We love grace. It’s unmerited favor. It’s kindness received from God that we did not deserve. In simplistic terms, it’s God being nice to us when we don’t deserve it. We like that. And mercy is pleasant, too. It’s the other side of the same coin. If grace is receiving favor we don’t deserve, mercy is receiving forgiveness instead of the punishment we do deserve. It’s the mirror image, so to speak, but equally nice. So, we stand here on this side of receiving both grace and mercy and we’re glad. What we don't seem to do is understand the negative connotations of grace and mercy.
Paul said, “But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works, otherwise grace is no longer grace” (Rom 11:6). Grace is not earned. “Now to the one who works, his wage is not credited as a favor, but as what is due” (Rom 4:4). So the point of grace is that we don’t earn it. God doesn't owe us His kindness. “We maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the Law” (Rom 3:28). Not earned because we can’t earn it. That’s a somewhat unexpected and even harsh reality. We cannot earn it. Left to our own devices we’re incapable. Grace is unmerited which makes it grace and despite our popular ideas about being “good enough,” we cannot be. The very existence of grace is an indictment of our own abilities to save ourselves.
Mercy carries a similar indictment. Mercy is compassion, leniency, or restraint in imposing punishment shown to an offender. Mercy presupposes we are offenders. Mercy assumes there is a need for justice and if mercy is not applied, we will rightly face punishment. “There will be tribulation and distress for every soul of man who does evil, of the Jew first and also of the Greek” (Rom 2:9). Mercy assumes we’ve earned it. When Paul wrote, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom 3:23), he was explaining the nature of sin. Sin falls short of the glory of God. God’s glory is hidden in our sin. It is, according to Paul, the reason that God is righteously angry with us (Rom 1:18-19). Mercy is necessary because we’ve incurred God’s wrath, a wrath that requires appeasement (Rom 3:25; Heb 2:17; 1 John 2:2; 1 John 4:10) .
We love grace and mercy, and we should. But their goodness is rooted in the reality that we need them desperately. We cannot earn His favor, and we have earned His wrath. If you're going to claim we have earned His kindness and we haven't earned His wrath, you have no need for grace or mercy. Forgetting that reality turns grace into something cheap and mercy into something casual. Worse, it leads us back to the same self confidence and self righteousness that stirred His anger in the first place. As people who stand only because of His grace and mercy, we ought to remember why they are so good.
7 comments:
This falls in line with what I was saying yesterday about the necessity of the Fall. No Fall, no grace or mercy. Without the Fall, Adam and Eve earn their place in the presence of God by their obedience. But that obedience is simply what is required of us and is not enough for righteousness.
Grace and mercy, favor and forgiveness--both sorely needed by me, a sinner, and both poured out generously by the Lord, the lover of my soul.
David, I suspect that I concur with your general premise, but I’m having trouble following your thoughts the way you expressed them (both today and yesterday). (I’m guessing that you and Stan have discussed this topic in the past apart from the blog and thus you feel confident about your points, while I am going only by your actual statements here and wondering about your grounds for them. I am certain that I am misunderstanding you. Just so you know.)
As I mentioned for yesterday’s post, I believe that Adam and Eve’s original holiness--placed within them upon their creation in God’s image--afforded them perfect harmony with God, nature, and each other. They were not robots, going through preprogrammed obedient motions--a fact proven by their subsequent sin. I don’t see that they needed to or did “earn their place in the presence of God by their obedience”; they were placed there immediately through no effort on their part--by grace. Perhaps you meant that their inclusion in God’s presence continued only as long as their obedience did? And that after they sinned, their righteousness was no longer sufficient for their former fellowship with God?
Lorna, I believe that Adam and Eve at their creation had perfect communion with God. However, that doesn't mean that had full knowledge of God. They had a perfectly good relationship with Him, but COULD NOT know what grace or mercy were, nor could they grasp the magnitude of His love which He expressed by giving His Son for our sin. You would have no idea what a gonculator was unless you had some means of being introduced to it, and they had no means of being introduced to mercy and grace.
As I said elsewhere, I don’t think we should speculate too much about Adam & Eve’s relationship with God before the Fall; the narrative in Scripture is too scant. From what we are told, however, it is clear (to me, at least) that they received grace in abundance from the start--from God’s creation of them (in His image--how gracious is that?!) to His perfect care and provision for them in the garden, His continuous fellowship with them, the general knowledge and instruction for living He imparted to them, His provision of a partner for each of them, and more. Everything from God’s hand to them--their entire existence--was unearned, special favor--i.e. grace. Perhaps your point is that in the beginning, they did not understand or recognize God’s treatment of them as grace (the way so many people today don’t), since it was all that they knew. I would concede on that point.
Lorna, as created beings, Adam and Eve were required to obey God's Law. However, simply obeying what is required of you is not enough to merit righteousness. The absolute maximum we could achieve is meeting the requirements set forth, but that doesn't make us righteous. There is no faith in only obedience. Abraham's righteousness was not his own, but given to him by God. In that sense, Adam and Eve, prior to the Fall, had no righteousness, only obedience.
I haven't talked with Stan about this outside the blog, but I'm pulling from RC Sproul, so that might be why he isn't confused by my poor writing skills.
Thanks for the efforts towards clarification. I see that we have slightly different things in mind in this exchange. My apologies.
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