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THE SCIENCE OF GRACE #12
GET GRACE – GIVE GRACE
Have you ever caught yourself resenting the fact that somebody else catches a break – maybe gets forgiven for some grievous mistake – and then realized with a start that you had gotten a pass yourself in the exact same sector of sin? That’s an embarrassing moment . . . and often it slips right past us because we just plain don’t see our flub. We can spot someone else’s conflict of interest a mile away, but not our own when it’s right in our own checkbook. We can see the pride in a neighbor’s life through two walls and three hedges, but not the arrogance in our own heart.
America was stunned not too long ago when a popular radio personality had to enter a drug treatment program – after he had publicly castigated other addicts and suggested they be sent “up the river.” A preacher went to the White House to give spiritual counsel to a President who had been caught in an affair; and it turns out that the minister – almost at that exact same time period – was indulging in an adulterous relationship as well.
Well, we can call it hypocrisy. We can call it the old double standard. Or the pot calling the kettle black, etc. But most of all, we should just call it “human.” Because, friend, every single one of us is a sinner. Every one of us has a log in our eye that should make us humble about digging around for the splinters behind our neighbor’s bifocals.
We’ve been delving into the Word of God now for more than two weeks on this one radio topic: THE SCIENCE OF GRACE. And several times now, the word “accept” has come along. Grace is a free gift, but it must be accepted. God offers it to the entire human race, and our part is to ask for it and say yes to the universal gift. But today we want to take that word “accept” – or “acceptance,” if you will – and turn it into a two-lane highway running in both directions.
First of all, here’s a new Bible verse for us to prayerfully meditate on. Romans 15:7:
“Accept ONE ANOTHER,” Paul writes, “just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God.”
Now, what is “Christ accepting us”? That would be grace for sure. Despite our sinfulness, even though we have rebellious hearts, Christ dies for our sins and gladly accepts us as returning sons and daughters of God. That’s grace. But here in this tough passage, Paul is telling us that we must accept others just as Jesus accepts us. In other words, we must give – as well as get – grace. Freely ye have received; freely give. That’s Matthew 10:8.
And we think of a parable of Jesus – also here in Matthew – where a man is forgiven five gazillion dollars. An Everest of debt is wiped out by a loving King. Half an hour later, the same guy begins to choke his underling down the hall over a few bucks, a Happy Meal. “Pay up or I’ll kill you!” he screams. “I’m craving a Big Mac and a oreo McFlurry, and you owe me, fella!” Lo and behold, when the King finds out, the earlier forgiveness is canceled! The debt of five gazillion is back on. And we wonder: is God’s forgiveness a conditional, on-again, off-again gift that flickers feebly with a loose connection in the shadows of Calvary? Is grace a river that abruptly runs dry, leaving us high AND dry?
And the answer is no, friend. God isn’t fickle and He doesn’t change His mind. But the simple fact is that His grace is an ocean of love. It’s for me, it’s for you, and it’s also for our wayward neighbor. And the only way I can be in His ocean of forgiveness is if I allow my wayward neighbor to be in it too. So Jesus says to us: “Accept one another, just as I have accepted you.” “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.”
A bit earlier in this series we borrowed from a terrific book dating back to 1979 entitled Love, Acceptance, and Forgiveness. Authors Jerry Cook and Stanley C. Baldwin have a little section entitled “Acceptance – Love in Action.” And they describe a lady who came up to Pastor Jerry and said to him: “Uh, Pastor, I’m sorry, but I can’t keep having Bible studies for people over at my house.” Cook is a huge proponent of empowering his church members to do the work of God – and not having the head pastor do everything in the world all by himself. I can go for that concept too . . . but this one lady was ready to quit the team. So he said to her: “That’s too bad. What’s the problem?”
And she told him: “People are coming and smoking in our house.”
Well, I must confess that I wouldn’t like that much either, and my pristine wife Jeannie might have a thing or two to say about it. But this lady went on to give the obvious concern: “It’s stinking up our new drapes.”
And you know, Jerry Cook, bless his heart, gave an answer that brings me up short; that’s for sure. “Do you want sterile drapes,” he asked, “or do you want to expose hurting people to the love of Jesus?”
I have a friend who got into a missionary project where he was picking up a divorced woman and her two kids and taking them to church each weekend. And the plain fact was that this family carried with them the stale odor of unwashed dogs. The kids smelled like unwashed dogs; she smelled like unwashed dogs . . . and soon this guy’s brand new car smelled like a whole kennel full of Rin Tin Tin without Right Guard too. And let’s admit it: many of us like for our cars and drapes to have that minty-fresh smell. But do we want that more than we want to extend grace to a malodorous sinner who needs to know Jesus? Pastor Cook goes on to explain:
“Love means accepting people the way they are for Jesus’ sake. Jesus hung around with sinners and if we’re too holy to allow people to blow smoke in our faces, then we’re holier than Jesus was. He didn’t isolate Himself in the synagogue. In fact, He mixed with sinners so much that the self-righteous got upset about it. ‘He’s friendly with some very questionable people,’ they said. And Jesus replied, ‘Yes, because I didn’t come to minister to you religious leaders. I came to call sinners to repentance.’ And Pastor Cook concludes: “Jesus spent His time with dirty, filthy, stinking, bent sinners. And when those kinds of people find someone who will love and accept them, you won’t be able to keep them away.”
I don’t want for us to get too hung up here on smells and stains. Yes, we should love lost people more than we love our clean drapes. But can we accept not just the smoker, but the person walking around in a cloud of HIV infection? Or the friend who has lied about us? Can we let them into the ocean of grace right next to us? How about the person who has gossiped and hurt our reputation? Or the office co-worker who has a hateful attitude toward us? Compared to them, the lady with the used-dog cloud is easy to welcome into the forever family of forgiveness.
Is it possible that we don’t accept others and extend grace to them because we’ve just plain forgotten – or maybe never grasped – the enormity of the grace extended to us? Do we do like that servant in Jesus’ parable who simply loses sight of the five gazillion dollars that have been wiped off our own debit sheet? In the Adventist Review special Week of Prayer issue being read in my own denomination, Pastor J. David Newman writes:
“Think for a moment about your greatest need – emotional and relational. The cry of humanity, the cry of every individual, is acceptance for who they are. We want to be loved, to be valued, and to be accepted just as we are.” Then he adds: “When Adam and Eve took the forbidden fruit, they knew they had done something wrong. They were afraid that God would no longer accept them as they had become, so when God came looking for them, they hid.” And isn’t this next line the truth? “We have been hiding ever since. We are afraid that God will not love us.”
Just after this, Pastor Newman adds his own diagnosis to what we find in God’s Word about accepting others. Listen to this:
“We find it difficult to confess our sins, our problems, and our difficulties, because we are afraid that others in the church will look down on us. We are afraid of rejection just as Adam and Eve were. YET WE NEED EACH OTHER in order to grow in Jesus.”
After his smoky-drapes story, Jerry Cook just has to add on one more sound bite for the preachers. Lonnie Melashenko, take heed:
“Pastors are not obligated,” he writes, “to get people to heaven. That’s the work of Jesus. A pastor’s obligation is first to love AND ACCEPT them, and second, to bring them to ministry readiness by teaching them to do the same.”
Imagine a whole church of people just loving and accepting one another. In fact, Jesus tells us that’s how onlookers will know it IS the Church.
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