Grace

 March 8, 2022

It often amazes me how, having read a Bible text perhaps hundreds of times, every so often something new pops out at me. This morning I was reading Galatians 5:4–“You have become estranged from Christ, you who attempt to be justified by law. You have fallen from grace.” 

It is no secret that Paul was a champion of grace. After all, he considered himself the worst of sinners for having persecuted followers of Jesus in his younger years. That Jesus should appear to him as he was on his way to Damascus for the purpose of hauling some of them off to prison was a source of constant amazement to him. He was chosen, and he knew it, and it had nothing to do with any goodness in him. He knew the depths of depravity in his own heart from which he had been snatched by grace, and was not about to let anyone minimize his experience. 

So his words to the Galatian Christians were particularly strident. This is Paul’s only letter that didn’t begin with some sort of commendation. Even his epistle to the corrupt and decadent Corinthian church opened with words of praise. Not so here in Galatia! Infighting, sexual depravity, desecrating Holy Communion was nothing compared to abandoning grace! For Paul, any attempt to justify ourselves by our fidelity to the law deserved the most damning condemnation. He knew from personal experience how zealotry for a cause can be perverted into the most destructive behaviors.

Even if we acted with the most circumspect manners, trusting in our own goodness can profit us no more than the earthly praise it garners. Worse, it separates us from Christ himself. Whenever I imagine I haven’t done enough, or when I think I have, I step away from grace. Even God cannot justify the person who insists on justifying himself!

How often I’ve carried guilt over not measuring up to even my lax standards, let alone the Law of God! How often I’ve figuratively patted myself on the back for my good behavior! Either end of this spectrum takes me out of the realm of grace, mercy, and forgiveness, and plants me firmly in the rocky soil of guilt and pride. May God once more grant grace to us who so desperately need it, and lift us by it into the presence of his glory with angels and archangels, and all the saints redeemed by the blood of the Lamb!