Thought for Today

Jeremiah 31:2 Thus says the LORD: The people who survived the sword found grace in the wilderness; when Israel sought for rest,   

John 1:14 And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth.  

John 1:16 From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. 17 The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.  

Ephesians 2:8 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God—

“If we regard the Spirit of God as the sole fountain of truth, we shall neither reject the truth itself, nor despise it wherever it shall appear, unless we wish to dishonor the Spirit of God.” (Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2.2.15)

“grace, common (Lat. gratia communis) God’s universal, nonsaving grace in which blessings are given to humanity for physical sustenance, pleasure, learning, beauty, etc., as expressions of God’s goodness. It is particularly contrasted in Reformed theology with God’s special or saving grace.” (Westminster Dictionary of Theological Terms, pg. 120)

The word grace appears in the Bible between 116-170 times. Only 3 verses in the Old Testament contain the word grace. The other occurrences are all in the New Testament. Our English word grace translates the Greek “χάρις, ιτος, ἡ grace; (1) as a quality that adds delight or pleasure graciousness, attractiveness, charm (LU 4.22); (2) as a favorable attitude; (a) active, of what is felt toward another goodwill, favor (AC 2.47); (b) as a religious technical term for God's attitude toward human beings kindness, grace, favor, helpfulness” (Friberg, Analytical Greek Lexicon)

Many of us learned a shorthand definition of grace as “God’s unmerited favor.” I strongly suspect that most of us associate the word grace with Paul’s words in the Epistle to the Ephesians above; that is what is known as saving grace, “God’s gracious favor for salvation on the basis of the work of Jesus Christ (ibid, pg. 121). That’s okay. But, Calvin suggests that grace is something much more. Calvin offers the concept of common grace.

As I read my morning devotional in Coffee with Calvin, I encountered those words above from Calvin’s Institutes. My mind immediately went to an email I just received from one of our church’s deacons. In that email, the deacon commented on the news reports we hear and read, the “unceasing stream of violence, war, oppression that threatens the world, communities and safe havens.” Some days it does seem that we are awash in an ocean of bad news, negativity, calamity and disaster. I always try to remind myself of the journalism aphorism that “A headline of ‘man bites dog’ sells more newspapers than a headline of ‘dog bites man.’” Negativity and sensationalism sell advertising space.

Yet, we cannot and must not ignore the world in which we live. Christians are not called to withdraw from the world, we are challenged to bring about a world in which God’s will is done on earth as it is in heaven. Easier said than done, but God never promised us a rose garden. God tried that by giving our ancestors the Garden of Eden. All of the news we encounter, all of the current world in which we live, is a result of what those ancestors and all of us did with that rose garden.

Calvin suggests to me an entirely different way with which to view all of Creation. Calvin’s words suggest to me that we should view the entirety of Creation as being a reflection of God’s grace. Calvin seems to view reality as God’s truth. Maybe that is what Jesus meant when he said, “John 8:31 . . . ‘If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; 17 and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.’"

I just paused in writing to look at the lyrics of a favorite hymn, This Is the Day. Today, I will hum “This is the day that our God has made, we will rejoice and be glad in it.” For all of those things for which I am not glad, I will strengthen my resolve to bring about change. Christians are called to bring about a new world in which we can fully know God’s grace, God’s truth in the world in which we live.

Rejoice and be glad in God’s common grace, recognize God’s truth in all Creation,

Pastor Ray