Freedom

All of my life, when I have had something that I couldn't handle I have turned to my Grandmama.  Whatever I have needed she has always been there.  When Cheyenne and I first got married, we had a lot of money problems.  We barely had enough to live on and had borrowed some money from Grandmama.  As tough as things were we worked hard at paying her back.  After we had made a few payments though she announced that she wouldn't accept any more money from us, she considered the loan paid off, of which we had only paid a small fraction.  Cheyenne and I both wanted to continue paying her back, largely because she has always been so good to us that we didn't want to take advantage but also as a way of proving ourselves I think, proving our character.  But this is where I came to a realization that I have been trying to understand since.  When someone gives you grace, and that is exactly what she did, there is nothing you can really do about it.  There was simply no way that I could make her accept a payment that she didn't want.  I consider myself fairly inventive but there were no arguments against her grace, no weapon formed against it would prosper.

In the Reformed tradition, we talk a lot about Sovereign Grace or Irresistible Grace.  And I think that we usually have the idea that Grace is sovereign or irresistible because it is supported by some kind of divine power.  But what I learned then, and have been trying to understand since, is that Grace is naturally sovereign.  Most of the things in our lives are bound by various forms of obligations.  The fundamental rule of our world is that everything has to come up to the standard of Justice.  That is if you cheat someone, if your actions are below the standard of Justice then you ought to bring them up to that standard, by compulsion if necessary.  There may be differences of opinion about how this applies to specific situations but I don't think anyone would deny the general principle.  And that is where we live, we live a life in which all of the things that we do, we are bound to do, we can choose to do them well or poorly, willingly or unwillingly, but if we don't obey the Divine Law from prudence and wisdom then we will obey it from necessity.  In this whole system there is not a single thing that is free, it is slavery from top to bottom.  So, if Justice is a bar that we must meet and anything below that bar is required to be raised to the bar, is bound to meet the standard, then there is a sort of freedom which this idea forces on our consciousness.  Everything above the bar is free.  All grace is free grace, it ceases to be grace to the degree that it ceases to be free.

Suppose you owe someone, let's just say $100.  As long as you pay them less than you owe you are required to make up the difference, and I fully believe that in the end God will bring everything up to that standard, every failure to meet justice He will correct(in fact has already corrected preemptively but that is not our theme right now).  But you are free to overpay.  If you choose to pay $120, no one can force you to only pay the amount owed, just as no one can prevent you from forgiving a debt.  The freedom to overpay may seem laughable, but not to those who are sick of slavery, not to those who know the value of freedom.  Our lives have become so closely shut up in obligations, in fact we already owe all that we have and all that we are, to our God, to our spouses, and to our children.  We also owe various other debts to others.  So we are already, by simple addition, owing more than triple of all we are and have.  No wonder we are always behind.  If we get more then we owe more.  So we could begin to have some freedom by overpaying some of our debts, we could exercise a sort of sovereignty over our creditors, we can be as irresistible as God wherever we choose to be gracious.  But what about those to whom we owe everything, the debts that can never be satisfactorily paid?

I don't want to pass over the freedom I talked about above too quickly.  It is not the receiving of grace that makes us free but the giving.  Being gracious makes us as free as the Only Begotten, the Fullness of Grace and Truth.  But because we owe more than we have, or can have, there is no absolute freedom.  Only God, who is, and has, more than He can ever owe is absolutely free.  He is absolutely free because He gives to everyone more than He ought.  His every action is an over-payment with no recompense expected or in fact allowed.  I said previously that He will raise every thought and action, everything whatsoever, to the level of Divine Justice.  But, in truth, I believe that He will give everyone and everything better than they deserve.  I believe that with Him there is no justice which is not infused with grace.  This can be proved simply by the fact that He is never under compulsion and justice is always subject to compulsion.(This BTW functions as a proof that Justice is not one of the Divine Perfections, His character is not strictly speaking just it is gracious.)  In order to be free everything He does must be gracious because only grace is free.  He made Himself under the Law to redeem those who are slaves to the Law, but even then His every action exceeded what was required from us and therefore exceeded what was required of our substitute.

And all of that seems great and warm and fuzzy but we are still left slaves to the debts that we can't pay.  But there is a solution to this, the one and only solution is the Covenant of Marriage between Christ and those for whom He gave His life.  The simple truth is that His Bride has the perfect and inalienable right to write checks on His bank account, to draw from His infinite resources as much as she likes.  We have enough to be gracious in any situation that we choose to. We have received double for all of our debts.  Take comfort, you are free, you are gracious.

“Comfort, yes, comfort My people!”
Says your God.
“Speak comfort to Jerusalem, and cry out to her,
That her warfare is ended,
That her iniquity is pardoned;
For she has received from the Lord’s hand
Double for all her sins.”

The voice of one crying in the wilderness:
“Prepare the way of the Lord;
Make straight in the desert
A highway for our God.
Every valley shall be exalted
And every mountain and hill brought low;
The crooked places shall be made straight
And the rough places smooth;
The glory of the Lord shall be revealed,
And all flesh shall see it together;
For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

The voice said, “Cry out!”
And he said, “What shall I cry?”

“All flesh is grass,
And all its loveliness is like the flower of the field.
The grass withers, the flower fades,
Because the breath of the Lord blows upon it;
Surely the people are grass.
The grass withers, the flower fades,
But the word of our God stands forever.”

O Zion,
You who bring good tidings,
Get up into the high mountain;
O Jerusalem,
You who bring good tidings,
Lift up your voice with strength,
Lift it up, be not afraid;
Say to the cities of Judah, “Behold your God!”

Behold, the Lord God shall come with a strong hand,
And His arm shall rule for Him;
Behold, His reward is with Him,
And His work before Him.
He will feed His flock like a shepherd;
He will gather the lambs with His arm,
And carry them in His bosom,
And gently lead those who are with young.

Who has measured the waters in the hollow of His hand,
Measured heaven with a span
And calculated the dust of the earth in a measure?
Weighed the mountains in scales
And the hills in a balance?
Who has directed the Spirit of the Lord,
Or as His counselor has taught Him?
With whom did He take counsel, and who instructed Him,
And taught Him in the path of justice?
Who taught Him knowledge,
And showed Him the way of understanding?

Behold, the nations are as a drop in a bucket,
And are counted as the small dust on the scales;
Look, He lifts up the isles as a very little thing.
And Lebanon is not sufficient to burn,
Nor its beasts sufficient for a burnt offering.
All nations before Him are as nothing,
And they are counted by Him less than nothing and worthless.

To whom then will you liken God?
Or what likeness will you compare to Him?
The workman molds an image,
The goldsmith overspreads it with gold,
And the silversmith casts silver chains.
Whoever is too impoverished for such a contribution
Chooses a tree that will not rot;
He seeks for himself a skillful workman
To prepare a carved image that will not totter.

Have you not known?
Have you not heard?
Has it not been told you from the beginning?
Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?
It is He who sits above the circle of the earth,
And its inhabitants are like grasshoppers,
Who stretches out the heavens like a curtain,
And spreads them out like a tent to dwell in.
He brings the princes to nothing;
He makes the judges of the earth useless.

Scarcely shall they be planted,
Scarcely shall they be sown,
Scarcely shall their stock take root in the earth,
When He will also blow on them,
And they will wither,
And the whirlwind will take them away like stubble.

“To whom then will you liken Me,
Or to whom shall I be equal?” says the Holy One.
Lift up your eyes on high,
And see who has created these things,
Who brings out their host by number;
He calls them all by name,
By the greatness of His might
And the strength of His power;
Not one is missing.

Why do you say, O Jacob,
And speak, O Israel:
“My way is hidden from the Lord,
And my just claim is passed over by my God”?
Have you not known?
Have you not heard?
The everlasting God, the Lord,
The Creator of the ends of the earth,
Neither faints nor is weary.
His understanding is unsearchable.
He gives power to the weak,
And to those who have no might He increases strength.
Even the youths shall faint and be weary,
And the young men shall utterly fall,
But those who wait on the Lord
Shall renew their strength;
They shall mount up with wings like eagles,
They shall run and not be weary,
They shall walk and not faint.

Solus Christos

"If you died today, are you sure that you would go to Heaven?"  Growing up Evangelical that was the ultimate question.  Perhaps the defining mark of Evangelicalism, of all religion, is the reducing of all of life to an answer to a question, to some final thumbs-up or thumbs-down which makes everything else insignificant.  And that is kind of my problem.  I don't want everything else to be insignificant.  I don't want the beauty and the poetry and the love and the pain, the dreams and the sacrifices to be reduced to a calculation of an almighty bookkeeper.

When Jesus walked this earth, He talked more than probably anyone else ever has about the Judgment and about damnation.  He painted graphic pictures of acceptance and rejection.  I think that all of the rest of us are rather uncomfortable with these ideas.  He may well have been the only man of us to be completely comfortable with the facts of salvation and damnation.  It is incumbent on the religious to stigmatize anyone who views these subjects differently than we do.  Arminians condemn Calvinists and vice versa.  Catholics condemn sola fide, and we condemn the idea of adding works to what Christ has done.  And of course, every one of us condemn Universalists.

Many people don't believe that there is anyone who will be saved, for convenience sake let's call them Buddhists, because it seems to me that making the annihilation of the self the ultimate hope is essentially admitting that every existence is damnation.  Some don't believe that there is anyone who will not be saved, Universalists.  Christianity sides with the majority of human beings in rejecting both of these positions, with the idea that some will be saved and some damned.  I say the majority of human beings because almost every one of us is certain that there will be a cut and that we need to make the cut.  There are of course as many theories on how this cut will be made as there are human beings.  The ubiquity of this position, to me, suggests that Universalists and Buddhists are entitled to a high level of respect simply for having the integrity to maintain such unpopular positions.

The Question; "If you died today, are you sure that you would go to Heaven?"

The Formulas:

"I won't and neither will anyone else"-Buddhism

"People who believe in Jesus will.  I believe in Jesus therefore I made the cut." -Evangelicalism

"People who believe in Jesus and live right will.  I believe in Jesus and I think with good works, penance, forgiveness, and prayer I will make it." -Catholicism

"I will because everyone will." -Universalism

All of us believe in one of these formulas, or one essentially like them.  We may change between them, but I believe that these positions represent pretty well all of humanity.  I vacillate between the evangelical and universalist positions.  Many go between evangelical and catholic understandings.  But we all eat, sleep, and breathe our formulas.  I condemn all of these formulas, and those, including me, who hold to them.  Because every single one is an addition to the great principle of Scripture, Christ Alone, and a reduction of life to something less than life, a substitution of our creation for His Creation.

God, whatever we believe, did not make this great pageant and panoply of life just to reduce it to a sum of credits and debits.  Whatever is to judge life, must itself be greater than life, and no formula, no law, is greater than life.  "Man was not made for the Sabbath(the representative of all laws and formulas), but the Sabbath for man"  Man was not made for the judgment.  But there is a judgment and it was made for man.  Just as God made a law for our benefit, He makes a judgment for our benefit.  For this reason, all judgment is committed to the Son of Man, the only One who is fully alive and greater than life itself.  We can't know who will make the cut, but we can trust that the One who does the cutting does it not as a butcher but as a gardener pruning for the benefit not just of the totality but for the benefit of the one pruned.  I know that some men will go to Hell, and that I am probably in their number, and I am convinced that that is where we belong.

We treat everyone and everything around us as an object, that is we believe that the good of the things  and people that we objectify can be sacrificed for some greater good, whatever that may be.  But this is an artificial scarcity.  There is really enough goodness in Christ for everyone to have what is best for them individually and collectively.  To Him nothing is an object that can be sacrificed for the benefit of others.  Anything He burns, He burns only to bring it to the fullness of itself, to perfect each existence.

To anyone who will not accept this, my answer is that damnation is not the worst thing that can happen to a person.  It is justice, and holy and just and good like the Law.  The only thing better than Law is Grace.  Law, and Hell, beats the pants off of anything else.  Especially most of what we have experienced in this life.  To be left as we are, to never experience the gracious judgment which is His presence would be far worse than Hell.  So, I want to leave us without any answers, but not without certainty and not without comfort.  Our certainty is not based on some bargain, some formula, for that would be mere law, but on the faith that He will give to everyone what is best for them.  Not faith that He will decide the way we want Him to, but that the decision is entirely in His hands and that that is the ultimate cause for celebration.

In Christ Alone