Anthony
B. Robinson, a minister of the United Church of Christ in the US, writes:
We have imagined that Christianity
itself is a religion of virtue. But no, Desmond Tutu reminded us, “Christianity
is not a religion of virtue; it is a religion of grace.” And there's a difference.
A religion of virtue says, “If you are good, then God will love you.” A
religion of grace says, “God loves you.” God loves you despite your foibles and
failures, not because you're so good but as a sinner in need of mercy. God
loves you; live then as one who is beloved, who has been forgiven. (http://www.inwardoutward.org
30/4/2012)
It
is not our duty to love. It is our privilege. It is not our responsibility to
care for others. It is our gift. It is not our obligation to honour God. It is
our delight. Because love born of a sense of duty or responsibility or
obligation is not freely given. It is a task, a requirement, a burden. Love
born of obligation is love given out of fear; given for our own sakes that we
will not be dishonourable or disreputable or punished for what we have not
done. That is not the love that is God’s gift to us; nor is it the love that
God calls out from us. The love that we receive from God is a gift of grace. We
do not earn it. We do not deserve it. We cannot prevent it or hinder it. We can
only respond to it. And if our response comes from a recognition of God’s love as
gift, it will be a response of freedom, and thanksgiving, and love.
That
is God’s message to us in Jesus—that God loves us utterly. God loves us enough to
enter God’s own Creation in order to demonstrate that love. God loves us enough
to participate in the whole of human life, even death, in order to demonstrate
that love. God loves us enough that God does not withhold anything from us. We
have all that God can give us. We are made in God’s image, gifted with the creativity
of the Creator. We are people made for relationship with God and with each
other, gifted with the very nature of our Creator God. We are invited, but never
coerced, into relationship with God and with each, gifted with the very freedom
to choose, to act according to our own wills, as God acts in accordance with
God’s will. All this is gift from God. And it is in and through this gift that
love begins and ends. “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from
God” (1 John 4:7).
It is the
very nature of God to have grace, to be gracious, to offer God’s self
generously and without reserve to the creation that God has so lovingly made. Before
we know anything about God, God has already been at work in our lives—creating
us, forming us, shaping us.
Grace
is the absolute, unprovoked, unconditional generosity of God. God creates us,
God reconciles us and God makes us holy through absolutely no effort of our
own. God is above all things, and beyond all things and precedes all things in
God’s great works of creation, redemption and sanctification—making us,
liberating us and sustaining us as God’s people.
God’s grace
comes before everything because grace is the very nature of God. Before we know
God, God knew us. Before we fail God, God loved us. Before we honour God, God
creates and awakens us for relationship. Everything we have comes from God; and
everything we know has its origin in God. We have been gifted with all this
through the graciousness of God—God’s utter, unprovoked, unconditional desire
to share God’s self with us.
Grace is
utter good news for us. God created us. God loves us. God wants us to be in
relationship so much that God is prepared to even enter God’s own creation in
the person of Jesus. As creatures made in God’s image by God, we too are programmed
for relationship—it’s in our “DNA” as human beings. And we are particularly
created for relationship with the God who will do all that God can to enable
that relationship—all that God can except taking away our free will, our free
decision to be in relationship with God. God will never force God’s self on us,
because coerced or forced relationship is not relationship at all. God treats
us with utter respect as unique and independent beings, despite the fact that
God created us especially for God.
And this is
God’s covenant with us. God created us for relationship. God promises us to
always be open for and indeed enabling our relationship with God and with each
other.
God’s
covenant with us begins in creation; is present throughout human history, fully
revealed in Jesus Christ; and present with us now through the work of the Holy
Spirit. It is utter, unprovoked, unconditional gift—the eternal nature of
God—God’s grace.
And
we are invited into and out of this graciousness to share that gift of grace
with the whole Creation, in gratitude and thanksgiving, in freedom and by
choice, in unconditional, un-coerced love, not for our own sakes, but the sake
of the very nature of love itself—that graciousness which is always oriented to
the Other, and open to the discovery of the gift in the very act of self-giving
love.
Today
as we present this year’s Alwyn Jones Community Service Award, we honour the
self-giving love that members of our community have shown; and we give thanks
to God for the graciousness and freedom to act in love which is God’s very gift
to humanity.
