist; I fear that because it can be perceived this way by the world, Bell is going ahead and taking this as the definition for Christianity and then saying, “There is truth out there outside these walls, there are Buddhists who are wiser than some of these simple Christians. Perhaps we can sit with them, and glean what they know. Perhaps through their perspective we can come to better know our Lord.”

If that is what’s being said, I’d recommend to Jamie that she put the book down and not return to it. It seems to me that regardless of his intentions, and in the end it is his intentions that worry me, Bell is playing games with words.

Christianity is not a man made thing, it is defined by the one whose name it bears, and as a result, there is no truth outside its walls. There are to be sure, people who do not know Jesus Christ, who possess some of his truth, who have come to know some of the Words of God. And if God brings such a one into your life, and if you see some thing you have never seen before and you take it to the revealed Word of God and see that it is true, then thank God humbly for His revelation. But don’t believe that you have traveled outside the walls of Christianity to learn it. Or that you must seek other non-believers to know God better.

We must remember that it is the exception and not the rule for an unbeliever to know the truth of God. Consider what Christ says to them:

I know that ye are Abraham’s seed; but ye seek to kill me, because my word hath no place in you. I speak that which I have seen with my Father: and ye do that which ye have seen with your father. They answered and said unto him, Abraham is our father. Jesus saith unto them, If ye were Abraham’s children, ye would do the works of Abraham. But now ye seek to kill me, a man that hath told you the truth, which I have heard of God: this did not Abraham. Ye do the deeds of your father. Then said they to him, We be not born of fornication; we have one Father, even God. Jesus said unto them, If God were your Father, ye would love me: for I proceeded forth and came from God; neither came I of myself, but he sent me. Why do ye not understand my speech? even because ye cannot hear my word. Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it. And because I tell you the truth, ye believe me not.
(John 8:37-45)

It is shocking when those whose father is the devil, speak the truth. We should not be surprised that they are deceived, nor that they seek to deceive us as well, for they know not God.

As I said, I don’t know where Bell is going with his arguments. I’ve certainly run into plenty of authors and speakers who make similar cases for the flexibility of truth. If I’ve judged wrong, maybe someone can set me straight.

The word mundane comes from the Latin word mundis, and means of the world or earthly and by implication, it has come to mean boring, banal, and unexciting. And that’s significant, because mundane has another meaning as well, one that backtracks a bit and unwinds itself, a meaning that in some ways, diminishes the borders of the word, and in other ways, sets it up as a ruler over an incredibly populous kingdom. Intrigued? The word mundane means of the world, and before you say, “you just said that”, let me explain that it means of the world in the sense that it does not mean, of heaven.

Mundane is a border word. It is half of a dichotomy. It is a line drawn through the middle of our minds. It is a firmament. It is a kingdom. And like all great kingdoms, it does not allow dual-citizenship. Nor does its counterpart, for Heaven is the other kingdom, the other country that borders the mundane, the demesne whose edges begin where mundanity leaves off. And it is concerning the nature of this border that the lie consists.

You have heard the phrase, “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”, and if you are like me, you have believed it. You have more than likely also believed by implication, that mundanity is in the heart of the partaker. That what one man loves, another hates; what one finds joyous, another finds dull and uninteresting; what one says is glorious, another says that it has no glory in it at all. And while this seems true to our relativistic minds, it is ultimately a lie.

Heaven is like light and the mundane, like darkness, in that just as light does not begin where darkness fails, but quite the other way around, so does Heaven draw out the borders of its kingdom and then gives to mundanity what terrain it has refused. Don’t be fooled though, this doesn’t make the borders of the mundane any less real. Or to be more specific, when we declare what we find to be mundane or heavenly, we are not, as we are tempted to think, changing the borders of those great kingdoms, but we are instead, declaring where it is we dwell.

We see this sort of thinking throughout Scripture, here for instance:

If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth: But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.
(1 John 1:6-10)

And the mundane deception is no different. It is about the misidentification of the earthly with the heavenly. It is calling evil, good and it is what we begin to do when we grow weary in well doing. It is what C. S. Lewis spent so much time writing about. It is, I think, worth thinking about.

And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit. Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual. The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven. As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy: and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly. Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption.
(1 Corinthians 15:45-50)

Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour

I think about this a great deal lately, about the last five words in particular. I know people who have been devoured by the adversary, people who have been eaten and metabolized by the awful work of sin. We think of being devoured as being destroyed, but nothing eternal can be destroyed, it can only be changed, and we all know people who bear the marks of such a transformation. To some degree, we all bear such scars ourselves.

I think about these things when I look at my children, when my daughter is squeezing my hand and looking up at me with large and innocent eyes, when my son is standing in the center of our living room staring up at the television and drinking in whatever we have chosen for him to see, when my wife is at home and I am at work and she is facing the dark thoughts of a dreary afternoon. I think about these things, and I wonder what, if anything, I have done to keep this beast at bay. Some days, I know and fear the answer to that question.

But I should be clear here, we are not to fear Satan. There is only one thing that we are to fear, and that is not fear itself, but God Almighty. For Satan, we reserve our vigilance. For Satan, we reserve our seriousness and our sobriety of mind. And we know what this means. It means no more laughing at little sins, at cute wickednesses and clever blasphemies. It means being wise and alert and sleeping with one spiritual eye open. It means going through our homes and looking at everything with an air of suspicion, with an air of caution, with the thought in the back our minds that our families and our own lives may depend upon it. Because whether we like to think about it or not, there is a beast out there, and he is hunting for more than just you.

Perhaps you’ve heard the old bon mot, imagine a world without hypothetical situations. But let me suggest something: if you believe that the world from beginning to end has been ordained by the Words of God, and that nothing happens or exists outside of this ordination, then that is exactly the type of world that you live in.

When I talk to and debate theological issues with Arminians, and we discuss the nuts and bolts of salvation and God’s goodness and the history of the world, invariably someone will propose that we examine the world through the simplified lens of a hypothetical situation. And this is where things start to break down.

You are standing at a train switch and a train is hurtling down the track. Sitting astride the right-hand track is a car containing five children. Tied to the left-hand track is your wife. The switch is currently set so that the train will go to the right. You have only seconds to act before the train is past the switch. What do you do? (Also, how could a kind and loving God ordain such a situation to occur.)

A hypothetical situation demands that the author of the situation become God. A hypothetical situation gives the illusion of total knowledge. A hypothetical situation is at best a tool for examining the world, it is at worst a tool of self-deception. I don’t know if our predilection for hypothetical situations is a modern thing. For me, they fit quite well into my science fiction fueled concept of time. The idea that contained within the nexus of every decision there are a million possible outcomes, and that a million worlds spin into existence with every choice that we make.

Scripturally, this is hogwash.

If God is the God that He says He is, then within the nexus of every decision there is one possible outcome. This doesn’t mean that I get to know what that decision is, but it does mean that I can’t game the system by proposing unscriptural outcomes. What if something happened that was so evil, that God never received any glory from it? What if someone was about to be saved and a gunman burst into the church and shot them just before they made the choice? What if…?

If God is who He claims to be, then the universe is not one million possibilities, but instead, it is one complete thing, and it is designed from beginning to end, to bring glory to God. And lately, I can’t imagine it any other way.