Prevenient, justifying and sanctifying grace, it’s
kind of like a three-way pyramid of grace to me. I related well to the
story/quote Pastor Jim relayed in "Grace from the Editing Room Floor"
this week in his FaithMatters column from a story told by Barbara Brown Taylor.
A Lebanese seminary classmate threw a theological
tantrum and said, “All you Americans care about is justification! You love
sinning and being forgiven, sinning and being forgiven, but no one seems to
want off that hamster wheel. Have you ever heard of
sanctification? Is anyone interested in learning to sin a little
less?”
I sometimes feel like that's how my Christian walk
has been where I never get off the hamster wheel. It really hit home with me
learning that God loves us so much, He keeps meeting us where we are, but won't
just let us stay there. I do feel like for the first time in my life, I'm at a
place in my Christian walk where I want to seek a bit more grace, and I'm glad
I have found a church home where that journey can begin.
Depending on where we are in our walk probably has
a lot to do with how we see grace in the pyramid. I can relate to the pyramid
in that, God's prevenient grace really has always been there, I kept bumping
into Him and turning away, sometimes running at full speed the opposite
direction through my childhood, college, and early in my professional life. The
justifying part of grace I’ve probably spent the most time with on a see-saw of
wanting to somehow earn my faith, but then it’s freely given. I still have a
hard time with that one, I want to do good, be good, and earn everything that
God has to offer. And then I feel like when the bad happens, that that’s
probably why, I didn’t earn the good in the first place.
Now I feel the sanctification part really tugging
at me, but I have never really felt comfortable even trying to sin a little
less... it sounds so goody-goody to me, all the things I've stereotyped and not
liked about Christianity before that kept me running from God's prevenient
grace, wanting to justify that I wasn’t good enough to even deserve it. But
trying to act from grace and asking for more of it that I can start working on
without too many objections.
In the conclusion to the story Pastor Jim references, Taylor wrote,
“God’s grace is not simply the infinite supply of divine forgiveness upon which
hopeless sinners depend. Grace is also the mysterious strength God lends
human beings who are interested in learning to sin a little less. To
repent is both to act from that grace and to ask for more of it, in order to
follow Christ into the startling freedom of new life.” (Context,
March 15, 2000, p. 5).
I’m seeing myself more and more at the center
of the grace pyramid, the prevenient part will always be there, justification
comes from just having faith and knowing I can’t earn it per say, and that
sanctification is the part I’ll spend the rest of my life striving for…
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