{"id":1409,"date":"2022-02-23T10:54:21","date_gmt":"2022-02-23T15:54:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=1409"},"modified":"2022-02-23T10:54:21","modified_gmt":"2022-02-23T15:54:21","slug":"thats-easy-its-grace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2022\/02\/23\/thats-easy-its-grace\/","title":{"rendered":"That’s Easy: It’s Grace"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Across the spectrum of global spirituality, is there anything unique to the Christian faith?
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Those attending a British conference on comparative religions in the middle of the last century debated that very question. \u00a0When all is said and done, is there anything associated with following Jesus that has no parallel?\u00a0
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How about the Incarnation?\u00a0 That didn\u2019t fly, since other religions include stories of various gods taking on human form.\u00a0 The resurrection, perhaps?\u00a0 That\u2019s not unique to Christianity, either, since others make claims of people rising from the dead.
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Miracles?\u00a0 Angels and demons?\u00a0 Guidance provided through dreams and visions?\u00a0 None of those are unique to the faith associated with Jesus of Nazareth.\u00a0
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The debate continued until author and theologian C.S. Lewis wandered into the room.\u00a0 \u201cWhat\u2019s the rumpus about?\u201d he asked.\u00a0 When told that the delegates were trying to identify what, if anything, makes Christianity stand apart from other religious options, he said, \u201cOh, that\u2019s easy.\u00a0 It\u2019s grace.\u201d\u00a0
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That was the end of the discussion.\u00a0
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There is in fact nothing else in the world that holds a candle to Jesus\u2019 teaching that God\u2019s love and acceptance are absolutely free and unconditional.\u00a0
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That idea, however, goes so strongly against the grain of human instinct that virtually all the religions on earth (not to mention a number of churches that have lost their way) end up promoting a set of spiritual self-improvement strategies.\u00a0 God will favor us if we are good, or if we perform, or if we love God first.\u00a0
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Jesus turns all that on its head.\u00a0 And right now he\u2019s making the offer of a lifetime.\u00a0 Deal or No Deal<\/em>:\u00a0 You can be in a transforming relationship with God in which he provides all the power, all the meaning, and all the resources \u2013 if you will abandon all your efforts to win God over according to some kind of performance plan.
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That\u2019s grace.<\/em>
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Grace means that God\u2019s presence, God\u2019s love, and God\u2019s forgiveness cannot be earned.\u00a0 They cannot be deserved.\u00a0 They can only be received.\u00a0 No wonder the apostle Paul begins and ends all 13 of his New Testament letters with a reference to grace.
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In his book What the Mystics Know<\/em>, Father Richard Rohr describes the alternatives:\u00a0
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\u201cThere are two utterly different forms of religion.\u00a0 One believes that God will love me if <\/u><\/em>I change.\u00a0 The other believes that God loves me so that<\/u><\/em> I can change!\u00a0 The first is the most common.\u00a0 The second follows upon an experience of personal indwelling and personal love.\u201d\u00a0
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I John 4:10 reminds us: \u201cThis is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us.\u201d\u00a0 One of my friends calls his mother every Sunday evening.\u00a0 Their conversations always end the same way.\u00a0 He says, \u201cLove you, Mom.\u201d\u00a0 And she always answers, \u201cI loved you first.\u201d\u00a0
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God loved us first.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0
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This truth is so incredible that if we choose to believe it, our lives will never be the same.
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Now maybe at some point you learned all about grace.\u00a0 It was a transforming discovery and it profoundly affected your life.\u00a0 But you\u2019ve done a lot of sinning since then, and have succumbed to the old human reflex to go back to some version of a personal performance plan \u2013 to somehow win your way back into God\u2019s favor.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0
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What options do you have?\u00a0 Only one makes sense: \u00a0Give up your earnest efforts to keep treading water (which you can never do anyways) and surrender yourself to the God who is reaching out for you even now.\u00a0 \u00a0
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C.S. Lewis memorably wrote:
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Give up yourself, and you will find your real self.\u00a0 Lose your life and you will save it.\u00a0 Submit to death, the death of your ambitions and favorite wishes every day and the death of your whole body in the end:\u00a0 Submit with every fiber of your being, and you will find eternal life.\u00a0 Keep back nothing.\u00a0 Nothing that you have not given away will really be yours.\u00a0 Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead.\u00a0 Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay.\u00a0 But look for Christ and you will find him, and with him everything else thrown in.<\/em>
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Perhaps that sounds like a spiritual pipe dream.\u00a0 But God himself is utterly committed to see such a transformation in our lives.
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Is there anything he can possibly give us that will help make it happen?
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That\u2019s easy: It\u2019s grace<\/em>.\u00a0

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0Across the spectrum of global spirituality, is there anything unique to the Christian faith?\u00a0Those attending a British conference on comparative religions in the middle of the last century debated that very question. \u00a0When all is said and done, is there anything associated with following Jesus that has no parallel?\u00a0\u00a0How about the Incarnation?\u00a0 That didn\u2019t fly, since other religions include stories… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1410,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[101,408],"class_list":["post-1409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-grace","tag-world-religions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1409"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1409\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1411,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1409\/revisions\/1411"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}