Christmas and Easter, in their different seasons and styles, can seem far apart. Yet, in essence, they celebrate and declare the same reality: the costly grace of God. Both show the depths that true love will plunge, in order to invest in and give to the ‘other’. Where God is the giver, in sending the light of life and key of Creation, His own Son, diving into the morass of mankind’s demonised confusion, darkness and death.
Great passages of Scripture demand mention here: the declaration of our Father’s love for us, in John 3.16-17; and our Saviour’s manifestation of this love, in Philippians 2.6-11. This is how Grace is costly. It is the outpouring of pure love by God, birthed in the heart of God. It comes at such great cost. The self-emptying of the Son of God, entering and taking to Himself our flesh and blood (John 1.14). The offering up of Jesus Christ’s flesh and blood as sacrifice, in our place, at the Cross of Calvary.
The costliness of grace, for the disciple of Jesus Christ, must be more, however, than a cause for composing a doxology. Here is a deep root for resourcing a truly Christian ethic. To show grace and to be a means of manifesting God’s grace to others will be costly to the giver. The Apostle Paul understood this, in speaking of his mission of love, when he embraces the need to, ‘fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ’s afflictions, for the sake of his body, which is the church’ (Colossians 1.24).
That grace is costly is a bedrock for Christian ethics and a deep source for acts of holy love. Both constrained commissioned in God’s costly grace, the man or woman who has died with Christ and now lives for Him, in His faith, is caught up in the swell of God’s intentional and irresistible love. Is it possible to live a life that conducts the flow of such love, as a conduit, without knowing great, personal cost? I think not. The sacrifices to be made by the man or woman, who seeks to see life with the mind of Christ, will be many. There may be mistakes, but there will also be a course chartered through the tempestuous seas of life that will demand a putting to death of self – the acts of mortification – in order to allow love and its practical expression to abound. In this regard, there is no more meaningfully missional passage in Scripture than 2 Corinthians 5.
There is a such a gulf between ethics and morality issuing out of Christian grace, costly grace and the perception of loving grace; and perception of costless grace as free grace, easy grace, surrounding us in much contemporary, church culture. When did it start? I suspect it became endemic after late-nineteenth century revivalism became divorced, in the twentieth century, from a call to holiness and repentance as the essential partner of faith. When faith became commodified and salvation became the biggest free offer of all time! When confession of Jesus as Lord became replaced by a mere acceptance of him as a personal Saviour.
When costly grace is replaced by cheap grace, there is no demand. It is easy surrender and capitulation to the elixir of religion. Cheap grace is an invitation to a life of religious delusion that costs nothing and gives nothing. Church dies as church when this is the message, a man-made fabrication and poor imitation of the real thing.
When facing the deep desires of our own being, including our personal sexuality, we all would do well to remember that God’s grace is costly. Costly grace brings and conveys authentic love. All true expression and pursuit of a Christian ethic, whether by a single person or a congregated community, will have a personal cost to pay if it is to authentically convey and live out an ethic that reflects the glory and goodness of God.
This is the second of six, introductory essays, designed for social media. The third will follow.
