Grace Upon Grace Journal

Last Sunday, I continued my sermon series based on the Four Alls, a journey through God’s grace and what it means for all of us. On the first Sunday, we reflected on “We All Need Grace.” Yesterday, the message was “Grace Is for All.” I connected it with our experience at camp with Bella, my dog. She absolutely loved the river. At home, she has a little plastic pool, but the river was different. She felt like she was in heaven. The pool has limits; the river keeps flowing. Sometimes we do the same thing with grace. We create our own little “pools” and decide who deserves grace, who belongs, who is forgiven, and who is welcome. But John 3:16 reminds us that God so loved the world. I also reflected on the prophet Ezekiel’s vision of a river flowing from the temple, the water that kept getting deeper: ankle-deep, knee-deep, up to the waist, until it became deep enough to swim in and dive into. God was inviting Ezekiel to go deeper. What a beautiful picture of grace. We don’t have to create...

Cheap grace is when we want God’s forgiveness without allowing God to change our lives. It is talking about forgiveness without talking about repentance. It is wanting Jesus as our Savior, but not necessarily as our Lord. It is receiving grace without being willing to follow Jesus. It is a faith that wants the blessing but not the discipleship. It wants the presence of Christ but doesn’t want to change the things in our lives that keep pulling us away from him. Costly grace, on the other hand, is like the treasure hidden in a field; the kind of treasure someone is willing to give up everything to find. It is like the pearl of great value for which a merchant sells everything he has. It is the call of Jesus that causes the disciples to leave their nets and follow him. Costly grace is what happens when the Kingdom of God becomes so precious to us that we begin to rearrange our entire lives around it. Costly grace is not simply something we receive. It is an invitation we respond to. It c...

Beyond religious practice, the New Covenant offers every person a renewed understanding of themselves and others, making it a powerful force for social transformation. The salvation proclaimed in the New Testament, at its fullest, calls for the humanization of people by setting them free from everything that prevents them from becoming who God created them to be. This understanding points to the social responsibility of the Gospel, which is meant to shape both the lives and the witness of Christians, leading them toward the fullness of their humanity and a life marked by good works. In keeping with this vision, many social movements have emerged from both Protestant and Catholic Christianity with the goal of bringing greater compassion, dignity, and humanity to Christian ministry and practice. Among them are Catholic pastoral ministries, Protestant social ministries, the work of the The Salvation Army, founded within the Methodist tradition, and the Methodist Reconciling Ministries mov...