on Grace

i write better than i speak sometimes and when a friend of mine asked me what separated Christianity from the other religions, i thought immediately of C.S. Lewis’s answer: Grace. And proceeded to fumble through three acts of logical trapezee-ing and one act of pure thick-tongued-ness. sometimes i wish i were a child, that way i’d have an excuse.

but Grace is important–it is indeed central to the christian faith. and so i’d like to take it up again.

i’d like to say that Grace is simple, but it’s not. i’d like to say that you can detach Grace from Jesus Christ, but you can’t. the marvelously confounding ideas of Grace, as christians understand it, was born on the cross the moment Jesus died. At that moment, God showed his love for us by sacrificing his Son so that we may be reconciled with Him. This is what christians mean by Grace, which is distinguished from the “grace” we humans show each other.

And so what?

Well it didn’t hit me either until the following pieces were revealed to me:
1. the nature of death
2. the nature of Christ

i didn’t understand christianity until i saw what death was/is. it is not that one can’t be a full christian without first having a harrowing experience, but rather that i am bone-headed–and that only the shock of death could pass through my thickness. i don’t think i can explain exactly what death is like–but i just want to say that death is indeed black (exactly as they say), and you will feel it in your room–the closing in that is. it was what every fiber of my being chaffed against, but was helpless against. i hope it isn’t vacuous to say this, but death is anti-life–the closing in that is. this was, at least, my vantage point.

i also didn’t understand christianity until i realized who Christ was. some take it as a matter of belief that Christ is God, but until you take this as a matter of fact, then you won’t understand christianity either. For if you do not hold, as fact, that as God, which by definition is the spring of Life, Christ died for us, then how would you see the marvelous perplexity of that fact: For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. If Jesus were merely a man, then Christianity is baseless. But I know, as fact, that Jesus was God–as He claimed himself to be (lemma).

And this is when it hit me: I understand the depths of God’s love for me in Christ’s act–God Loved us so much that He did the thing which was against every fiber and conception of His Nature–that is to die. And that is the Christian idea of Grace: what separates Christianity from other religions is that God sacrifices Himself for man. He does not say we must atone 100% for our iniquities; or that he would meet us half way; or even the 99% mark–and that we must do some token praying etc–No–the confounding distinction of Christianity is that God bore it completely Himself, and in a manner completely against Himself, leaving us with nothing else to do but to be in complete awe of this act and to be so humbled by it that we fall to our knees. That is when Grace hits you. And when it hits you, it hits you profoundly and you are profoundly saved.

“He did what??–for me????!!! what???! why did he even bother? honestly, i wouldn’t even bother.”*

That is Christianity. It is hinged on Christ, for if Christ is not God, Grace and Christianity does not work. If Christ was only a man, then Grace is a conflation. But Christ is God, for on the third day he rose–and this is not a matter of belief, but of fact: hundreds saw first hand the resurrected Christ, individually and en masse for many days before the Assumption.

*seriously, i wouldn’t.

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~ by lentaing on July 11, 2011.