Monday, September 30, 2013

Amazing GRACE

Amazing grace how sweet the sound
That saved a retch like me.
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see
(Amazing Grace by John Newton)

Grace.  It is the very foundation of the Christian faith. It is what makes Christianity different from every other faith and belief system. It is the major theme through the entire Old and New Testaments. We sing about it, talk about it, and preach about it, yet I think very few of us really understand it. Before getting into what grace is, I want to address what grace is not.

1- It is NOT something we earn: Grace by definition is unmerited favor. There is nothing anyone can do to earn grace. Eph 2:8 tells us God's grace is a gift and not a result of any works. There is no decision you can make, action you can take or ritual you can perform to earn God's grace. We cannot bargain with God for grace. We cannot bribe Him for grace. We cannot influence whether He issues more or less grace. The Ephesians passage goes on to tell us we cannot brag or boast about grace. The grace we have received is despite all we do and we have no cause to boast about it.

2- It is NOT an excuse for sin.  Romans 6 is very clear that grace does not give us a free pass to sin. When we truly understand grace, it frees us from sin. It drives us to flee from sin to be like Christ and His righteousness. Grace never says, "Its ok".  It does always say, "You are forgiven."

3 - It does NOT free us from the consequences of our sin.  Through grace we are spared the punishment of sin - death and separation from God. It does not guarantee we will avoid the consequences of our sin. David was a "man after God's own heart". He committed adultery and murder, and by God's grace retained God's favor. But, his sin led to the death of his infant son and deep divides within his family. We are forgiven, but we must still bear the consequences of our actions. Giving our children grace means we forgive them, we lead them to God who forgives them, but it is not an excuse not to discipline. 

So what is grace?

It is God's unfailing, unchanging, unmerited love for unrighteous, lawless, self-serving humans. The book of Romans contains a long theological discussion of grace.  Chapter 1 begins to establish that righteousness means perfect inward, as well as outward, conformity to Law. The punishment for not obeying even one aspect of the law - death. Yet, the Law was given for one purpose - to point us toward our need for God by defining sin. Romans 3 states "None is righteous, not even one;.....no one does good." Even the most pure outward appearance of righteousness does not meet the standard because it lacks God's understanding.  Then comes Jesus. God's son.  He came to earth as a humble human, subjected to all the temptations and impulses known to man - yet lived a truly pure, righteous life.   He lived a life that completely fulfills the Law.  God takes this perfectly righteous Son, and puts on Him the punishment and torment of our sin. With the price of sin paid, God takes the righteousness of Jesus and gives it to us. That is grace - God giving us a righteousness we do not deserve. This grace is given to us through one means - faith in Jesus death and resurrection. 

So....what does all this have to do with parenting? As Christians, everything!

Grace tells us we cannot do this on our own! We are no better, no more righteous, and no more law abiding on our own, than our children are. Without Christ, we are the blind leading the blind. We can be faithful parents because we trust in the grace and love of God. We can trust that He will give us the wisdom, strength and perseverance to raise our children in a manner that is pleasing to Him. Grace also relieves us of the responsibility of saving our children. We cannot save ourselves. We cannot save our children. Our children's spiritual salvation lies in the hands of God and God alone. Our faith allows us to trust that He has placed each child in our home, when He did and how He did for a reason. It assures us that He loves them even more than we do. He knows every one of our failures, he knows every mistake we will make - and He gave us these children anyway. It is because of grace we are motivated to continually point our children to Christ and to teach them about his love and salvation.

Grace teaches us to parent toward Christ, not toward law. The ultimate goal of our parenting is to raise adults who are fully committed and lost in the love of God. We do not want "good" children, because we know that is impossible. We want God to capture our children's hearts and turn them into young men and women who are devoted to Him. Grace teaches us once they have been captured by God's love they will not be able to help but strive toward "goodness". God gave us law to expose our need for Christ. When we teach our children law, our first goal should be to expose their need for Christ and share with them His forgiveness and acceptance because of His work on the cross. 

Grace teaches us a need for personal discipleship - both for ourselves and for our children. If we are to lead our children to Christ, we must be walking with Him ourselves. We need to be studying His Word, spending time talking with Him, fellow-shipping with other believers, and being held accountable to His teachings. The Church has a very vital role in families by supporting parents in personal growth so they may in turn lead their children. 

God created a wonderful institution in which grace should be clearly visible to our children - marriage. God designed the family as a father and mother who work together to lead their children to Him. All too frequently this does not happen. Next, we want to take a little time to take a look at grace within the context of marriage. But be assured, if your situation does not match the dad+mom+children equation, God in His abounding grace, is still living and working and nothing can hinder His plan!!

'Tis grace that taught my heart to fear,
And grace my fears relieved.
How precious did that grace appear,
The hour I first believed

Saturday, September 21, 2013

The House that Grace Builds

As we have headed into the active summer months and now a busy-as-ever school-year, I have taken very little time to blog. By the end of the day I can barely decide whether to read or watch a movie, no less construct coherent written sentences and paragraphs! Over the next few months I want to share with you something that has been very heavy on my heart for the American Church, and which has greatly convicted, challenged and changed me, my faith and my family.

Over the last 15 years, we have watched children from "good Christian homes" grow up and leave the faith with, at best, an indifferent tolerance for the church or, all too frequently, outright rejection and hatred. We have watched even more children gain the ability to do and say the right things, but show very little heart understanding of our faith in their lives. They were motivated "be good" and to "make Daddy and God happy"- living as if their salvation, acceptance, and worth relied on their actions.  We saw the same things in the most liberal families and the most fundamentalist, conservative families.  Most painful, was the day we realized our children were no exception. They knew the stories, the songs, the Sunday School answers, but when it came to real heart-felt motivations and answering deeper questions - it just wasn't there. We were raising "good" kids who didn't truly understand the depth of the love and grace of God.

It began what is a continuing quest of mine to question "christian" parenting across the fundamental to progressive spectrum of theology  - because, quite frankly, it doesn't work. If generation, after generation of children raised in Christian homes are continually, and with increasing frequency, turning its back on the faith, than we, the parents, are not passing the faith on to them. We have done a fantastic job of passing down religion, but not the faith and love of a gracious Savior.

So what I want to do over the next several months is share with you what we will be sharing with our church. Not because we have all the answers, or have come upon any new revelations, or are perfect in parenting ourselves, but because I believe every Christian, especially every Western Christian, needs to take a very good, hard look at themselves, their families, and their churches before we completely loose the next generation.

One of the things we quickly realized, is our "parenting theology" is a big part of the problem. For some reason, we tend to drop good hermeneutics at the door when it comes to parenting. We need to start with "rules" for reading the Bible. (We are beginning with an assumption in the inerrency, authority and divine authorship of all of Scripture.)

1 - Context, context, context  - Every verse, every word of Scripture must be read within the context it was written. Probably some of the most frequent mis-uses of scripture come from pulling passages out of context. A very common one is Ephesians 5:22 "Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord" Begin and end it there and you have a verse that demands wives be subservient to their husbands. The entire context though, completely changes the meaning. The prior verse end with "submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ". Verse 25 commands "Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her..." Verse 33 reflects 22 with "let the wife see that she respects her husband". No longer do we have a dominating relationship, but one of mutual submission, self-sacrificing love and respect.

2- Literary Genres are Important - It rarely fails when going to a parenting workshop, Proverbs 13:24 is quoted. "Whoever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him."  This is coming from Proverbs, a book of wisdom literature. Wisdom literature, by its nature, intent and structure, is different from law, history, and gospels.  Quite frequently this Proverb is used as law - children must be spanked. But it isn't law, it is wisdom. Its intent is not to demand spanking, but to impart the wisdom of firmly disciplining children.

3 - Redemptive History- All of scripture should be read in light of God's promise to redeem man, namely through Jesus Christ. Without the light of redemptive history, one could claim that Genesis 22 teaches child sacrifice!

4 - Reading in Light of the Whole - Scripture cannot be the Word of God and conflict with itself.  Our interpretation of one passage, must be consistent with what is in the rest of scripture.  It is inconsistent to think we can predict the date of the return of Christ from Revelation and Daniel in light of Jesus' words in Matthew 24, "no one knows, not even the angels of heaven nor the Son".

5 - Avoid moralisms - This has become one of my personal pet peeves, especially when teaching children Bible stories. David and Goliath. How many children have been told that they have to "be like David" and God will help them defeat the Goliaths in their lives? There are several problems with this: 1- the passage is mainly about God's redemption of His people (Redemptive History) 2- The passage is quite clear that David gave God the credit for the victory, and it was not David's actions, but God's power through David that saved the Israelites  3-God does not always allow our Goliaths to be defeated. Sometimes we must walk through a fiery furnace. Sometimes we are stoned to death. My all time favorite was the Sunday School lesson that directed me to teach the Tower of Babel  The curriculum's goal: That the children would understand that every language was created by God, so we should love people of all languages. Um, that is no where near the message of the passage. Different languages were given as a curse for pride and idolatry!

6 - Read more complex passages in light of more clear ones - Much of scripture can be very difficult to understand and accept. Some of it makes me scratch my head and say "Why in the world would God put this in here?" Fortunately many of those passages are more easily understood in light of easier passages (and when #1-5 are also applied). Read Song of Solomon 7:7. I wouldn't allow my children to touch any other book with this type of imagery in it!

Now that we have laid basic ground work on how to read scripture, next week we will look at the defining and most unique concept of our faith - Grace.