Hi First Presbyterian Church,
It’s time for our Mid-Week Meet-Up! Please keep the Vision Team in your prayers, since their next retreat is this weekend. It has been over a year since the Team last met with our consultant Kevin Ford, and, this weekend, we will be meeting with him to reflect on our progress with our Faith Forward initiative - the visioning process we began two years ago. You’ll be hearing from the Vision Team about the outcomes of this retreat after its conclusion.
One of our Faith Forward objectives has been Everyday Faith: Reimagining discipleship to become highly personal, relational, and biblical. Our one-year Bible-reading journey has been the primary way we’ve been working toward achieving this goal. Today is Day 206 in our Bible reading, and we’re currently reading through Paul’s Letter to the Romans. This particular letter is unique among all of Paul’s letters, because, unlike most of his letters which were written to churches he had personally founded to address particular concerns, Paul had never met the Roman church and was writing to them to explain a general outline of the Gospel. This is one reason why so many Christians throughout history have been drawn to the Letter to the Romans. Its explanation of the Gospel is much more straight-forward and clear than other New Testament texts.
Recently, I have been reflecting on the relationship between God’s radical grace and our intended response to this grace - radical obedience. This relationship is explained very clearly in Romans. Let me illustrate what I mean.
Imagine you own a piece of residential property that you rent. It’s time for rent to be paid, and your tenant tells you, “I’m sorry, but I can’t pay rent this month.” As the landlord, you tell your tenant, “I understand. I won’t require your rent payment this month.” Your forgiveness of the rent payment is an act of grace. Next month, your tenant says the same thing, “I’m sorry, but I also can’t pay rent this month.” It would be particularly gracious of you to forgive the rent payment for a second month in a row. Now, let’s just say that this happens again for an additional two more months, and each time you forgive the rent payment. This would be an example of radical grace. As the landlord, should you expect to ever receive a rental payment from your tenant now that they know you are going to forgive their payment each time they tell you they can’t pay it? Definitely not! People have a tendency to take advantage of grace.
However, now reimagine that in this landlord-tenant metaphor, you (the landlord) are a beloved relative to your tenant. Your tenant (let’s imagine it’s your nephew or niece or a grandchild) loves you dearly. It is far less likely that they will want to take advantage of your gracious act of forgiving their rent payment. Why? Because they love you!
The only way for the Gospel to make sense (i.e., that God’s radical grace demands our radical obedience) is if we love God. Paul understands this. This is why he writes, “Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound? By no means!” (Romans 6:1-2). He continues later and says, “Thanks be to God that you, having once been servants of sin, have become obedient from the heart to the form of teaching to which you were entrusted, and that you, having been set free from sin, have become servants of righteousness” (Romans 6:17-18).
If we truly understand the extent of God’s love for us and become so captivated by it that we nurture our own deep love for God, we will not want to take advantage of God’s grace. My prayer for you and for all Christians is that our hearts will grow more and more in love for God, because this is the only way that we will ever learn to become obedient to our loving God. With Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit, this is possible.
May your hearts become ever enraptured by the love of God shown to us in Jesus Christ!
Peace to you,
Pastor Aaron