So what is grace as a substance?
As with any of these spiritual substances (grace, mercy, peace), it might be easier to start by thinking of grace adjectivally:
Something that is graceful has an elegance, a wholesomeness, a carriage or conduct that exudes rightful proportions physically as well as metaphysically. Gracefulness elicits calm appreciation from all in its presence.
A graceful ballerina.
A graceful flowering of dogwoods in spring.
There is kindness in graceful displays: they put us at ease beyond what we would have anticipated. Gracefulness has a way of disarming one's plans and calculations.
Then we can appreciate grace adverbially:
To grace someone -- or better, to be graced by someone's presence -- is to feel included in that person's favor. Somewhere in our depths we know what we are, and our ugliness, or at least our ho-hum-ness, is not a fit for this wonderful favor we have somehow been included in. But we are.
It is a wonderful thing to be graced and, if we are capable, to grace someone else.
Then there is the most incomprehensible of them all: grace as a noun. We should really capitalize it, perhaps even remove our hats and stand, because it is a proper name:
Grace is an essence of God. Grace spares, and thus enables those who are out of proportion to His moral perfection to, nevertheless, be in His presence. That is why it is said of Jesus that He was full of grace.
Grace is the first substance Paul wished upon Timothy, both to receive as well as to give.
Logos2Go
1 Timothy 1.1-2 Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the command of God our Savior and of Christ Jesus our hope, To Timothy my true son in the faith: Grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.
John 1.14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
χάρις Strong #G5485, charis
Grace as a substance
Posted by
David Wang
Apr 23, 2010
2 comments:
I prefer verbs to nouns. Thus your suggestion to capitalize, remove hat, and stand at the noun Grace "rubs me the wrong way." [Other readers: Please know that Dave and I are good friends and our exchanges here occur in that secure context!]
Don't get me wrong. Grace is indeed incredible and incomprehensible. But I've wondered why Paul does not inlcude it in the "big three": "And now these three remain: faith, hope and love" (1 Cor 13:13). In the Greek NT, each of those nouns has a commonly used verb form, whereas grace does not.
In Gen 1:3ff God spoke into existance the "substance" of creation. This is why "being verbs" are such a special class in language. Although "light" is a noun, SPEAKING it (an action) created it. Made in the image of God, our use of words also has powerful effect (compare my reference to "blessing" and "cursing" in reply to the previous post). Substance is always preceded by the verbal. Substance comes-to-be though action.
Scripture is explicit: "God is love." It does not say "God is grace." Rather than saying "Grace is an essence of God," I prefer to say "Love is the essence of grace." Grace is a noun that captures the substance of ALL of God's action originating and continuing, redeeming and restoring, his creation.
I believe these distinctions are important because, if we do not understand them, we might think that the Christian faith is a matter of finding and believing some "thing," some spiritual "substance." It is not. Christian faith uses lots of nouns, but it is all about persons IN ACTION: God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit acting, and you and me responding in action. Love. (And only by God's grace.)
1. Thanks for your faithful commentary on my blogs... we are indeed friends and that is secure. That said, I'm not sure I'm fully with you on your thoughts above. Yes Paul doesn't refer to "the big three" in the Timothy text, but it doesn't follow from that that mention of any series of three attributes elsewhere (grace, mercy, peace) needs to be evaluated through the lens of The Big Three of 1 Corinthians 13 (love faith hope).
I also appreciate the fundamental nature of God as Love, but I get the feeling that insisting that Love is more fundamental on a post that focuses on Grace is a kind of straw man sort of argument (ie, proposing the importance of something the text does not say, and then critiquing the text for not saying it...).
2. But today I attended a day-long "Going Deeper" seminar at Christ the Redeemer Church. Very good. I am quite sobered by the need to stay true to the Biblical text, and not allow other lenses to color exegesis of Scripture. I think I tend to do that (at least I'm afraid I do that), so I appreciate the inherent "checks" that are in a lot of your comments to my posts.
Post a Comment