The Grace Academy

So. Grace is the Relay buzzword. Which means, as the Relay Co-ordinator, you'd think I'd kind of have it pegged. And yet, I feel like, even though I spend a lot of my life thinking on, teaching about and depending on grace it still feels like this picture, like I can just see a sliver of the amazing light dawning all the time!

This weekend I had a great time doing 4 talks on grace and chatting to CU leaders in the UCCF North East Region.
But getting the talks ready and teaching through them I had a bit of an epiphany.

Let me fill you in. I don't understand much about the New Persepctive, but at least part of the debate seems to be whether Luther got it right that "righteousness" in Romans is God's giving us his righteousness or God displaying his own righteousness. Ignorant amateur theologicans like me wondered why we had to choose.

Anyway, I started this weekend in Hosea 11. What a great passage for expressing God's grace: for it shows the the depths of the adluterous idolatrous behaviour we have adopted against our faithful, loving gentle and gracious Father, and yet the aching and emotional compassion He has for us. What's clear from the passage is that God's bringing his people back won't be any sort of weak begging of a cheated husband, but a terrifying roar that will bring us trembling to him. God demonstrates his righteousness in bringing us back. What's also clear in Hosea is that God considers this demonstration of his amazing character an alluring of his people to him: not only will he objectively bring them back, but they will subjectively want to come back when they see his greatness. When they see his acts of saving judgement, they will wonder why they were worshipping and serving such stupid dead things instead.

Fast forward to Romans 3, talk number 2 - where the righteousness of God is made known in the Gospel. Righteousness of God or from God?
Well - both frankly. God is just and the justifier - making us righteous and ALSO at the cross displaying his own amazing, superb, awesome mercy and justice. The Gospel is all about God being really seen to be who he really is - not only does he objectively make it possible for us to come back by the cross, he also woos us back by displaying how great he is. God did this, as the passage says, to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time.

When I see the cross, which allows me to come back to God, why would I worship anyone but the great God revealed at the cross?

Awesome - God opens the way, AND woos us back at the cross.

This explains much. Not least why the ultimate aim of the Gospel in the Bible is to glorify God - for it is in the Gospel God is revealed as he really is - glorified.

But more than that I feel challenged about my formulaic, what's in it for the listener, Gospel talks. God woos us back, allures us, by showing us his greatness in the Gospel. When I present it to people I want to be saying not only, you can be forgiven and justified but also, this God is so great, why worship something else. When I call Christians to full commitment to God, I'm not just preaching the cross as the place where you can be confident that your lack of commitment can be forgiven, I'm preaching as the place where you'll see that worshipping another God is just stupid and dead and swapping someone awesome and great and alive and righteous for things that are dead and cruel.

Grace rocks. For not only allows us to come back if we want to, when we see it moves our foolish sinful hearts to come back and live in covenant with a brilliant stupendous, too great for me to explain in words, Husband. And that, my friends, has set my heart a-singing today.