Costly Grace

Costly Grace

Romans 5:1-11[1]

I think we are a people for whom God’s grace doesn’t make much sense. I mean, think about it: the whole idea is that God loves us just because he chooses to do so no matter what we do or don’t do to deserve it. That’s not something we “get” very easily. We’re wired to understand things like working hard to get somewhere in life; if anything is worth doing, it’s worth doing right; and you don’t just get handed whatever you want on a silver platter. But the idea that God—especially God—would grace us with his love simply because he chooses to do so is something of a stretch for most of us.

In our world, we’re much more comfortable with the idea that “God helps those who help themselves.”[2] I think many people view the Christian faith from this perspective—as if it were some kind of barter system, where we exchange going to church and helping the less fortunate and giving our income so that God will give us eternal life in paradise. It is the idea that we have to earn whatever we hope to receive from God’s hand in the end. And in fact, that idea has actually been endorsed at times by church leaders because it can be an effective way to motivate the flock. The fact that it turns salvation into an elaborate “pay-to-play” transaction doesn’t seem to matter to those who take that approach.

In contrast to that line of thinking, in our lesson from the Letter to the Romans for today, the Apostle Paul speaks about a God who offers peace, hope, and life to us all.  Not because of anything we could possibly do to deserve it, but simply because God chooses to do so. It’s an act of grace. It’s purely a gift. And as difficult as it may be for us to comprehend, that means there’s nothing we can ever do to deserve it. I think that makes a lot of us uncomfortable, because we prefer to be in control of our destiny. Although I don’t know why we would think we could control our eternal destiny!

But in fact, Paul says that God pours out his grace for us precisely when we are in no position to do anything to earn it for ourselves. He says that God sent his Son to die for us when we were helpless and even antagonistic toward God.  As Gene Peterson translates Romans 5:6 in The Message, “Christ arrives right on time to make this happen. He didn't, and doesn't, wait for us to get ready.”  Paul says that at just the right time, Christ died for the sinners and the ungodly—and in Paul’s mind that includes us all!  He doesn’t talk this way to browbeat us for our fallen condition, but to bring us to the place where we can accept the gift of peace and hope and life that God offers us all. 

But that’s really the question: how do we accept the gift of the amazing grace that God is offers us through Jesus the Christ? If it’s simply a gift that we can never deserve or earn, then it might make sense to think that we can just sit back and let God do his thing. But the fact of the matter is that’s not how it works either. Both extremes miss the point—we cannot earn it, but neither can we just sit back and act like we are entitled to it. That’s what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called “cheap grace”!  By that he meant grace that doesn’t really have a lasting effect on our lives.[3]

By contrast, when grace really grabs us it changes us for good. The word that the Scriptures use for that is repentance. The Scriptures call us all to repent; that is, we have to come to the point where we can acknowledge our faults in order to accept the gift of the grace that God offers us. It might seem like a contradiction to say that there’s nothing we can ever do to deserve or earn it, but that we have to come to the place where we admit our failings in order to receive it. And yet, various recovery programs have taught us that the only way to start the journey toward healing is to recognize that we have a problem.  I think the same thing holds true for God’s grace. It really doesn’t make much of an impact on us that God loves us so freely until we realize that we need it. God’s grace becomes something life-changing when we fully grasp that we cannot live without it.

I think a big part of what St. Paul was getting at is that we cannot “save” ourselves. That might seem obvious, but I think there are a wide variety of ways in which we go around trying to “save” ourselves. What St. Paul knows is that repentance and faith go hand in hand—you can’t have one without the other. We can’t really come to the place where we put our faith in Jesus as our savior until we realize that we are simply unable to save ourselves. That’s a hard thing for many of us to admit to ourselves. No amount of effort, no amount of service, no amount of giving will suffice. Our only way to find the peace and joy and new life that God offers us is by recognizing that we need it, and that we can’t do anything on our own to get it. 

The season of Lent is a time for us to come to terms with who we are—we are all in need of the gift of grace and new life that God offers us through Jesus Christ. But it’s also a time to recognize that grace is “costly” as Bonhoeffer said it.[4] And St. Paul makes it clear how much it cost to make it possible for us to have access to this grace: it cost Jesus his life. It cost God the life of his own son. I think that pretty much takes care of any notion that we can somehow deserve or earn God’s grace. That’s another reason for the season of Lent. It’s a time for us to get past the pride that keeps us from acknowledging our need, so that we can accept the gift of God’s costly grace.

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[1] ©2017 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 3/19/2017 at Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] This phrase entered our society through Benjamin Franklin’s “Poor Richard’s Almanac.” It is not a quote from the Bible, despite what many think!

[3] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, vol. 4 (2001), 43-44: “Cheap grace is means grace as bargain-basement goods, cut-rate forgiveness, cut-rate comfort, cut-rate sacrament; … Cheap grace is grace without a price, without costs. … Cheap grace means justification of sin but not of the sinner. Because grace alone does everything, everything can stay in its old ways. … So the Christian need not follow Christ, since the Christian is comforted by [cheap] grace! … Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without the living, incarnate Christ.” This edition of Bonhoeffer’s classic work is vastly superior to the previous English translation, The Cost of Discipleship. In some cases the older version actually renders the German of Bonhoeffer’s Nachfolge into English in direct contraction to the German original! For example, on page 44 of Discipleship, Bonhoeffer speaks ironically about “Cheap Grace” leading the Christian to try to do something exceptional, and as a result “there is no difference between Christian life and worldly life.” In The Cost of Discipleship, 44, the same statement is rendered to say that it is imperative for the Christian “to distinguish his life from the life of the world,” and the motivation is so that the world will believe in “the free gift of grace” (“billige Gnade,” which is correctly rendered “cheap grace” in the newer version). There are many such examples of this reversal of meaning in Cost of Discipleship.

[4] Cf. Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, 45: Costly grace “is costly, because it calls to discipleship; it is grace, because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly, because it costs people their lives; it is grace, because it thereby makes them live. It is costly, because it condemns sin; it is grace, because it justifies the sinner. Above all, grace is costly, because it was costly to God, because it costs God the life of God’s Son… and because nothing can be cheap to us that was costly to God. Above all, it is grace because the life of God’s Son was not too costly for God to give in order to make us live.”

Trusting Faith

Trusting Faith

Romans 4:1-5, 13-17[1]

We live in a time when it seems that it gets harder every day to trust in the promises we hear. Of course, since the first advertisement promoted a product that was “New and Improved!” we have been subjected to a flood of “promises.” With all that racket going on, we’ve learned that those kinds of “promises” aren’t meant to be kept. They’re meant to convince us to buy something. At times, the truth is found in the “fine print” or the hastily rattled off disclaimers at the end. Unfortunately, too few of us pay attention to those details. And after not a few times of being “taken,” we get to the place where we stop trusting promises altogether.

It seems that these days the better part of wisdom is to realize that people make promises for all kinds of reasons. Some make “promises” because they want to tell us what they know we want to hear. Some make “promises” because they want to get something out of us. Some make “promises” because they just like the feeling of having the power to make someone believe something. And when these “promises” turn out to be false, we have to wonder whether they ever intended to keep them in the first place. It’s a sticky problem, because I don’t think one answer fits all. There are some who mean well and promise more than they can deliver. Then there are others who use their words to blatantly manipulate us. How do you tell the difference?

This problem of knowing which promises to trust comes into play with our faith. Our faith is one that built wholly on promises—promises are the foundation, the structure, and the shape of our faith. I wonder if sometimes it may be just as difficult to trust the promises of our faith as it is to trust the other “promises” we encounter in life. After we’ve been burned a few times, all “promises” begin to sound alike. So we tend to assume that if something sounds too good to be true, then it must be. And yet, most of the promises that serve as the basis for our faith sound “too good to be true” to a lot of people these days.

In our lesson from the letter to the Romans for today, St. Paul looks to Abraham as the prime example of one who trusted in God’s promises. That makes sense, when you think about it, because Abraham and Sarah are the place where God’s promises and our faith begin. Most of us know the story: Abraham and Sarah lived in “Ur of the Chaldees,” or what is modern-day Iraq. And at the age of 75, God called Abraham to leave the land of his family and to go to a land God would show him. And the promise was that God would make a “great nation” of Abraham, and through his offspring God would “bless all the families of the earth.”

I think if you’re looking for the personification of a faith that trusts God to keep his promises, Abraham and Sarah are pretty good candidates! I’m not sure I would have had the faith to set out on such a journey at their age. And as one passage of Scripture points out, they set out not knowing where they were going (Heb. 11:8)! That would have been difficult enough. But the promise was not just that they were headed to a land that God would show them. The promise was that from their offspring God would make a great nation. I think that was a promise that would have been difficult to trust. After all, even in that day and time, 75 was well past the age when someone could expect to have children.

So it seems reasonable for us to ask what in the world would have motivated them to set out on such a journey of faith. And St. Paul quotes from the Scriptures to answer that question: “Abraham believed God” (Rom. 4:3, quoting Gen. 15:6). Simply put, the reason is because Abraham trusted God to fulfill his promise. St. Paul defines this faith in different ways: he calls it trusting in the one who “justifies the ungodly” or “declares the guilty to be innocent” (TEV) or “accepts sinners” (CEV; Rom. 4:5). He also speaks of the faith of Abraham as trust in the God who “gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist” (Rom. 4:17). I think it’s one thing to put your faith in the promise that God forgives sinners. It’s another thing altogether to trust that God gives life to the dead!

But St. Paul insists that this is the kind of faith that opens the door to the forgiveness and acceptance and new life that God offers us all through Jesus Christ. He is convinced that trusting faith is the only way for us to have that kind of life-giving relationship with God. Experiencing the gift of new life is something we cannot “work up” by our own efforts. It comes only in response to faith. The reason for this is that Paul knows that salvation “depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace” (Rom. 4:16). New life is something that rests on God’s grace. As such it is conveyed to us by a promise. And the response to that promise is trusting faith.

I will be the first to admit that this kind of faith is not always easy. Sometimes, the circumstances of our lives seem to contradict all the promises we’ve trusted. Sometimes it just seems too good to be true that God could really be the kind of God who forgives sinners, or who brings good out of evil, or who gives life to the dead. At times it may take more faith than we can muster to trust those promises. That’s when we encounter the growing pains of our faith. That’s when we learn that we find peace in this life only by trusting God, especially when it seems beyond us. We find ourselves renewed as we take the risk of responding to God’s promises with trusting faith.

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[1] ©2017 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 3/12/2017 at Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

No Comparison

No Comparison

Romans 5:12-19[1]

I think one of the worst things to happen to the Christian faith was when sin became the primary focus of attention. That might sound like a strange thing for a preacher to be saying on the first Sunday of Lent. Of course, I’m not trying to say that sin is unimportant. But whatever you make the starting point for your faith is going to have a significant effect on what you believe. You know what I’m talking about: you’ve been to other churches where people are constantly made to feel guilty. And as a result, God’s love comes across not as unconditional, but as something that depends on what we do. If we make the right choice, then the “good news” is that we’re in the clear. If not, well, the “news” is not so good.

One of the things I like about the way we approach the faith in our tradition is that we start with God’s grace. We see that in the sacrament of Baptism: it demonstrates that God’s love chooses us before we even have the capacity to make a choice for ourselves. We see it in the sacrament of Communion: God’s love continually strengthens us so that we can follow Christ. Obviously, we don’t ignore sin. We have a confession of sin at the beginning of every worship service. But we confess our sins with the confidence that we’re approaching a God of grace, whose love for us is unconditional and irrevocable. In my mind, that makes all the difference in the shape of our faith.

This might also seem like a strange introduction to a sermon about our lesson from St. Paul’s letter to the Romans. In this passage, Paul reminds us that the “original sin” of our first parents had consequences for the whole human race.  Something about that just doesn’t seem right to our way of thinking.  How can one act have such widespread effects?  Part of the explanation is that one sin has a tendency to lead to another. And another. And another!  St. Paul looks at the whole sweep of human experience, so full of violence and greed and hatred and abuse and corruption and exploitation and injustice and oppression, and he says in effect that it all started with one sin. 

For most of us, the idea that the “original sin” of Adam and Eve could be held against us all seems to be unfair. How can God hold us all accountable for something we didn’t do?  The reason why we can’t claim that it’s unfair is that we all have our own history of sin.[2] None of us can claim never to have done anything that might contribute to the spread of sin’s effects on the whole human race.  In fact, each and every one of us, in some way or another, at some time or another, has done our part to extend the grasp of sin on the human race a little farther.  In a very real sense, what Paul is trying to do is move us to the Lenten discipline of confession—to acknowledge that our sin has far-reaching consequences. 

I think we also have a problem with St. Paul’s assertion that one sin brought death to the whole human race.  But what we have to understand is that Paul isn’t primarily talking about the physical limits of human mortality.  I think he’s talking about death as a spiritual condition.   He’s talking about those actions that affect the spirit, the heart, the mind, the very the soul of who we are as human beings.  Even still, we might not like the idea that one sin could lead to the death of a person’s very soul. But I think if you ask a victim of any kind of violence or addiction you will find that it can!  I think what the Apostle Paul wants us to consider is that every sin you and I commit has the potential to spread death and destruction much farther than we can imagine.  And there are some sins that have the potential to destroy the whole human race.  

But if we stop there, we run the risk of completely missing the point!  St. Paul’s point is not just to make us all keenly aware that each sin has far-reaching consequences. I think the main point of this passage is that however powerful the effect of our sin may be, there is no comparison with the powerful effect of what Jesus did for us on the cross. Paul insists that while one sin brought “death” to the whole human race, the one faithful act of Jesus Christ, humbling himself and becoming obedient to the point of death on a cross, brought God’s grace to the whole human race. And God’s grace is far more powerful than our sin. Through that one act, God’s generous grace was poured out on all humankind, healing the destructive effects of our sin, restoring the hearts and minds and souls that have been subjected to all kinds of death, and replacing it with the gift of life.[3]

Throughout this passage, St. Paul insists that there’s no comparison between the one sin of Adam and the one righteous act of Jesus, giving his life for us all. As he contrasts the two, he repeated says that the gift of grace and life through Jesus Christ “much more surely” outweighs the effects of our sin. I like the way The Message puts it: “There's no comparison between that death-dealing sin and this generous, life-giving gift” (Rom. 5:16). And so Paul concludes, “just as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all” (Rom. 5:18).[4]

I think the reason for all of this is that, while St. Paul certainly doesn’t minimize the problem of sin, God’s grace plays a far more important role in his understanding of the gospel. His faith is based on the conviction that God acts in each of our lives to bring us new life before we are even aware of what he’s doing. In fact, God is always working in each of our lives, constantly surrounding us with his love and mercy, drawing us to trust in him and so to find that his grace by far overcomes the consequences of our sins. When you think about it, how could our sin ever be more powerful than God’s love? As serious as our sin will always be, when you set it alongside God’s grace, there really is no comparison.

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[1] © 2017 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 3/5/2017 at Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] Cf. Paul K. Jewett, Romans, 376.  Ernst Käsemann, Romans, 148, cites the Jewish apocalypse 2 Baruch 54:19, “each of us has become our own Adam.”  Cf. also James D. G. Dunn, Romans 1-8, 290, “Death continues to dominate humanity not solely because of one primeval act but because of humankind’s continued acts of sin.”

[3] Regarding the issue of whether Paul’s language of redemption applies universally to the whole human race, Dunn, Romans 1-8, 297, acknowledges the problem, but asks the question, “How, after all, can grace be ‘so much more’ in its effect if it is less universal than the effect of death?” Cf. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV.1:333-35, where he speaks of the “alteration of the whole human situation” through Jesus’ death and resurrection.  Cf. similarly, Beverly Roberts Gaventa, “The Cosmic Power of Sin in Paul's Letter to the Romans” Interpretation 58 (July 2004): 240: “The gospel Paul proclaims is that God has not left us alone and powerless. In Jesus Christ, God has already broken Death and Sin and will finally crush Satan on our behalf. Confidence in that word is the beginning of peace and joy and the obedience of faith.” See also Jan Bonda, The One Purpose of God, 103-107; and Jewett, Romans, 370, 379-80.

[4] Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope, 205, where he points to the divine righteousness as an event that takes place in the cross and resurrection of Jesus as “the universal gospel, which is oriented towards the new creation that fulfils all things, sets them right with God and so gives them status and being.” He continues, “Divine righteousness ‘happens’ here, and the gospel reveals it by proclaiming the event of the obedience of Jesus even to the death of the cross, by proclaiming the event of his surrender to this death, and by proclaiming his resurrection and his life as the coming of the divine righteousness to the unjust.”

Paying Attention

Paying Attention

2 Peter 1:16-21[1]

One of the benefits of living in the “information age” is that we have relatively quick and easy access to a lot of information. Many of us have at our fingertips the equivalent of an unimaginably large library with just about anything you might need. But at the same time, I think one of the great challenges of living in this age is that we have access to so much information. Without a proper framework for making sense of it all, it can just become overwhelming. Rather than putting forth the effort to sort out fact from farce, we accept as truth whatever seems convenient. Or what’s worse, we simply tune out.

Unfortunately, this also applies to our faith. With all the different voices claiming to represent Christ in our world, it can be confusing. Between television, radio, the internet, social media, books, and magazines, the fact is that those who speak for Christ do not speak with a consistent voice. To some extent, variety in the Christian message is to be expected. It comes from our different backgrounds and experiences and perspectives. That’s a healthy thing. But I’m afraid it goes beyond that. The collective voices of all those who speak for our faith disagree on matters that are fundamental, ranging from how we experience new life to what living out that life looks like to what our ultimate hope is. The resulting confusion can lead us to tune out rather than paying attention and trying to find a perspective that makes sense out of the teachings of Scripture.

The fact of the matter is that the Christian community has always had to deal with divergent voices that have made it challenging for people to know what to believe. Most of the apostolic writings in the New Testament bear witness to this. There was no mass communication technology in that day. The only methods the apostles had for dealing with this problem were to personally visit a church, to send a representative, or to write a letter. That’s why many of the New Testament letters were written in the first place: to clear up the confusion caused by rival preachers and teachers presenting views that called the apostolic faith into question.

This was the case for 2 Peter. In fact, much of the letter is devoted to refuting “false teachers” who contradicted the message of the apostles, who advocated a blatant disregard for the most basic ethical principles of the Bible, and who did all this in order to enrich themselves at the expense of their audience. As you can imagine, the response to this kind of flagrant deception was less than polite. In fact, 2 Peter is not unique in that. Most of the apostles saw those who were teaching with a different voice as a threat—primarily a threat to the well-being of those who were led astray by their “deceptive words” (2 Pet. 2:3).

In the case of 2 Peter, the primary problem had to do with the Christian hope. In the New Testament, that hope was focused on the return of Christ. Of course, throughout the history of the church, our faith in the return of Christ and the final fulfillment of God’s saving work has raised basic questions. What happens to believers when we die? Do we have to wait for the day when Jesus returns to be raised to new life? Are we looking forward to all of this taking place in heaven or on a new earth? It’s not hard to find conflicting views on these and many other aspects of our hope.

Apparently, 2 Peter was written long enough after Jesus’ resurrection that many were beginning to deny that there would be a “second coming” at all (2 Pet. 3:4). In response, the letter pointed to the transfiguration of Jesus as a foreshadowing of his return. Claiming to be a witness of the glory revealed at that time as well as the voice that attested Jesus’ identity as God’s beloved son, 2 Peter insists that “we have the prophetic message more fully confirmed” (2 Pet. 1:19). What those who were there saw and heard left them without doubt that Jesus would indeed return in the full majesty of his glory as Savior and Lord.[2]

Unfortunately, some have approached this passage as if it advocates that Scripture is to be accepted at face value. The truth is that kind of simple faith works for some people. But I find that unquestioning belief doesn’t go over too well with most of us. Scripture itself raises questions, some of which we cannot readily answer.[3] And any written document has to be interpreted—especially ancient writings that addressed a very different time or place. I think what all this means is that we’re going to have to put forth some effort if we’re going to “pay attention" to the apostolic message, "because it is like a lamp shining in a dark place until the Day dawns” (2 Pet. 1:19, TEV). I think that means more than a simple casual reading of select verses. It means serious and sustained study of the source of our faith.[4]

Cultivating faith has never been easy. There have always been those who raise objections they think clearly refute what we believe. There will always be a wide diversity of voices claiming to speak on behalf of Christ. It takes some intentional effort to sort through the tangle of sometimes conflicting messages out there. But it seems to me that our lesson for today points us in the right direction: the fundamental teachings of the Scriptures have always been our guide. That doesn’t mean we’re going to automatically find the answer to our questions simply by flipping through our Bible. We have to do more than that to be able to sort through the chaotic voices in our day. It takes systematic and serious study of the Bible. In order to find clarity, we have to do a better job of “paying attention” to Scripture.

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[1] ©2017 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 2/26/2017 at Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] Cf. Jerome H. Neyrey, “The Apologetic Use of the Transfiguration in 2 Peter 1:16-21,”  Catholic Biblical Quarterly 42 (1980): 509-514.

[3] Cf. Neyrey, “ Apologetic Use,” 517 (fn 50), where he points out that “the position of Peter as an intelligent interpreter of oracles and tradition stands in tension with other traditions that portray him as not understanding what he sees or hears” (e.g., in the Gospels).

[4] In this particular context, Neyrey, “Apologetic Use,” 518-19, makes a persuasive argument that the “prophecy” that is at issue is the transfiguration as a foreshadowing of the return of Christ. He says, “The parousia-prophecy has already been defended as regards its source (i.e., God, vv. 17-18) and its authenticity (έπόπται, v. 16); vv. 20-21 add the author’s apology for his interpretation (see 3:1-2, 9-13,15-16). In this framework, the author senses that his opponents consider this interpretation of eschatological materials idiosyncratic and self-serving; hence it is incumbent upon him to continue to defend his own credentials for leaving an accurate remembrance of these matters.” Contrast R. J. Bauckham, 2 Peter, Jude, 224. While he recognizes that Neyrey’s view is held by the majority of NT scholars, he argues that the “prophetic word” refers to passages from the prophets of the Hebrew Bible which the NT authors used along with their eyewitness experience to confirm the promise of the return of Christ.