Free Grace
Notes
Transcript
This past week a friend of mine introduced me to something called the just-world hypothesis. The just-world hypothesis was postulated in the mid twentieth century by the Canadian psychologist, Melvin J. Lerner, and it is also sometimes referred to as the just-world fallacy, which I think you’ll agree is probably a more accurate way of putting it. The just-world hypothesis (or fallacy) states that the world is a fair and orderly place where what happens to people is generally what they deserve. In other words, bad things happen to bad people, and good things happen to good people. This view leads us to believe that the world is stable and predictable. We want things to make sense, and the logic of the just-world fallacy gives us the illusion that we can make sense of our world and the things that take place in it. For example, most of us, when faced with a difficult medical diagnosis will (at some point) wonder, “What did I do to deserve this?” because the stinking thinking of the just-world fallacy is practically a subconscious reflex for us.
This type of logic makes sense to us. The problem is that this logic is not the logic of the gospel that Paul so wonderfully articulates in Romans 5.6-11
Especially striking to me is the logic of verses 6-8 where Paul writes,
6 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.
7 Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die.
8 But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.
The eternal Son of God did not become incarnate and offer himself on a cross for the sake of our salvation at a time when humanity was at its best: the reality that God was violently crucified on a cross by the very people he desired to save proves that. Think about how remarkable this is! According to Paul, it’s rare enough for someone to die for a person they would consider righteous, someone who is exceedingly noble. And maybe, just maybe someone might lay down their life for someone whom they think is good but not quite to the level of being righteous. It’s unthinkable, then, that a person would lay down their life for someone who is antagonistic and ill-natured. And yet! that is exactly what God did for us: he died for us when we were hostile and had done nothing to warrant or deserve such a rescue. Let’s make this personal. Bring to mind the person in this world whom you have had the most enmity and conflict. Now imagine laying down your life so that person could live. This seemingly illogical, irrational act is the logic of the gospel and the rational act of a God whose love for us is far beyond our comprehension. The logic of the gospel obliterates any notion of the just-world hypothesis, not because bad things happen to good people, but because because the undeserving get that which they don’t deserve in Christ. That, my friends, is grace.
Now some of you may be puzzled by the fact that I kept saying things like “God was crucified” and “God died” for us. I’m being very intentional in using this language. Too often we talk about Jesus’ act of self-giving on the cross as though Jesus did something for God. As the second member of the Trinity, who was fully human and fully God, Jesus was not doing something for God but as God. Tom Wright puts it this way:
Paul for Everyone, Romans Part 1: Chapters 1–8 Jesus’ Death Reveals God’s Love and Guarantees Final Salvation (Romans 5:6–11)
Look at verse 8. What Paul says here makes no sense unless Jesus, in his life and death, was the very incarnation, the ‘enfleshment’ (that’s what ‘incarnation’ means) of the living, loving God. After all, it doesn’t make sense if I say to you, ‘I see you’re in a real mess! Now, I love you so much that I’m going to … to send someone else to help you out of it.’
As Jurgen Moltmann put it, make no mistake. It was no mere man who was crucified; it was God crucified.
While the gospel logic of Romans 5.6-11 is a simple but profound and powerful truth, it is extremely difficult for us to absorb into our hearts.
Romans 5.6-11 invites us to dive far below the surface of the inaccurate and simplistic world-view of a so-called “just-world” to the depth of God’s mysterious and incomprehensible grace and mercy toward us.
So, today is a good day. Today we get to talk about the Wesleyan notion of grace. Of course grace is not distinctive to Wesleyan theology. Every stream of Christianity celebrates God’s beautiful grace.
However, what makes Wesleyans different, especially when contrasted with those affirm the doctrine of predestination is that we believe (as John Wesley put it), grace is FREE FOR ALL and FREE IN ALL. That is, God’s saving grace is not only available to a certain group of people whom God has elected to be saved; rather, God’s saving grace is freely available to everyone who would welcome it.
In his sermon, “Free Grace,” Wesley takes aim at those who affirm the doctrine of predestination. Simply put, predestination is the idea that God has decreed before the foundation of the world that a few people will be saved while the rest of humanity will justly face eternal punishment. In many ways this doctrine corresponds with the just-world hypothesis, though to be fair, proponents of the doctrine declare unmerited grace for a few but not all. For the Wesleyan, these are fighting words largely because we believe that this doctrine ultimately leads to an understanding of the nature and character of God that is entirely unfitting and unworthy of God.
I have some very, very dear friends in Christ who believe in predestination, so I want to do my best to present this doctrine fairly. I want to be respectful of those who hold to this theology; however, I’m not sure there is a doctrine popularized by the reformation with which I could disagree more.
Many of you may have heard of the acronym, T.U.L.I.P. as a pneumonic device to remember the five basic tenets of predestination: total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, and the perseverance of the saints.
We don’t have the time to talk about all five tenets and the ways in which Wesleyan thought differs, but I do want to address unconditional election and limited atonement.
Unconditional election is the idea that God elects some to be saved and that that election is not based on any action or condition on our part. Instead election rests on God's sovereign decision to save whomever he is pleased to save, which from the Wesleyan perspective necessarily means God is “pleased” to have a large group of people suffer eternally. In the back of my head, I can hear some of my Calvinist friends disputing that characterization and others saying, “Yep, that’s it. What’s wrong with what?” Whereas I feel all I need to do is say it out loud, and it sounds self-defeating to me.
When it comes to unconditional election, Wesleyans believe that salvation is open to everyone, not just a few. Thus, in John 7.37 when Jesus says, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me,” he really means everyone, not just those whom God has elected. In Acts 17.30 when Paul preaches to the people of Athens and says, “While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent,” all really means all and not just those who are among the elect. Finally, if it is true that God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked as Ezekiel 18.23 suggests and God does not want anyone to perish but for all to come to repentance as 2 Peter 3.9 states, we cannot affirm that salvation is extended only to a few whom God has chosen and not freely offered to everyone.
The idea of limited atonement means that Christ died only for the elect, not for the whole world. Again, just articulating this out loud seems enough to me to dismiss it.
Wesleyans do not affirm this either. Now to be fair, this is the most controversial tenet of the five points and not all who believe in predestination embrace it. However, those of us who are Wesleyans strongly disagree with those who do.
When John 3.16 says,
John 3:16 (NRSV)
16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”
we take that to mean that Jesus died for all, for the whole world, not just the elect.
And, as 1 John 2.2 says,
1 John 2:2 (NRSV)
2 “and he [Christ] is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.”
The atoning work of Christ is efficacious for all, not just a select group whom God chose before the foundation of the world.
Resort to proof texts but there are larger issues
If there are any Calvinists listening to this, they will want to offer their own list of verses and alternative interpretations of the verses I have mentioned. We could go back and forth proof-texting all day long, and I got a sense of what hell might be like when I was stuck on a van with a Calvinist for 15 hours on a mission trip. She wanted to argue the issue The. Entire. Time. I was ready to say I agreed with her just to get her to shut up about it.
In my opinion lobbing verses back and forth as we did on that interminable drive, will get us nowhere. Both sides can produce Scriptures that support their view. However, in Wesley’s sermon, “Free Grace,” he puts his finger on what I believe are the two main problems Wesleyans have with the doctrine of predestination. First, Wesley says that predestination “overthrows the whole Christian Revelation.” What Wesley is getting at is that when you look at the metanarrative of Scripture, it suggests that God’s unfolding plan was always to expand those who are saved, not limit it.
After the fall, God begins his plan of salvation by choosing one man, Abram. Through Abram came the nation of Israel, whom God elected. Through the elect nation of Israel came the Messiah who would bring salvation not only to the Jews but to the Gentiles as well. Thus, those whom God elects whom God chooses is always expanding in the narrative of Scripture. We can throw individual verses back and forth all day long, but for the Wesleyan, the real biblical problem with predestination is that it runs counter to the overall biblical narrative.
Another key issue that Wesley addresses is what the doctrine of predestination ultimately says about the nature of God. Wesley minces no words here calling it a “doctrine full of blasphemy” that “destroys all of God’s attributes at once” and “represents the most holy God as worse than the devil as both more false, more cruel, and more unjust.”
To be sure a Calvinist would take great issue with Wesley’s statement here, but I wanted to give you a taste of the rhetoric Wesley deployed to demonstrate the seriousness of the disagreement. I’ve never used this type of rhetoric with a Calvinist before, but Wesley says out loud here what many of us Wesleyans are thinking inside. And make no mistake, my Calvinist friends would like to level similarly strong language back!
From a Wesleyan perspective, the problem is this: regardless of how advocates of predestination might soften their language or qualify their terms, at the end of the day, you end up with a God who created sentient beings, most of whom will suffer eternal torture with no chance of a different outcome because they were never given any other choice. To the Wesleyan, this is an understanding of God’s character that is altogether unworthy of him and unfitting of who he is.
A.W. Tozer famously once wrote,
“What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” What we think about God is so important, Tozer argued, is because “we tend by a secret law of the soul to move toward our mental image of God.”
In other words, we tend to develop a character and set of dispositions that reflect what we actually believe about God.
If Tozer is correct that we become similar to what we believe about God, it is deeply troubling to Wesleyans to mimic the character of a God who is “pleased” with the eternal suffering of sentient human beings made in his own image.
Tozer goes on to note that the image of who God which is in our hearts, is not necessarily consistent with what we say we believe about God. Tozer writes,
“Compared with our actual thoughts about Him, our creedal statements are of little consequence. Our real idea of God may lie buried under the rubbish of conventional religious notions and may require an intelligent and vigorous search before it is finally unearthed and exposed for what it is. Only after an ordeal of painful self probing are we likely to discover what we actually believe about God.”
While a majority of people may not follow a Calvinist line of thinking about God’s nature, I do think that what most of us actually believe about God in our heart of hearts corresponds to the logic of the just-world fallacy rather than to the logic of the gospel that Paul describes in Romans 5.6-11. Deep down we tend to believe God is generally only gracious to those who deserve it as a result of their being a “good person.”
Last week, I told you about Father Gregory Boyle’s ministry to former gang members in Los Angeles. This week I’ve got another story from Father Boyle’s ministry to share with you.
The photographer, Steve Burton, visited Homeboy Industries to undertake what he called the “Skin-Deep Project.” He took photos of several former gang members who were covered from head to toe with tattoos, reminders of their former lives. Every time they looked in the mirror, they were reminded of their past. Every time another person looked at these intimidating figures, the first thing they saw was a fiendish past literally written on their bodies for all to see. Burton took the photos and edited them to reveal what each person would look like without their tattoos. It was an extremely touching and emotional experience for these men and women to see themselves with the markings of a dark past.
The Skin Deep Project - David Pina
You see, like these former gang members and those who see them with all of the threatening markings on their bodies, we fail to see past the things that have darkened our lives. In our heart of hearts, we often believe the logic of the just-world fallacy: we have to either get the tattoos removed or avoid them in the first place to receive God’s grace. However, the logic of the gospel states that God’s grace comes to us precisely when we are marked by darkness, and as Wesleyans, we believe this grace is freely offered to all, not just a few. This is the beauty of God’s grace freely given to all.
Reflection Questions
Reflection Questions
In my heart of hearts, what do I really believe about the nature and character of God?
What “tattoos” have darkened my life that I believe exclude me from God’s grace?