The Difference Is Grace

Thursday morning I got to the coffee shop early. I spoke to the barista about his upcoming international trip and how I handled my vaccinations before my first trip abroad. Like the fellow at the Chinese restaurant here in town, the barista doesn’t even ask my order any more...I guess I'm predictable (caffe americano and a muffin or scone). I like to eat before the rest of the guys arrive. Talking through Berkhof’s a bit easier when I’m not eating. I opened my Bible. The previous evening we’d finished the Revelation in Bible study. While eating, I turned to Revelation and then Isaiah.

“And the Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come!’ And let him who hears say, ‘Come!’ And let him who thirsts come. Whoever desires, let him take the water of life freely” (Revelation 22:17).

“Everyone who thirsts,
Come to the waters;
And you who have no money,
Come, buy and eat.
Yes, come, buy wine and milk
Without money and without price” (Isaiah 55:1).

(We’d been in Isaiah 54:5-13 the week before while studying Revelation 21:1-22:5.)

I kept reading through Isaiah 55 and came to a passage I’ve quoted countless times over the years:

“‘For My thoughts are not your thoughts,
Nor are your ways My ways,’ says the Lord.

‘For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
So are My ways higher than your ways,
And My thoughts than your thoughts’” (55:8,9).

Reading it Thursday morning, though, I realized that this passage teaches God’s absolute difference from us as it relates to the Gospel’s free gift.

“‘Everyone who thirsts,
Come to the waters;
And you who have no money,
Come, buy and eat.
Yes, come, buy wine and milk
Without money and without price.

Why do you spend money for what is not bread,
And your wages for what does not satisfy?
Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good,
And let your soul delight itself in abundance.

Incline your ear, and come to Me.
Hear, and your soul shall live...’

...seek the Lord while He may be found,
Call upon Him while He is near.

Let the wicked forsake his way,
And the unrighteous man his thoughts;
Let him return to the Lord,
And He will have mercy on him;
And to our God,
For He will abundantly pardon.

‘For My thoughts are not your thoughts,
Nor are your ways My ways,’ says the Lord.

‘For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
So are My ways higher than your ways,
And My thoughts than your thoughts’” (Isaiah 55:1-3,6-9).

The Gospel is not natural to our fallen race. Every religion other than that of the Bible is works-based. Even the religion of naturalistic evolution is works-based (the strong survive). We believe we must work to save ourselves or to keep ourselves alive in this world. In this belief-system shared by everyone from the Muslim to the atheistic biologist to the Mormon to the Buddhist, human beings stand in solidarity. And God is utterly different. Salvation with human beings is impossible; only God can save (Matthew 19:26//Mark 10:27//Luke 18:27). This is the context of Isaiah 55. The Gospel, or Good News, is that God does the impossible by freely giving a gracious salvation to those who hear His command to repent: “Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the Lord” (compare with Matthew 3:2,8; 4:17; Mark 1:15; 6:12; Luke 3:8; 5:32; 13:3,5; 24:47; Acts 2:38; 3:19; 17:30; 26:20). He freely gives grace: “...He will have mercy on him; and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon...”

God is different because of grace. We think we must earn our salvation, yet we cannot. We fight His offer of the gift, trying to make Him like us in a million different ways. But it’s a gift. A gift we cannot earn. Ever. This is the absolute difference between God and man, and it is a difference we must accept if we are to be saved.

It is Gospel, or Good News:

• “...all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, Whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith” (Romans 3:22-25).
• “...the free gift is not like the offense. For if by the one man’s [Adam] offense many died, much more the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abounded to many. And the gift is not like that which came through the one who sinned [Adam]. For the judgment which came from one offense resulted in condemnation, but the free gift which came from many offenses resulted in justification. For if by the one man’s [Adam] offense death reigned through the one, much more those who receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ.)” (Romans 5:15-17).
• “...the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23).
• “...by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:8).

The Nothing of the Gospel

“Then one of the Pharisees asked Him to eat with him. And He went to the Pharisee’s house, and sat down to eat. And behold, a woman in the city who was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at the table in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster flask of fragrant oil, and stood at His feet behind Him weeping; and she began to wash His feet with her tears, and wiped them with the hair of her head; and she kissed His feet and anointed them with the fragrant oil. Now when the Pharisee who had invited Him saw this, he spoke to himself, saying, ‘This Man, if He were a prophet, would know who and what manner of woman this is who is touching Him, for she is a sinner.’ And Jesus answered and said to him, ‘Simon, I have something to say to you.’ So he said, ‘Teacher, say it.’ ‘There was a certain creditor who had two debtors. One owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. And when they had nothing with which to repay, he freely forgave them both. Tell Me, therefore, which of them will love him more?’ Simon answered and said, ‘I suppose the one whom he forgave more.’ And He said to him, ‘You have rightly judged.’ Then He turned to the woman and said to Simon, ‘Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave Me no water for My feet, but she has washed My feet with her tears and wiped them with the hair of her head. You gave Me no kiss, but this woman has not ceased to kiss My feet since the time I came in. You did not anoint My head with oil, but this woman has anointed My feet with fragrant oil. Therefore I say to you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much. But to whom little is forgiven, the same loves little.’ Then He said to her, ‘Your sins are forgiven.’ And those who sat at the table with Him began to say to themselves, ‘Who is this who even forgives sins?’ Then He said to the woman, ‘Your faith has saved you. Go in peace’” (Luke 7:36-50, N.K.J.V.).

Oh, be careful how you read, hear, and meditate on this narrative, beloved! The easiest thing in the world is to miss the Gospel in it. That doesn’t seem possible, right? There is a woman who is a notorious sinner, broken and adoring Jesus at His feet. Jesus praises her above the religious leader and announces her forgiven. Gospel, right? Not if you miss the most important point.

You see, we’re tempted to give too much value to the woman’s actions (7:38,39,44-46). There is a tendency to see her humble, even humiliating actions as the merit by which she receives her forgiveness. She’s worthy of forgiveness, we all-too-easily consider, because she has abased herself in front of the people in Simon’s house and even Jesus Himself. If we come to that conclusion, though, we miss the Gospel entirely. The woman’s tears, kisses, hair, and perfumed oil do not merit her forgiveness. Not even a little bit. Don’t make bad theology because of the powerful emotional tug of the moment. I fear – given our emphasis on musical/emotional experience in worship and the most popular books Christians are apparently reading – that the dear woman’s actions can be misunderstood as being the ladder on which she is able to climb from the pit of sin up to an intimate relationship with the great Lover of souls, and that’s just not true. In fact, if this is our assumption, we miss the Gospel, and, no matter how sweet the situation is, missing the Gospel is an eternally deadly error.

Merely using our imaginative senses to dwell in the woman’s actions isn’t enough. This will lead to an anti-gospel in which emotional is the new law and spiritual sensuality is the new legalism. Just as in every gathering of the people of God in Christ for worship, the actions of adoration are capable of damning us unless there is doctrinal explanation in the preaching. We have that in this text, too. The guiding principle by which we understand the woman’s actions and the grace Jesus grants her must be His explanatory parable in 7:41,42.

“There was a certain creditor who had two debtors. One owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. And when they had nothing with which to repay, he freely forgave them both. Tell Me, therefore, which of them will love him more?”

What did the debtors offer to get out of debt? Nothing. “...they had nothing with which to repay.”

As far as the woman’s infinite, eternal debt to God for her sins (her sins before God are unendingly more serious than her reputation in her community for those sins), her tears, hair, kisses, and perfumed oil are “nothing.” Does that seem harsh? If it does, we’ve cleansed the story of the Gospel in our reading of it.

This woman’s actions, no matter how sweet and tender they are, do nothing to gain her forgiveness before the divine Creditor she has offended in her sin. In the same way, there is nothing any of us can do, no matter how good-intentioned or sincerely sentimental or religiously disciplined, to “repay” the debt we owe because of our sin. “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23).

It is the great grace of the creditor, when he “freely forgave them both,” that is the Gospel in this story. They had “nothing with which to repay,” and he “freely forgave them both.” Anything else is not the Gospel, and will not save.

In response to the graceful forgiveness of the Gospel, which she believed by faith (7:50), she lives out a response by weeping, drying, kissing, and anointing – she “loved much.” Her actions are beautiful, touching, and appropriate to what she has received in the grace of the Gospel.

It is not our adoration that is the saving power of the Gospel, but His kindness on behalf of those who have “nothing with which to repay.”

“...when the kindness and the love of God our Savior toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit, Whom He poured out on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior, that having been justified by His grace we should become heirs according to the hope of eternal life” (Titus 3:4-7).

This is Good News, and merits our own humble acts of love forever and ever. May we love much, for we have been graciously given forgiveness for much.

"The Anointing with Oil and Tears," by Sadao Watanabe (1979)

W.W.P.D.?

If "following Jesus" was the whole of the Christian faith, the New Testament would be a whole lot shorter.

The early Church's normal practice was devotion "to the apostles' teaching" (Acts 2:42), and the Church is "built on the foundation of the apostles" (Ephesians 2:20; cf. Revelation 21:14). God the Holy Spirit has given the apostles (and their writings in the New Testament) as His gifting to the Church (1 Corinthians 12:28; Ephesians 4:11).

Merely "following Jesus" or "being like Jesus" or W.W.J.D. alone is not biblical Christianity.

*In addition to being missional and evangelizing often, Paul also planted churches, spent lots of time with churches, exhaustively taught doctrine to churches, and worked hard to make them organized and even - gulp - institutional.

Jeremiah's Turning #11: Hard As Stone

Following the word “turn” (שוב) through Jeremiah’s prophecy.

“O LORD, do not Your eyes look for truth? You have smitten them, but they did not weaken; You have consumed them, but they refused to take correction. They have made their faces harder than rock; they have refused to repent [שוב]” (Jeremiah 5:3).

They became like what they worshiped: “Their idols are silver and gold, the work of man’s hands. They have mouths, but they cannot speak; they have eyes, but they cannot see; they have ears, but they cannot hear; they have noses, but they cannot smell; they have hands, but they cannot feel; they have feet, but they cannot walk; they cannot make a sound with their throat. Those who make them will become like them, everyone who trusts in them” (Psalm 115:4-8).

The Lord responded to this hardness in two ways:

• The prophet preached a message that went unheard by the decree of God: “Then I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?’ Then I said, ‘Here am I. Send me!’ He said, ‘Go, and tell this people: “Keep on listening, but do not perceive; keep on looking, but do not understand.” Render the hearts of this people insensitive, their ears dull, and their eyes dim, otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and return and be healed’” (Isaiah 6:8-10). By this way, this passage is one of the most-quoted in the New Testament (Matthew 13:14,15; Mark 4:12; Luke 8:10; John 12:40; Acts 28:26,27; Romans 11:8). The principle does not change between the Testaments because God’s plan to save a small group of the elect from the mass of idol-worshiping humanity does not change (neither does their idolatry change). “For many are called, but few are chosen” (Matthew 22:14).
• The prophet was made just as hard as they were: “Then He said to me, ‘Son of man, go to the house of Israel and speak with My words to them. For you are not being sent to a people of unintelligible speech or difficult language, but to the house of Israel, nor to many peoples of unintelligible speech or difficult language, whose words you cannot understand. But I have sent you to them who should listen to you; yet the house of Israel will not be willing to listen to you, since they are not willing to listen to Me. Surely the whole house of Israel is stubborn and obstinate. Behold, I have made your face as hard as their faces and your forehead as hard as their foreheads. Like emery harder than flint I have made your forehead. Do not be afraid of them or be dismayed before them, though they are a rebellious house.’ Moreover, He said to me, ‘Son of man, take into your heart all My words which I will speak to you and listen closely. Go to the exiles, to the sons of your people, and speak to them and tell them, whether they listen or not, “Thus says the Lord GOD”’” (Ezekiel 3:4-11). John the Baptist was raised up to be this kind of preacher. His message was not vanilla, easy-listening, and it certainly didn’t tickle the ears (2 Timothy 4:3).

Repentance is the gift of God (Acts 5:31; 11:18), enabling His elect to respond to the preaching of His Good News of salvation through Jesus’ death on the cross alone (Acts 2:36-38). The gift of repentance is the blessing of God given through His Son (Acts 3:26).

Though salvation is impossible to achieve by human beings (Matthew 19:25,26; Mark 10:26,27; Luke 18:26,27), God is able to bring anyone to repentance. So we prayerfully and lovingly – but immovably in the truth of the Word – appeal to the human rocks with the Gospel, hoping God will use the Word to bring them to repentance and faith: “The Lord’s bond-servant must not be quarrelsome, but be kind to all, able to teach, patient when wronged, with gentleness correcting those who are in opposition, if perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, having been held captive by him to do his will” (2 Timothy 2:24-26).

Today's Gifts, Not Tomorrow's Rot

“They...fled unto Lystra, and Derbe, cities of Lycaonia, and unto the region round about, and there preached the Gospel. Now there sat a certain man at Lystra, impotent in his feet, which was a cripple from his mother’s womb, who had never walked. He heard Paul speak: who beholding him and perceiving that he had faith to be healed, said with a loud voice, ‘Stand upright on thy feet.’ And he leaped up, and walked. Then when the people saw what Paul had done, they lifted up their voices, saying in the speech of Lycaonia, ‘Gods are come down to us in the likeness of men.’ And they called Barnabas, Jupiter: and Paul Mercurius, because he was the chief speaker. Then Jupiter’s Priest, which was before their city, brought bulls with garlands unto the gates, and would have sacrificed with the people. But when the Apostles, Barnabas and Paul heard it, they rent their clothes, and ran in among the people, crying, and saying, ‘O men, why do ye these things? We are even men subject to the like passions that ye be, and preach unto you, that ye should turn from these vain things unto the living God, which made heaven and earth, and the sea, and all things that in them are: Who in times past suffered all the Gentiles to walk in their own ways. Nevertheless, He left not Himself without witness, in that He did good and gave us rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food, and gladness’” (Acts 14:6-17, Geneva Bible).

God is the Source of all the happy things in the life of humanity, from work (“fruitful seasons”) to pleasure (“food, and gladness”). We’ve been going through Ecclesiastes the last few months, hearing the message of the Preacher about these things. “There is no profit to man, but that he eat and drink, and delight his soul with the profit of his labor: I saw also this, that it was of the hand of God...I know that there is nothing good in them, but to rejoice, and to do good in his life. And also that every man eateth and drinketh, and seeth the commodity of all his labor. This is the gift of God...behold then, what I have seen good, that it is comely to eat, and to drink, and to take pleasure in all his labor, wherein he travaileth under the sun, the whole number of the days of his life, which God giveth him: for this is his portion. Also to every man to whom God hath given riches and treasures, and giveth him power to eat thereof, and to take his part, and to enjoy his labor: this is the gifts of God. Surely he will not much remember the days of his life, because God answereth to the joy of his heart...and I praised joy, for there is no goodness to man under the sun, save to eat and to drink and to rejoice: for this is adjoined to his labor the days of his life that God hath given him under the sun...go, eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine with a cheerful heart: for God now accepteth thy works. At all times let thy garments be white, and let not oil be lacking upon thine head. Rejoice with the wife whom thou hast loved all the days of the life of thy vanity, which God hath given thee under the sun all the days of thy vanity” (Ecclesiastes 2:24; 3:12,13; 5:18-20; 8:15; 9:7-9). Give thanks to God for His gifts to us today (work and pleasure), but don’t try to wring meaning, peace, security, hope, fulfillment, identity, etc., out of them. They are given to us today to point us to the Giver of the gifts, Who has twisted reality so that we must turn to Him in faith to find all that we seek to get out of reality (Genesis 3:16-19; Ecclesiastes 7:13). Like the manna He gave from heaven to the children of Israel in the desert, it’s only good for today’s need and happiness; hold on to it until tomorrow and it’s rot (Exodus 16:13-21). Trust Him with tomorrow. Don’t be like the Lycaonians, worshiping everything except the Giver, Who has “left not Himself without witness, in that He did good and gave us rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food, and gladness.” Give Him thanks today for the work and the pleasure He gives in the name that is above all names, the only name given under heaven by which we must be saved, the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.

Wisdom & Folly from Garden to Gospel

A timeless tale:

“Wisdom...calls from the tops of the heights of the city: ‘Whoever is naive, let him turn in here!’ To him who lacks understanding she says, ‘Come, eat of my food and drink of the wine I have mixed. Forsake your folly and live, and proceed in the way of understanding’” (Proverbs 9:1,3-6).

• The Gift In the Garden: “The LORD God commanded the man, saying, ‘From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die’” (Genesis 2:16,17).
• The Gift in the Gospel: “Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through Whom also we have obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand...those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ” (Romans 5:1,2,17).

“The woman of folly...[is] calling to those who pass by, who are making their paths straight: ‘Whoever is naive, let him turn in here,’ And to him who lacks understanding she says, ‘Stolen water is sweet; and bread eaten in secret is pleasant’” (Proverbs 9:13-17).

• Rejecting the Gift in the Garden: “When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate” (Genesis 3:6).
• Rejecting the Gift in the Gospel: “Brethren, my heart’s desire and my prayer to God for them is for their salvation. For I testify about them that they have a zeal for God, but not in accordance with knowledge. For not knowing about God's righteousness and seeking to establish their own, they did not subject themselves to the righteousness of God. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes” (Romans 10:1-4).