Redeeming Grace

Grace. Redeeming grace. God’s redeeming grace. It’s impossible to define, to wrap one’s mind around or express adequately in one’s lived experience. That’s why addressing the church at Ephesus the author, likely a student of the apostle Paul, begins with sheer praise: an encomium of the God who is amazing and who does amazing things for us.

The epistle text today is actually one long sentence in Greek, phrase tumbling upon phrase, each as wondrous and exciting as the next! It is not presented as difficult-to-fathom doctrinal statements, even though every phrase refers to a core doctrine of the Christian faith. Rather, it is like trying to evoke a mind-blowing tour of creation. Let’s go!

From the outer galaxies to our solar system with planets, black holes, and stars, and on to our moon and the earth. Once there, from the highest mountains to the depths of the sea, with its variety of weather, ecosystems, plants and creatures, all the way to cells and quarks. Then there are the social, political, cultural, and religious dimensions of human existence. We need a moment to catch our breath, so vast is the scale!

In order to do justice to this scripture passage, I am beginning a series of sermons on God’s actions for us as expressed chiefly by the verbs in the soaring paean. Just listen to this list of actions God has taken on our behalf in Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit: blessed, chosen, destined, bestowed, lavished, made known, gather up, marked. Today we begin with ‘blessed.’

The notion of being blessed has a rich biblical history, a conceptual thread wending from Genesis through Revelation and into our own lives. One source defines a blessing as “a statement of goodwill and happiness that is said about another as well as the condition that fulfills those good words.” A blessing for peace, for example, is thought already to be bringing wholeness and healing divisions into the life of the one being blessed. Obviously, creation itself is a blessing; an opportunity to exist within a world perfectly suited to us.

Blessing is also the foundational purpose for which God created God’s own people and the church. God blesses Abram and his family so they can flourish and, in turn, they can help all the families of the earth to flourish as they are blessed, as well. One shares with others what one has received, and on and on it goes without end.
The primary blessing Abram receives from God is entering into a new relationship with God, getting to know God and God’s plans for the world. By knowing who God is and what God does, including what God cares about, every family can live in ways to reflect God’s good, just, merciful character. Likewise, we raise children and teach people to be good citizens by helping to form them according to shared values and teaching them the laws of the land, so things will go well for them.

Before God reveals Godself to him, Abram is a pagan, worshipping multiple deities and living like the other families at that time. That may be an accurate description of many of us, as well. Once he accepts the offer of this holy One to go where the Lord shows him and to do what the Lord asks of him, his life is forever changed. Abram is set apart for a particular task and, in response, is called to live a distinctly holy God-reflecting life. The calling upon our lives as God’s people in this day is no different.

Eventually, Israel is given the sacred law that identifies more explicitly the divine nature. This law helps Israel make life-giving choices, day in and day out, in the words they speak, in the way they treat people from all walks of life, and in the way they worship God. In following this law, in obeying God, the people called by God’s name can actually begin to reflect their God; like parent, like child.

Let’s take a look at the chronology here, because it also reveals something critical about this God: God redeems Israel first, then gives them the law. This means that God is first the God who acts on behalf of lost people; then, to form them into being God’s own people, to form them for life, the law is given. This is grace upon grace.

It is also why the law, known as the Ten Commandments, begins with the identifying redeeming action of this God as prologue, just to make sure we all know whose law we are talking about: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me…” and so on. God redeems us, then shows us how to respond with our lives. How gracious! Like human parents who don’t stop at rescuing the drowning child from the pool; they go on to teach the child how to swim.

As we obey God, others can now see us do the unthinkable, living according to realigned priorities. From our resources and blessings, we choose to care tenderly for one another and even care for immigrants justly and non-Christians without judgment. We can feed the hungry and host the unhoused, just as Jesus would. The way we live each day puts our God on public display. It is such a distinguishing lifestyle, set apart from the typical worldly one, that people not only notice but they may be compelled to inquire why we live this way. Then we get to tell them about the God we follow who loves generously, is hospitable and compassionate, forgiving, self-sacrificing, and blesses all.

The people of God, you see, are created to be a magnet, drawing others to the one true Creator and Lord. In Jesus Christ, you and I are blessed to be a blessing to all the families of the world.

It’s a funny thing about blessings: as you are blessed, you become a blessing to others; you give what you have received – blessedness to flourish in life. At least that’s how it’s supposed to go, according to God’s will. Too often, though, we who are blessed stop right there. We may be content to bask in whatever blessings we now tell ourselves we have deservedly accumulated due to our hard work or brilliance or whatever. We forget the major reason for our blessedness is to pass it on to those who need a life-giving blessing. And God is blessed in it all.
Ancient Israel certainly forgot the God who blessed them and the people who needed their blessing. Over and over again, God’s own people abandon God – just like we do. They reject the particular divine essence that makes them the people of this God and no other. They disobey God’s law which is God’s way for abundant life; they abandon their responsibility to live the distinctive, godly lifestyle that truly reflects God’s holy nature. In so doing, they end up profaning God’s sacred name among the nations. For when we say and do what isn’t true to what God says and does, we give God a bad rap, sullying God’s reputation in the world.

So, in judgment, God temporarily removes Israel’s blessings. They lose the blessing of their bountiful land, flowing with milk and honey; a land by which their lives are sustained. They lose the blessing of their temple; the one place on earth where this God chose to have the divine glory reside in their midst, the holy place where they could worship the Lord. They lose their freedom to live as God’s people; now they are forced to live as slaves subject to foreign masters and false deities.
They reject God and God’s ways; and God rejects their evil ways, though never the people whom God chooses to love forever. That is because God is still and always God, no matter what we do or don’t do. God is eternally the One who blesses and whom all creation is called to bless in praise.

The author of Ephesians notes that God reveals something more beyond the blessings of creation and of God’s people. It is the mystery of God’s plan to redeem all of creation in Jesus Christ. The beloved Son of God is a new kind of eternal blessing from God to the whole cosmos. We are told “God. the loving Parent of Jesus has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.”
In the coming weeks, we will elaborate upon more of these spiritual blessings. Yet, do not mistake the ‘spiritual blessings’ as merely ethereal, otherworldly notions that benefit us only in the next life. Surely, they include that. However, as you have seen, God, first, cares about how all people live our lives right now, here in this world.

To live the sacred life God intended us to live from the beginning is pure blessing. When we forfeit that life and the accompanying blessings due to our sin, our rejection of God as our God, God doesn’t give up on us. Instead, God chooses to fulfill the eternal divine plan in Christ who, through his obedience even unto death, makes possible this new kind of life with God. Now, it is a life lived as God’s beloved children, even like the Son, Jesus himself. This is God’s will of redeeming grace that is good for us, merciful to us, and can be transforming our entire lives, along with all of creation. God accomplishes through the Holy Spirit, because of who Jesus Christ is and what he has done for our sake.

One last thing to grapple with. Unlike you and me, God is what God does and God acts according to who God is. We, on the other hand, can say one thing and do its opposite. We are ‘dis-integrated’ in this way, pulled in different directions due to our sin nature. God is one, perfectly integrated. There is no division in God, no rift between who God is and what God does. In fact, God can only do that which is in full accord with God’s eternal nature. Since God is loving and just and merciful and good, then everything God does must also be an expression of that way of being loving, just, merciful, and good.

We may question things in this world that do not seem to us as if God is acting for our good or even justly. Yet, God is always God! And through the Holy Spirit who leads us into all truth, we can be confident that God always desires our best, our heart’s delight, and yearns for us to enjoy all the blessings of God’s redeeming grace in Jesus Christ, as any loving parent does.

Are you getting the picture how we are continually blessed by God’s redeeming grace in Jesus Christ? It is for this we are created and recreated as God’s own beloved people, blessed to be a blessing, and for which we bless God in Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit. Praise be to God; we are redeemed and blessed!