4-5-4 Barriers Against Grace

All that is within us seems to struggle against grace. Twice Jacob pleads with his brothers not to be angry, after he had so graciously accepted them (Gen. 45:5, 24 Heb.). He imagines that they will be tempted to become angry as they travelled the long way home, reflecting inevitably upon the grace of Joseph (Gen. 45:24- ‘fall out by the way’ is a poor translation). Joseph understood that having received such grace, the brothers were actually likely to become angry with each other, who had received it. The Lord foresaw this in His parable about the workers who become angry at His grace to those who worked little; and also in His matchless story about the elder brother who became angry at his younger brother’s acceptance. In many families, the child grows up with the feeling that enjoyment is only legitimate if it is somehow merited, and is a reward for some form of ‘work’. And the child within, in the person of the convert to Christ in later life, then tends to view the Kingdom as a ‘reward’ which likewise somehow has to be merited. And yet we cry out with Paul, that the good which we would do, we somehow can’t achieve. And so faith in being in the Kingdom becomes weak. And so instead we must try to recall our response as children, or view the response in children around us, to the receipt of unearned pleasures or gifts. These are the ones most joyfully received and appreciated and remembered. And this is how it is with salvation, the only thing which in our hearts any of us is truly worried about in any ultimate sense. A salvation that is so great, so free, given by a loving Father who rejoices in His children’s happiness and squeals of delight. It seems to me that for all his errors, Freud was right to observe that babies and children grow up often fearing the loss of their parents’ love, cowed into fear and submission because of this, ever seeking to impress others so as not to lose their love. The result of this is an almost disbelief that the love of God, so great and so free, will not be withdrawn; that His grace is indeed real. David marvelled of the Father that ‘He has not withheld His love from me’. Perhaps he perceived something of this psychology. We need never fear losing the love of God. We are exhorted to abide in His love, with the implication that we can withdraw ourselves from His love, but He will never, ever, withdraw His love and forgiveness from us.

Tragically, because so many take false guilt onto themselves and fail to see God as any different to their experience of human love, it can happen that “a Christian has lost the sense of forgiveness whilst retaining his sense of sin”⁽¹⁾. This, it seems to me, is the mess so many Christians are trapped within. Belief in the love of God as unconditional is simply too hard, too out of this world, too challenging. But this is why it takes a lot of hard faith to be a true Christian. It takes so very much faith to believe in the description of the Father in the parable of the prodigal, watching and waiting for the prodigal to return having already forgiven him even before he comes out with the words of penitence… and the real lesson is that it is the elder brother who places himself, by his choice, outside of the range of the Father’s love by his pride and his refusal to fellowship his brother. The love of God for us is simply because He first loved us, He took the initiative (1 Jn. 4:19). If we are faithless, yet He abides faithful to us (2 Tim. 2:13). We have met human love which is truly very great. But the love of God in which we believe, in which we   must believe if all the wonderful promises of Scripture which we have reviewed are to come true… this is unconditional, and of an altogether higher and different nature to human love. Once we appreciate something of the infinite height of the love of God, it becomes scary- for we decide whether or not we will abide within it, or chose to remain outside, in the darkness of our own unresolved guilt, anger with our brother in whom is the face of Jesus, of guilt repressed by our petty pride… The choice to remain within the love of God is ours; God will always remain faithful from His side. It’s somewhat like having a choice as to whether or not to receive one billion dollars, to have access to some immense power… all if we flick a switch. We almost don’t want to do it. But this is how deceptively simple it is, and yet in that is the demanding nature of it. That by believing, by doing nothing physical, not even flicking a switch, we have access to this grace wherein we stand, having hope of the glory of God.

This is the unconditional love which underlies grace, the grace by which we have been saved, which salvation is not of our working but a pure gift (Eph. 2:8), the gift of grace which is not merited or part of a payment God in any way owes us (Rom. 4:4), the justification by grace which is ultimately real and credible as it is pronounced upon us by the One and Only judge of all (Rom. 3:23,24). As we face the purity of this grace, we want to apply the brakes. That it’s too good to be true, that the theology, the Bible interpretation here isn’t quite right, that there’s a catch somewhere, that it can’t be that simple, that look, son, you get nothing for free round here, the cost always catches up, you gotta pay some time, some way. When we get to that point, that’s when we have to really release the brakes, not being bound in any longer by the experience of ungrace which has filled our experience in this world. We can even become angry at the idea- I’ve seen those who preach grace become the victims of the most angry protests and slander from their brethren, and Biblically we have the example of Jonah, who became angry with God for by grace reneging on His own promise to destroy Nineveh within 40 days. But surely we are not of those who draw back, who fall away from the reality and biting import of this grace; but we are surely of those who, convicted by grace and the Lord Jesus who embodied it, believe it, unto the saving of our soul.

The Psychology Of Works

The greatest barrier against grace is our own psychology of works; our belief that even what is good about us, in our character and in our deeds, is a result of our own unaided effort. Not for nothing does Paul contrast the works of the flesh with the fruit of the Spirit in Gal. 5:19,23). As William Barclay noted: “A work is something which a man produces for himself; a fruit is something which is produced by a power which he does not possess. Man cannot make a fruit”(2). It’s because of this that works are so glorified in society; it’s why the elderly and weak are somehow despised because they’re not ‘productive’ of ‘works’. Grace therefore cuts right across the way our rationalistic society, whether Marxist or capitalist, worships productivity.

Our tendency to value, indeed to worship, human works leads to great frustration with ourselves. Only by realizing the extent of grace can we become free from this. So many struggle with accepting unfulfilment- coping with loss, with the fact we didn’t make as good a job of something as we wanted, be it raising our kids or the website we work on or the book we write or the room we decorated… And as death approaches, this sense becomes stronger and more urgent. Young people tend to think that it’s only a matter of time before they sort it out and achieve. But that time never comes. It’s only by surrendering to grace, abandoning the trust in and glorying in our own works, that we can come to accept the uncompleted and unfulfilled in our lives, and to smile at those things and know that of course, I can never ‘do’ or achieve enough.

Realizing that we are in the grace of God, justified by Him through our being in Christ, leads us to a far greater and happier acceptance of ourselves as persons. So many people are unhappy with themselves. It’s why we look in mirrors in a certain way when nobody else is watching; why we’re so concerned to see how we turned out in a photograph. Increasingly, this graceless world can’t accept itself. People aren’t happy or acceptant of their age [they want to look and be younger or older], their body, their family situation, even their gender and their own basic personality. I found that when I truly accepted my salvation by grace, when the wonder of who I am in God’s sight, as a man in Christ, really dawned on me… I became far happier with myself, far more acceptant. Now of course in another sense, we are called to radical transformation, to change, to rise above the narrow limits of our own backgrounds. This is indeed the call of Christ. But I refer to our acceptance of who we are, and the situations we are in, as basic human beings.

Notes

(1) Paul Ricouer, Morale Sans Péché (Paris: Esprit, 1954).

(2) William Barclay, Flesh And Spirit (London: SCM, 1962) p. 21.