Squishy, limitless, radical grace

Grace is given to us not so that we can excuse our own sinful purposes but so that we can fulfil God's higher and better purposes for us. The misuse of God's grace to excuse (not only forgive) things God calls sin is the problem leading to schism. "Go and sin no more" turns into "go and sin." 

Love does not mean that one is infinitely indulgent. God is infinite in love, but his word promises us either his mercy or his wrath. Of course it does not diminish the goodness of God that some people will not like their eternal outcomes. God is good, whether or not you choose to join into that with him.

We risk doing the sinner no good,  but harm instead, when we assure him that whatever his moral failings, God's grace is sufficient for him. While saying so is true in a very real sense, it is dangerously misleading if the statement is not carefully qualified. Antinomianism is false, after all, and it comes to us speaking those very same words. It is dangerous because it is so nearly the truth, and because we would so much like it to be true. By antinomianism I mean the old heretical idea that God loves you so much that your behavior does not matter.  (See Rom. 6:1-2)

The authentic message of the gospel has us doing something constructive with God's grace once we receive it: amending our lives, improving our relationships and our communities, turning the world upside down with our deeds and our words and the godly examples we set. God's idea and expectation is that we will live differently from the people of this world. The worldly should see a different life in us. They can see their own examples, the kinds that they set, all around them. Something different about us should be there to be seen as clearly as a city on a hill. (Matt 5:13-14)

One of the schisms in Christendom today is due to some churches' preaching of cheap and easy grace that does little to improve us. We acknowledge our sins but are not called to do much to fight against them. That kind of preaching spurs loud rejection of the message, as a heresy known of old, by other churches. The view of historical Christianity is pretty clear. Grace is given to us not so that we can excuse our own sinful purposes but so that we can fulfil God's higher and better purposes for us. The misuse of God's grace to excuse (not only forgive) things God calls sin is the problem leading to schism. "Go and sin no more" turns into "go and sin." God's goodness, meant to lead you--sooner or later--to repentance loses its motivating force to draw you away from sin, if you are told that grace somehow blesses your ongoing sin into irrelevance. (Rom 2:4)

There are many examples I could cite here. I could talk about churches marrying people ineligible under any view of church history or former canons, such as men with men, but I think it is more to the point to talk about unmarriage. There is more of that going on, so much of it that people scarcely think about it or bat an eye. The people are canonically eligible, one man one woman, and sexually active together, and clearly form a pair bonded couple, but they do not marry.

The unmarriaged would fall under the Apostle's forgiving rubric if they married, better late than never, but for whatever reason they do not go before a pastor to take their vows. "What's the harm? We're not hurting anyone."  The harm is in fact twofold. The man does not have a wife who confronts him morally (which a very good thing to have) and the woman does not have a husband who has sworn away his life--whatever befall--to her safety and happiness.

He is not fully owning up to his responsibilities toward her. He is not showing her the moral and spiritual leadership the scriptures require of him. She is not demonstrating to him a godly mode of conduct either. She isn't setting a good example for him any more than he is for her. At the very least she is compounding his error.

That is the first harm: their relationship is not all that it should be, and is some things it should not. The second is that the man* is a dog in the manger. Some other man who would love her fully and marry her is never going to find her while her lover is occupying her attention. Inasmuch as the lover will not marry her, he should let her go to find her husband, or she should leave him on that errand. He does not love her as he ought or else he has not read the scriptures. Simply take your pick of those two options, and stop pretending that such 'arrangements' are doing no harm.

There should be a clear contrast between what the church does and what the world does. It is not an arbitrary difference, nor is it dissidence only for the sake of being different. We are supposed to make visible in this world some truths about the next. Marriage is a case in point. Christian marriage reflects essential truths about God's kingdom and the right relationship of women and men.

If the church does not act as heaven's signpost on earth then there is no signpost--it is that simple. Christian marriage is our model to explain how the church is joined to God. We cannot explain intellectually and in the abstract things that are not seen in a practical sense: we are then preaching without examples, something that never quite works. We cannot point to marriage to explain the church if the church is lax about marriage and indifferent to aberrance in the matter. We mar our witness, on several levels, if we do not stand up for marriage.

Because God is completely loving without being endlessly indulgent, sound preaching and teaching and example need to be like that too. We are not doing a good job of loving the sinner when we coddle his sin. We are not being truthful with him; we are failing in our witness by not giving him God's whole counsel. Likewise we do ourselves a disservice when we are slow to deal with our own sins. Let us not forget that point. The log in my own eye needs to be dealt with before I try to remove the speck in yours. But both are problems: both require removal. (Matt 7:1-5)

It is as if, in some churches, everyone has gotten the idea that nobody's sins bear mention, because mine don't want dredging up. That kind of thinking surely has things backwards. Another way of saying it is that two wrongs don't make a right. Surely we are all sinners. But, surely, we are not to be happy with ourselves in that state, or to encourage one another in it. The great problem with the antinomian approach is that we sell ourselves short. God's grace is better than that: We are not making of it everything we might.



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*  Usually it is the man who is the dog here, but there are exceptions now and then. In any case, real love will rise to the level of agape not just eros, and so the partner's good will be the paramount concern.  For the Christian, agape (selfless love)  trumps eros (romantic and sexual love), as a higher love and duty. Each partner will want the other's best good and a shacked up relationship is not the best kind.

It is possible to set aside one's own desires for the sake of the beloved's good--and walk away. It is even noble to do so, though it may be very difficult. Oddly enough one of the better examples is the secular film Casablanca: Rick lets Ilsa go free because that is what is best for her. (It helps the war effort too, but this was a WWII era film and could not resist a bit of propaganda.)