This Grace in Which We Stand

This Grace in Which We Stand

For

Eastgate Congregational UCC, Bellevue, Washington

June 12, 2022

 

Scripture: Romans 5:1-5

 

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

 

Saint Paul may well be one of the founding figures of our Christian faith, but, honestly, sometimes he drives me nuts. It’s not because he’s a sexist as he is often accused of being. The sexist verses attributed to him are not by him. It’s not because he somehow distorted the gospel of Jesus Christ as he is often accused of having done. Without him we probably would never have heard of Jesus of Nazareth. No, he sometimes drives me nuts because he is so inconsistent in his presentation of his core theology. That core of his theology is that we are justified, that is, we are put right with God, by grace through faith. But then, as in the passage from Romans we just heard, he puts it differently. Here he says that it is faith that justifies us not God’s grace. Those two versions of Paul’s theology are very different, and the difference is hardly insignificant. If we are justified by God’s grace, our justification is God’s doing not ours. If we are justified by faith, it is our doing not God’s. We put ourselves right with God by having the correct faith. That’s a big difference indeed. Paul can indeed be quite maddening in his inconsistency.

But then sometimes he will deliver a short, concise statement about God and our relationship with God that is simply wonderful, that is powerful and profoundly true. You can find one of those passages at 2 Corinthians 5:19 where Paul says that in Christ God was reconciling the world to Godself not counting our trespasses against us. There’s another at Romans 8:38-39, where Paul says that nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. And there’s yet another one in the passage we just heard. In those verses Paul says, “we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand.” Romans 5:1-2 NRSV. This grace in which we stand! What a wonderful thing to say! It is as good a concise statement of our relationship to God as you’ll find anywhere in the Bible, or anywhere else at all for that matter. We stand in God’s grace. And if grace is truly grace—and with God it is—then we stand in that grace always, everywhere, no matter what. Thanks be to God!

OK, but of course really to understand our relationship of grace with God we must understand what grace is and what its consequences are. So, what is grace? To answer that question we must start with the question, “Who is God?” Here’s the best short answer to that question I know of: “God is love.” 1 John 4:8 NRSV. Now, we must understand that in that statement love does not define God. Rather, God defines love. Just as God is so much bigger than we are, so God’s love is enormously bigger than any love we can imagine. Any love we can imagine surely has its limits. But God’s love is not our love. The love that God is has utterly no limits. Anything less than that is less than God.

But Paul uses the word “grace” here not the word “love.” What is grace? Grace, I believe, is the unconditional, limitless love of God extended to us. Because as Paul says we stand in God’s grace, and grace is God’s love extended to us, we stand in God’s unlimited love. And here’s a truth that many people have trouble accepting: So does everyone else! If God’s grace is truly grace it must be that way. See, God’s love, God’s grace, is utterly unconditional. We Christians find access to God’s grace through our Christian faith, but faith in Jesus Christ is not a condition of God’s grace. If God’s love and grace are conditional, that is, if some people stand in them and others don’t, then God’s love and grace are limited to those who somehow earn or deserve them. But conditional grace is not grace! We can’t and don’t have to earn God’s love, God’s grace. God’s grace in which we stand is God’s free, unmerited gift to all of creation, including to all of us humans. It has to be God’s free and unmerited gift to all because if it isn’t, it is a reward. It is given only to those who somehow have earned and deserve it. But grace as a reward is not grace! It’s more like payment of a debt God somehow owes us because we have passed some kind of test. But of course while we owe everything to God, God owes nothing to us.

So each one of us, each one of you, stands forever in God’s love and grace no matter what. So do I, as hard as I sometimes find it to believe that truth. Have we sinned? Of course we have, for we are fallible creatures not gods. No matter. God holds us in love and grace anyway. Have we harmed ourselves and others? Of course we have, for we are fallible creatures not gods. God holds us in love and grace anyway. Have we doubted the reality of God? Of course we have, for doubt is part of the dynamic of faith. No matter. God holds us in love and grace anyway. Folks, perhaps the greatest error people, including unfortunately a great many Christians, make is to believe that they have to earn God’s grace. To believe that we have to earn salvation. Here’s the truth: We don’t! As Paul says, we stand in God’s grace, and God’s grace is unconditional and unearned or it isn’t grace!

Now, that doesn’t mean it’s OK for us to go do whatever we want no matter how harmful it is to other people, to God’s good creation, or to ourselves. See, God calls each and every one of us to respond to God’s love with love. Jesus, after all, told us to love God, our neighbor, and ourselves—and everyone is our neighbor. Paul puts it this way, “how can we who died to sin go on living in it?” Romans 6:2b NRSV. If we truly understand God’s grace as grace and truly understand that God extends that grace to us unconditionally, we will avoid sin as much as we can, not that any of us can do it perfectly. God extends to us unconditional love and grace. We respond to that love and grace by living lives of love as best we can. That’s how our relationship with God is supposed to work. That’s how it does work when we truly understand God’s grace.

But that’s not all. What else does it mean that we stand always and everywhere in God’s unmerited love and grace no matter what? One thing I think it means is that we are free, or at least we can be free. If we will open our hearts and souls to this grace in which we stand, we can be free from many things. We can be free from guilt over our mistakes, and we all make mistakes. We can be free from fear, and we all at least at times fear something or other. We can be free of fretful, fearful concern for the ultimate fate of our souls, for, as Paul says at Romans 8:38-39, not even death can separate us from the love of God.

That, folks, is the gospel, the good news, of Jesus Christ in a nutshell. We stand in God’s free and unconditional grace. We can know that we do or not, but we do either way. God’s grace can set us free from whatever the burdens are that we carry, and all of us carry burdens. Set free in the knowledge of God’s grace we can live as the free, loving people God intends and calls us to be. God offers freedom in grace to each and every one of us, indeed, to every person now living, or who ever lived, or who ever will live.

So this morning, and not only this morning but always, let us open our hearts and souls to God’s grace. Let us live into that grace. Let us celebrate it with joy and thanksgiving. I ask you this morning, please understand and accept this greatest of all truths: Each and every one of you stands in God’s unconditional grace, God’s unconditional love. So do I. Each of us stands in God’s free and unmerited love no matter what. That, my friends, is the best news there ever was or ever could be. Thanks be to God! Amen.