The eCrozier

No account of the Christian Gospel is intelligible without the grace bestowed upon us in the Cross. God’s pre-emptive act in Jesus to redeem humanity on the cross means that everything else must be seen and understood through that cosmic intervention into human history. And that, of course, means God’s intervention of grace must shape how we behave in the Church. It makes no sense to model our behavior on Utilitarianism, Meritocracy, or Social Darwinism each of which at one time or another seems to be the ruling paradigm in western culture. If grace is true and it’s what God’s up to in the world, then we can’t proclaim it as God’s very nature and not practice it in how we live.

Although I’m by no means a Calvinist, I’m alert to my own life and to the world around me. Thus, certain aspects of Calvinism’s TULIP Doctrine make a whole lot of sense to me (especially the Big T, “total depravity” part). I recognize such depraved tendencies in myself, and to be “fair and balanced,” I see it in others as well. Sin is everywhere and all the time. No part of me and no part of the world goes unaffected by it. As the Office of Morning Prayer in the 1928 Book of Common Prayer states: “There is no health in us.” Well, maybe there’s some health? Maybe that overstates the human condition a bit? There’s “health” in me. My intentions are good most of the time. I’m able to do good. I can be kind, compassionate, and just. But I also know that even my best intentions can become an avenue for my sin.

Still, I understand the biblical witness to one of God’s irresistible grace, mostly. That doesn’t mean we don’t resist it. We do, sin being what sin is. But God has the last word on humanity’s fate. God has not and will not leave us to our own devices. Grace intercedes in our path to personal and communal destruction and snatches us from the jaws of death. And this is not only for the “sweet by and by.” There’s plenty of living death right now when we live gracelessly.

But when we do live gracefully, we do so because we know how the drama of the human story ends: with the New Jerusalem of John’s Revelation coming to earth. And, as we say in the Lord’s Prayer, God’s kingdom will come one day on this earth “as it (already) is in heaven.” God’s grace in Jesus makes this possible. The human family, who has seemingly bought a one-way ticket to death and destruction, gets its destiny rerouted by God’s intervention on the cross. So, our human trajectory changes from death to life. This is God’s last word to humanity.

God’s grace made manifest in the cross of Jesus then shouldn’t be seen as God meeting us anything less than all the way. It’s not as if God reaches half of the way to us and then waits patiently for us to come to our senses and then we reach the other half of the way. Our good works, our insight, our cleverness, or our efforts at living justly don’t make up the other half so we can meet God somewhere in the middle, that is, God does God’s part and we do the rest. God through Jesus steps into the sin of our lives and brings us out all the way. We do not help one bit. Once that sinks home, we begin to take the first steps to living gracefully.

+Scott