Reflections on Grace

Langford, Rolnick

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2007
• eBook ISBN: 9781498270410
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

For about the last fifteen years of his life, Thomas A. Langford pondered how grace is central to Christian theology. This book records his reflections and provides numerous gems of mature Christian insight. From beginning to end, the book is christologically focused. Grace is not something that God gives us; rather, it is the way God gives us himself. Grace is a person--God present to human beings. Grace is not a gift but rather a giver. Grace is Jesus Christ. The central contribution of this work is its personalization of grace, its sharp focus on God present in Jesus Christ. Because its focus on grace gives the reader such a clear and thematically developed entry point, this work is a great introduction to theology and the life of the church, the kind that pastors and parishioners would certainly benefit from confronting.

chapter one

Grace as Giver

“Grace to you and peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.”

(Galatians 1:3)

God Present

God present is grace. God present to humankind is definitively expressed in the historical person of Jesus, the clearest expression of the character of God. In him is expressed God’s intention and nature, God’s mode and spirit of relating to human beings. God’s being is expressed in this specific historical action in Jesus Christ; and as we allow the gospel to tell us who and what God is, we discover that God is gracious love.

Because this definition is not widely used, we need to say what we mean by this word grace. There are many options. For instance, in a published list of synonyms for grace, the following are given: the nouns delicacy, tact, culture, courtesy, attractiveness, charm, compassion, mercy, saintliness, and piety; and the verbs to honor, to decorate, and to improve beauty and taste. This is quite a list, but none of these synonyms goes to the heart of what Christians mean by grace.1

Within Christendom there has been a struggle over two basic understandings of grace. On the one hand, grace has been thought of as some thing, some thing God possesses and can give, and perhaps some thing persons can accept and possess; or, in larger terms, some atmosphere, energy, or power which represents God’s action and provides a surrounding context for human life.

On the other hand, grace has been identified with some one; grace is a person, grace is God—God present to human beings. To speak of grace is to speak of God’s presence and caring interaction with creation. In this understanding, considerations of grace are based upon reflections on the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Jesus Christ is grace; grace is Jesus Christ.

As a first consequence, grace is understood as God’s particular initiating activity that draws human beings into covenant existence, an existence that finds expression in thankful worship of God and gracious service to neighbors. From this covenant vantage point, the reality of grace is recognized in a wide range of expressions, such as in the finding of truth, in the continuous act of creation, in the history of Israel, in the tension of grace with disgrace, in the church as a community of grace, and in Christian encounters with social structures.

Jesus Christ is the definitive but not the exclusive expression of grace. To see grace as God present in Jesus Christ prepares one to discover expressions of grace as the ubiquitous presence of God. From the perspective of grace given in Jesus Christ, receivers of grace become aware of grace in every activity of God. Hence, recognition of other forms of grace, whether anticipatory of Jesus’s incarnation or resulting from it, depend upon our acknowledgment of this starting point: the definitive expression of grace is Jesus Christ.

The most basic character of grace is God’s freedom, and its defining modality is God’s free act of self-expression in human history. Grace as expressed in Jesus Christ is unnecessitated, surprising, and unforced. Grace is also a free act that liberates those whom it encounters. God meets human beings with forgiveness and renewal, and thereby creates new relationship. Bound by the love of Christ and unbound from all false loyalties, God’s presence comes as claim and succor; this presence makes clear the meaning of both judgment and hope.

God’s freedom is embodied in Jesus Christ. This historical person denotes who and what God is. Grace is not an abstract power, an impersonal quality, or a general ambience. God does not possess grace as an acquired or dispensable attribute. Because grace is not some thing God possesses and might give, grace is not a separable entity. God is grace in being and action; therefore, grace is a giver, not a gift. Grace is the character of divine life, and this character is known when divine life encounters human life as incarnate love manifest in the personal life of Jesus Christ.

To know grace, which is to know God, requires responsive faith, a faith which is graciously enabled. There is, in this sense, no theology of the unregenerate; the content of knowledge is conveyed through the positive relationship established by the encounter of God with human beings. Consequently, knowledge of grace comes in the experience of redemption by which God in Jesus Christ savingly encounters human beings and draws them into covenant. Such experience, while personal, is not individualistic; for the gospel of grace is conveyed through community, is nurtured in community, and is understood and interpreted by community. So God in Christ, working through the Holy Spirit, evokes a response of faith, and the established relationship sets the condition in which and through which grace is known.

The modes of grace’s operation, as defined by the historical reality of Jesus Christ, are always personal. Care must be taken in using traditional expressions of the ways in which grace operates, such as “irresistible grace,” “imputed grace,” “imparted grace,” “sola gratia,” “predestination,” and “election,” to insure that both the integrity of God in Jesus Christ and the integrity of human beings, as displayed by Jesus Christ, are honored. Jesus Christ defines not only God’s way of being in relation to persons but also the status of human beings in that relationship. That is, God meets human beings at eye-level. Human dignity is rooted in God’s dignifying of human life through encounter by Jesus Christ. Human beings are respected and dealt with in ways that affirm both divine freedom and the integrity of human selfhood.

Grace as a person forms and is found in relationship. This relationship is the meaning of covenant. Grace is not an independent entity that works as an external force, nor is it exchanged through legal transaction. The paradigm of gracious activity is drawn from the realm of personal relationships. In the engagement of life, in being spoken to and answering, being addressed and responding, grace expresses its character. The God of grace is the One who engages and the One to whom responses can be made. Human life finds its meaning in this covenantal conversation. God’s gracious presence creates and releases human capacity for relationship, for hearing and answering.

Grace as God’s direct presence is quite distinct from grace as an ambience, as an attribute, as an abstract power, as an indwelling potentiality of nature, or as a divine endowment of human existence. Grace is God, the giving of God’s self, God’s way of being God, and God’s way of being with us—Immanuel. Grace is God’s self-giving for the purpose of establishing community.

Any interpretation of grace rests upon an understanding of the nature of the relationship between God and the created order, including human beings. Self-giving may utilize concrete media for expression, but self-giving emphasizes the one who is conveyed as well as the means of conveyance. Grace is God’s offer of relationship, and in Jesus Christ, grace is God’s direct self-offering. Relationship with God is the fundamental engagement in human life; it is the relationship which creates the meaning and purpose of life—covenant with God and one another.

In gracious relationship, we discern the basic nature of human relationships in which there is giving and receiving of person with person. Personal relationship involves intentionality, whether for good or evil, for mind–body engagement, for action, for mutual vulnerability and strengthening, or for mutual self-giving. Because personal relationship is engaging presence, no substitute token has more than an indicative or extrinsic value in the relation that is being offered. A gift of the self is not a discrete thing but the extending of one personal life to another that places oneself in relation to another, offering one’s own being to another person. God’s self-giving is the gift of God’s own being, a gift which evokes responsive self-giving.

In gracious relationship we discern the nature of the triune God. Grace as the character of God is an expression of the Trinity, a focused act of corporate life. This fact has two primary implications. First, God’s wholeness, the entire Trinity, presents itself in Jesus Christ. What is revealed in Jesus is true of the entire Godhead. Second, grace in human life is found in the bondedness of community with God and with other persons. From God’s wholeness, life is maintained as whole in corporate existence. Consequently, grace expresses community and creates new community. Grace, as corporate and incorporating, establishes a new communal structure—the body of Christ.

The import of these claims is that grace is the distinctive element in the Christian message, for it is the most fundamental depiction of God, of God’s way of being, and of human possibility. The range of grace is as comprehensive as God’s relating to all creation. The expression of grace in Jesus Christ extends through the breadth, length, height, and depth of human experience. To be discovered by the grace of God in Jesus Christ leads to the possible discovery of the grace of God in creation, as prevenient presence, in present forgiveness, in maturing process, and in ultimate hope. Grace is the most permeative reality of Christian existence. God is present, and “in Him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28).

A New Emphasis: Grace as Strength

What is the meaning of grace for our time? For Martin Luther, in the sixteenth century, the meaning was God’s all-sufficient, unmerited love expressed as justification. Sola gratia, grace alone, was his cry, a cry that created one of those rare moments when a word changes a world. “Grace alone,” he said, and nothing remained the same. Two centuries later, John Wesley spoke again of grace. Now the theme was enlarged: grace was understood as prevenient (acting for us before we are even aware of it), as forgiveness (justification), and as transformation of life (sanctification). Once again these words reverberated through a nation and then around the world. These powerful assertions shook the past and still echo through our time. But is it enough merely to repeat what we have received? Has grace already been adequately interpreted for all time? Can anything new be said? Can we remember and reinforce these themes from Luther and Wesley and then speak God’s special work of grace for our era?

Helmut Flender, the New Testament scholar, has said that for Paul to say the same thing as Jesus said, it was necessary for him to say it in a different way. Such “new saying” is always necessary. If this is so, how should we speak of grace in the tongue of our time?

Grace is God’s justifying and sanctifying presence. But what form is that grace taking in our world? Perhaps God’s grace should be interpreted for our time as strength. Grace should be understood as God coming in justice, in judgment, in opposition to structured powers of evil, in challenge to all oppression, in standing by those in need.

To say that grace is strength is to recognize that we are dealing with a distinctive kind of power, a power for which there are no direct analogies in human experience, a power which can transform life by forgiving sin, by renewing existence, by remolding human forms of living. This power of grace is astonishing both in its being given and in what it accomplishes. The power of God to remake life is the first thing that must be said about strong grace.

The words strong or strength possess a variety of meanings. They may mean “having power to resist,” “possessing large numbers of supporters,” or “ability to effect one’s decision.” But strong may also mean “determined,” “capable,” or “not easily dissuaded or broken.” This latter sort of strong grace engages persons in a determined, persistent, unfailing manner—as steadfast love. It engages social conditions with the strength to challenge, and to persist in its challenge, of demeaning, destructive conditions. Grace expresses deep empathy or antipathy as the si...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Forward: Saying Grace: Tom Langford
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: A Work of Grace, A Life of Grace
• Chapter 1: Grace as Giver
• Chapter 2: Grace and Truth
• Chapter 3: Grace and the Biblical Jesus
• Chapter 4: Grace and Creation
• Chapter 5: Grace upon Grace
• Chapter 6: Grace, Disgrace, Grace
• Appendix: From Notebooks of Prayers by Thomas A. Langford
• Bibliography