Notepad

Grace Sightings

"Grace In Times Like These"

Posted by: Dave Bonselaar | Date posted: March 1, 2009

Grace. Grace? Someone asked me how can we be gracious in a situation where our values were violated? We want to be gracious, but how can we communicate grace in a time like this? Ah, good question. Maybe the wrestling match that produced the question is the beginning of grace.

I thought about this question. It’s a great question and it reminds me just how unusual grace really is. When we see or experience grace it takes a bit to get used to it. We have to adjust to a new reality. The reality is that someone else knows about my faults and failures and loves me enough to help me do more and do better.

Jesus was teaching a lesson on grace in John 8. The religious leaders brought a woman caught in adultery. The law was clear, black and white, cut and dried. The law calls for anyone caught in such a sin to be stoned. The religious leaders knew the answer to the question before they asked, but they wanted to see if grace would win out even in such an obvious and spectacular case.

I absolutely love how Jesus answers the question. He doesn’t preach. He doesn’t make them feel foolish with his rhetoric. He asks a simple question that no one could answer for anyone but them selves. The power came when each leader was facing their own reality. “He who is without sin among you, let him throw a stone at her first.” The story goes on to say that, convicted by their conscience beginning with the oldest to the youngest, they slowly began to walk away, leaving Jesus alone with this woman who was caught in sin.

I would imagine the air was thick with the two of them alone face to face in this new reality. She wondering what would this man do, what would he say? Looking right through to her soul Jesus just asked another one of those simple questions. “Has no one condemned you? Then either do I.” The way I read this, Jesus is saying that he is not about to condemn when grace will overlook the sin and wrong. Grace will allow for yet another chance to experience the joy when in the wrong is made right.

Now grace does not absolve anyone of responsibility and accountability. Part of grace is being able to acknowledge that wrong has been done, and then working to correct the wrong. Grace is not grace without naming and identifying wrong. The naming and identifying needs to happen with love and care. If we try to give grace without identifying sin, it’s not grace it’s simply blind tolerance on the part of the one giving and blind ignorance of the one in need of grace. That is not grace at all. It simply allows, and in some ways, forces the person to stay stuck in their sin.

So it seems that real grace has a real standard. But real grace covers real sin and allows for God’s mercy to be new each and every day and inspire us to something more and something new, something better.

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