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THE SCIENCE OF GRACE #21
REDEMPTION REQUIRED
I want to play with a few words here on the final Monday
of this radio series on grace. Let me ask you: is grace “sweet”? Well,
the great gospel song by John Newton, Amazing Grace, suggests that it
is. Is it tender? We always portray it as being that also. I think maybe
we have this picture of grace being soft, subservient, forgiving, kind
of cloud-like. “Gentle Jesus, meek and mild. Come what may, He’s never
riled.” That kind of thing.
But now let’s turn the tables. Is grace also a stout, rough, tough, determined,
assault-proof tower of strength? Is there something iron-clad about it
that actually has the strength OF iron?
We’ve shared a great Watergate story before – and today we’ll hit it from
a different direction. Many of you know how co-conspirator Chuck Colson
“found Jesus” right during the thick of the political scandal. Nixon’s
right-hand hatchet man had been converted, and now skeptics were grinning
and joking on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show that it might all be just a
nifty trick to stay out of prison.
One of Colson’s worst enemies was a big, burly, two-fisted Democratic
senator named Harold Hughes. This guy was a former truck driver and looked
the part. In 1972 he had made an abortive run for President AGAINST Colson’s
boss, Richard Nixon, so there was already bad blood for that. Nixon was
a conservative standard-bearer for the GOP; Hughes was just about as liberal
as they come, over on the blue side of the political map. And when born-again
Christian Harold Hughes heard that Chuck Colson had “got religion,” he
shook his shaggy head and said: “Oh, come on. Gimme a break.”
Then when some of his Christian friends suggested that Hughes might now
want to meet with the converted dirty-trickster, Senator Hughes said no
way. “I hate that guy,” he said. “I hate everything he stands for. Everything.
Now you want me to hold hands with him and sing ‘Blest Be the Tie That
Binds’? Not a chance.” But Doug Coe, their mutual Christian friend, reminded
his blustering senate pal that he wasn’t exactly being a very good Christian
himself right at that moment. Finally, with a huge sigh, Harold Hughes
agreed to the meeting.
Well, the rendezvous started in a battered blue Chevy station wagon and
then moved to Al Quie’s white Colonial home out in the country. As they
sipped iced tea and ate homemade apple pie, Harold Hughes listened pensively
as Chuck Colson haltingly shared his conversion story: how he’d burst
into tears one dark night in the driveway of Tom Phillips’ home and asked
God to come into his life.
And when the story was done, and the last words were hanging there in
the evening air, ardent Democrat and left-leaning Senator Harold Hughes
raised both of his huge hands up in the air, slapped them down on his
knees and said, and I quote:
“That’s all I need to know. Chuck, you have accepted
Jesus and He has forgiven you. I do the same. I love you now as my brother
in Christ. I will stand with you, defend you anywhere, and trust you with
anything I have.”
And as you read the rest of Colson’s autobiography,
Born Again, you find that Harold Hughes and others in the Christian community
of Washington, D.C. did exactly that. They defended Colson. They embraced
him physically and emotionally. They sustained him during the Watergate
hearings. They prayed for him when he went to prison. One of them even
offered to finish out his sentence for him.
And what I want to say here as we get into our final week on this greatest
of Christian themes is this: GRACE RESTORES THE FALLEN TO FELLOWSHIP.
When you come to the foot of the Cross and experience grace, you’re entitled
to a new beginning. It’s guaranteed. You get it. You’re allowed to join
– or REjoin – the family.
And one more thing: THIS IS THE RULE. It’s a RULE, a commandment, that
sinners who are forgiven get to come home. That’s as big as anything there
is in the Christian faith. Which is why Doug Coe had to gently remonstrate
with Senator Hughes and tell him: “Harold, I don’t care if you are a liberal
Democrat and you don’t like Nixon loyalists. I don’t care if you think
Colson was a sneaky, conniving, duplicitous political operative. I don’t
care that just seeing his face on TV makes your fists involuntarily double
up into weapons. It’s a RULE that you have to now love him and accept
him into fellowship.” And to his credit, Hughes did exactly that. He gave
Colson a huge bear hug and prayed with him. Later, Chuck would write in
amazement:
“[This] from a man who had loathed me for years and
whom I had known for barely two hours.”
Over in Luke 17, Jesus tells His baffled disciples
that this isn’t just the rule, it’s the rule seven times in a single day.
“If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents,
forgive him. If he sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times
comes back to you and says, ‘I repent,’ forgive him.”
Interestingly, all 12 disciples, like an astonished
choir, cry out: “Lord, increase our faith!” In other words, “Jesus, that’s
going to be hard to do! Someone is so stupid or stubborn he messes up
AGAINST US seven times in one 24-hour period . . . and You want us to
forgive him all seven times? Are we enablers, then? Are we pushovers?
Patsies? What are You saying here, Jesus?” And the answer plainly is that
this is the rule. This is how it is in the Christian faith.
Now, friend, this is not to say that the Church should not also be wise
and prudent. It is one thing to forgive a child molester, a sexual predator.
It’s another thing to keep that person in leadership in the children’s
division of your church. The Bible also says to deal vigorously to defend
the lambs in the congregation; in fact, this Luke 17 has that kind of
talk exactly two verses earlier. But the spiritual forgiveness should
be absolute, and to the extent that fellowship is possible and safe and
wise-as-serpents-harmless-as-doves, it is to be extended as well.
You might be thinking here of another place where Jesus plainly teaches
The Rule – the beautiful Lord’s Prayer. What does it say in Matthew 9?
“Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our
debtors.”
That stark command really spanked Senator Harold Hughes,
who had himself been forgiven by friends and family for being a recovering
alcoholic who almost committed suicide, leaving a wife and two little
girls bereft. Now it was his job, his moral imperative, to pass along
forgiveness to Colson, to allow him into the family of forgiven Christian
sinners.
In his book, What’s So Amazing About Grace?, Philip Yancey draws from
another powerhouse volume entitled Engaging the Powers by Walter Wink,
professor of Biblical Interpretation at Auburn Theological Seminary in
New York City. It’s a great one-third of his trilogy, Engaging the Powers,
Unmasking the Powers, and Naming the Powers. And Wink describes an incredible
story where Polish Christians received a visit from two peacemakers a
number of years after the end of World War II.
“[A group of German believers wants] to ask forgiveness,”
they said, “for what Germany did to Poland during the war and to begin
to build a new relationship.”
Well, the request didn’t just fall on deaf ears, it
fell on HOSTILE deaf ears. I mean, there was just no way. No way in all
the world. One animated Pole spoke up, emotion ringing in his voice.
“What you are asking is impossible. Each stone of Warsaw
is soaked in Polish blood! We cannot forgive!”
And that was it. As far as these still emotionally
shattered Polish survivors were concerned, the answer was nigdy, nigdy,
a thousand times nigdy! Zadna droga! In other words, never, no way, not
a chance, don’t bother asking.
Well, that kind of cast a pall over the proceedings, but the group did
try to talk about some less painful agenda items. When it was time to
adjourn, the group decided to hold hands and say the Lord’s Prayer together.
Which ground to a halt when they got to the impossible line: “Forgive
us our sins as we forgive . . .” All at once, the same man who had delivered
the heart-rending speech before bowed his head and said:
“I must say yes to you.” And get this: “I could no
more pray the Our Father, I could no longer call myself a Christian, if
I refuse to forgive. Humanly speaking, I CANNOT DO IT, but God will give
us the strength.”
And Walter Wink informs us that a year-and-a-half later,
there was an active, successful alliance, a fellowship of German and Polish
Christians meeting together in Vienna. Why? Because grace leading to fellowship
restored is a RULE. It’s not an option, it’s not a cotton-candy treat
you do if you’re in a good mood. It’s a cardinal tenet of the faith, a
bedrock prerequisite just as binding as every other line in the Lord’s
Prayer or the Sermon on the Mount. We don’t restore sinners because they’re
good now, or because we feel like it. We restore them because the grace
of Calvary demands it.
Considering the painful pettiness of our own hearts – and friend, I didn’t
experience any persecution during World War II – it’s a good thing the
gospel of Jesus Christ, the grace forged by the nails in a wooden Cross,
is as tough AS nails.
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