The Furniture of Grace

Before I can even begin to talk about Grace, we need to get something straight.  And this is the uber-critical paradox that people often forget when talking about God and his mercy and his goodness and his forgiveness:

Just because grace is ‘free’ does not mean it ‘costs’ us nothing.

We often speak of grace as a present we get from God.  Like Jesus on the cross worked out a deal where we get a bunch of “Get out of Hell Free” cards which we stuff in our pockets until stand in the throneroom of God and present them to “St. Peter” as the reason why we should be let into heaven.  But Grace is so much more than that. 

Jesus gave us a hint of that ‘cost’ of grace in a parable in Matthew 18 of a king who forgaves huge debt that his servant owed to him.  After receiving forgiveness, the king’s the servant went out to another man who owed him a small debt and demanded payment.  When the man could not pay, the king’s servant had him thrown in prison until he could pay his debt.  When the king heard this, he sent for his servant and had him thrown in prison and tortured.  Why? Because the compassion that the king had shown his servant had not caused the servant to show compassion to the man who owed him money.  There it is, the forgiveness and grace of the king required a change of behavior and, ultimately, a cost to the servant.  The servant should have been compassionate and should have forgiven the debt he was owed.

This parable suggests that grace comes with a cost: a cost of re-orientation, a cost of removal of old ways.  Sort of like when you find a new couch, the addition of that new couch to your living room at a minimum requires the removal of the old one.  And then once you get it in there, you find it does not match the love seat, so you need to get a new love seat.  And the drapes are the wrong color or fabric, so they have to change.  Then the end tables seem to clash, and the lamp is a bit off, and wouldn’t a different picture on the wall make a better accent and…

And then you realize, the addition of that one piece of furniture changed everything, whether you intended to or not.  The room is not what it once was, there is a new harmony, and the ambiance of that couch pervades the room.  That is what grace does in our lives, if we let it work in us.

What has grace changed in you lately?  What piece of furniture no longer fits the ‘grace motif’?  What are you grasping too tightly?  Take a look at the room and see what the grace of Christ has done and what it can do in your life.

And in case you are thinking this sounds like a lot of work, let me leave you with this encouragement:  “He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” (Phil 1:6)

By the way, that lampshade is so-o-o 1980’s…