The grace of God

As we continue to think about the Christianity Explained series our theme this week is the grace of God and some readings are: Hosea 14:4–7;Psalm 85; Ephesians 2:4–10; Luke 18:9–14 (if you are looking for the Commnon lectionary Readings they are here for all All Saints Day; or here for The 31st Sunday of the Year)

What the grace of God assures us is that God's love for us is so great
that he will do everything he can to bring us into the fold of the loving relationship
We are so perverse that we often seem to think
that God will only love us
if we are good enough
or if we are worthy.
The truth is that God loves us
not just when we behave,
or when we have totted up enough brownie points
to merit being loved.
God just loves us!
That love is not bought or sold
it is freely given.
We are often told that the Greek word for 'grace'
is closely related to the word for gift.
God's gift of love is a "grace"
and is truly and freely given.

So we see exposed in the Gospel we have chosen today (Luke 18:9-14)
the story of two men
who stand before God.
One, a religious man, an upstanding man
stands before God
and tells him what a good person he is.
And, I suppose he is, not humble but 'good'
We also see he seems arrogant
and we would probably say
there is a a lot of 'self-justification'
The question , it seems to me, about this man
is what need does he have of God,
he seems to think he is doing OK by himself.
We can all be a bit like this.
BUT if we are honest we should also recognise
that this sort of self-righteousness
is rather shallow, and not entirely truthful.
None of us can entirely justify ourselves because we cannot undo the wrong we have done.
The murderer, however repentant, cannot undo the murder;
nor the one who has hurt another with unkind words and actions
cannot make up for the hurt

So there is a contrast with the other man
who is actually crushed (it would seem) by the mess he has made of his life
His response is not to try and point out that he is not really all that bad
but rather to throw himself on God's mercy.
There is no other choice.

The truth is that the first situation
the self-righteous justification is actually a deception
and the second, that all have sinned and fallen short
is the reality.
The story tells us that it is the sinner who opens himself to God's mercy
who goes away put right.
Because God gives him what he cannot earn.

We find this pretty hard.
We don't like the realisation
that we cannot force God to like us by being good.
We have all really been mis-taught that if we are good enough
then we will 'get into heaven'
The truth is that god gives eternal life to us freely
we do not have to earn it.
In fact it is this trying to earn it that often seems to stand in the way!!
Our self righteousness and self justification
(often aimed at saying how bad others are
as much as how good we are)

This week
Instead of trying to bribe God be being God
can we think about what God might be trying
to give us that we don't think we are worth of?
Can we also try to model this in our relationships with others?
Instead of trying to give people the impression that if they
behave as we want them to then we will love and like them
can we rather give the impression that we are trying to love
unconditionally. This is hard and radical stuff.