This presentation is a theological exploration. I want to explore a distinctively Christian understanding of grace. In this attempt to determine the center and the dimensions of Christian grace, I want to be clear and direct; I hope to initiate thought and discussion. While I shall make assertions, provide descriptions and set priorities, this is not a dogmatic position, rather it is an opening for reflection. After a general discussion of grace, I shall conclude with an attempt to relate grace to the current and controversial topic of homosexuality and a distinctively Christian understanding of marriage.

To use the word grace meaningfully is difficult because the word "grace" is the most popular expression in North American religiosity. Grace is so widely used that its contours are blurred, its sensibility has become sugary, and its specific content is largely lost (even though played on Scottish bagpipes Amazing Grace has special poignancy). So, what is distinctive about grace for a Christian? Can we reclaim its potency?

The Center of Grace

We begin with an affirmation: grace is not a gift extended by God, grace is God, God-present. Grace is the self-gift of God. For Christian faith, this means that grace is a person; Jesus Christ, Immanuel is grace and defines grace. Grace is not a general ambience, not an amorphous atmosphere, not an inspecific feeling of sympathy, of good will or even of love. Grace is Jesus Christ. To put it sharply, Jesus is not an example of grace which is generally known, Jesus defines what grace is. Grace is to be understood as the quality of life that is expressed in Jesus Christ.

From this center Christians recognize God's grace throughout creation. But the order is important, We understand grace as it is made known in Jesus Christ, then we discover the reality of grace in all of God's activity. Jesus Christ is the definitive but not the exclusive expression of grace.

Let's face a tough question immediately. To specify grace as defined by Jesus Christ seems extremely exclusivistic, it sounds narrow, prideful, insensitive and chauvinistic, even ungracious. Among the wealth of world religions, to be so focused on Jesus Christ seems like special pleading. However, if we understand Jesus as grace then grace is as wide as Jesus' love. We sometimes think that we are more worried about those outside Christian faith than God is. But that is a fundamental failure in our doctrine of God. If God is as God is revealed to be in Jesus Christ, God's deepest love extends to the entire world.

I do not contend for the superiority of Christianity; I am asserting the primacy of Jesus Christ. Christianity has no uniquely exemplary history, its hands are bloody with egregious destruction. The only claim of Christianity is that it points to and confesses Jesus Christ as Lord and Judge over all things--including Christianity itself. We are important only as we point to the One who is ultimately important. There should be no Christian triumphalism; by Christ we are humbled; through Christ we are saved; in Christ we glory.

But what is the grace of God in Jesus Christ? What is its character? To begin with we must remove the overbearing contemporary sentimentality about grace. Too often we think of grace in soft terms; we think of grace as a 'nice' virtue; as gentle and mild, undemanding and unchallenging. But the depth of grace is expressed by the crucified Christ. What is this depth?

First, Grace in Jesus Christ expresses both the vulnerability and the power of God. Charles Wesley has captured this theme of vulnerability and power as few people have:
     "O Love divine what hast thou done!
     The incarnate God hath died for me.
     The Father's coeternal Son,
     Bore all my sins upon the tree.
     The Son of God for me hath died,
     My Lord, my Love is crucified."

Notice the contradictions: immortality has become mortal and eternal life has become finite. Even more, and we must speak softly, God is at risk. Divine love expresses Divine humility and therefore Divine vulnerability. Here is paradox: values are transvalued: the resurrection is not simply a triumph over death, it is a triumph through death. It is the crucified Christ who is resurrected. It is the crucified and resurrected Christ who is ascended. Power, ultimate sovereignty, is redefined! God's strength is made known in weakness. (II Corinthians 12:9)

Second, there is judgment in grace. It is not a judgment of simple retribution nor a judgment of external imposition of punishment. Rather, the judgment of grace seeks rehabilitation. Wooing love, if rejected, leaves one unfulfilled and literally dehumanized. Grace has the tenacity to call again and again for reconciliation; but it also has the ability--the painful ability--to step back and allow another person the integrity and consequences of their decisions.

An implication of the judgment of grace is that we must not equate our judgment with the judgment of God. Obviously we must make decisions, we must learn how to say both "yes" and "no," but we do so out of concern for the other and for the community of others. In every human judgment there must be room left for God's judgment. And that also is an act of grace.

Third, grace is the exposure of God to the human condition and it is the reach of God even to those who are alienated from God. Grace as self-giving is the message of the cross. Grace is costly, costly as the cross. Heinrich Heine is reported to have said, "God will forgive you, that's his business." This needs to be amended: God will forgive you, that's God's suffering.

To know what grace has cost God is to know what sin has cost humankind. Grace as God's self-giving is what makes sin so egregious. Sin is not simply a violation of God's law, it is a violation of God's love. Sin is unresponsiveness to God's gracious self-giving and an unwillingness to share in God's gracious giving for others.

In the old gospel Hymn, The Ninety and Nine the second verse reads,
     But none of the righteous ever knew
     How deep were the waters crossed
     Nor how dark was the night our Lord went through,
     E're He found the sheep that was lost.

That is true. Of course no one has ever known. But, to speak reverently, None but the righteous ever knew how deep were the waters crossed or how dark was the night our Lord went through e're he found the sheep that was lost. The deeper our understanding of grace the deeper our understanding of sin.

This centeredness of grace in Jesus Christ is what has made the theme of salvation so central in Wesleyan Christianity. Salvation is the discovery (recovery) of relationship with God and the world through Jesus Christ.

Dimensions of Grace

Grace, as Jesus Christ, defines God's relationship to the world. So grace is found in creation, in present experience and in the final things.

The Christian doctrine of creation begins not with Genesis 1, but with John 1. "In the beginning was the Word ... all things were made by him." God's creation was an act of love. The creation of all things was not a necessity. For God to create "out of nothing" is to act in the freedom of love. All that is, all that the total universe is, is the gift of God's grace.

Therefore to be created in the image of God is to be created for relationship with God. Love begets love. In incarnation and in creation God addresses human beings as significant others, as persons who are able to respond to God. The grace expressed in creation means that God puts the stamp of "good" on all creation. But this goodness is spoiled, then God unexpectedly, unimaginably comes again to the creatures. Grace become enduring. This is hesed , the unfailing, steadfast, continuous love of God.

Christian theology has stressed continuous creation. By this is meant that creation was not simply something done in the past. Creation is an ongoing process. Every moment God calls reality into being; if God ever stopped uttering the creative Word everything would disappear, there would be nothing. At every moment the totality of creation is dependent upon God's initiating Word. The Christian truth of creation is not that God once "said," but that God at every moment "says."

Wesleyans have cherished the notion of prevenient grace. Ordinarily the notion of prevenience (preventive) is associated with the past; it is what went before. Past grace is one dimension of prevenience. God acted first; God has taken the initiative, God came to us before we turned to God. Prevenience is written into original creation. But previence also has a future dimension: God goes before us; God is ahead of us, God is the wayfarer, God awaits us around every comer. Prevenience is written into continuous creation.

A significant part of God's creation is the creation of Christian community. To be graced is to be in the body of Christ. The church is the community of those who are in community with God. Recipient of God's self-gift, the church is mediator of God's presence. In its own self-giving, the church (including the United Methodist Church) is a concrete manifestation of God's life among and through particular communities of grace. In offering the eucharist it would be appropriate to say: the body of Christ, for the body of Christ, that you may be the body of Christ through your self-giving. Always in need of repentance (the treasure is in earthly vessels), the church is, nevertheless, a visible sign of God-present expressed through its own presence in the world.

God graciously guides history. We do not go into an uncertain future. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. The theme of the second coming of Christ has its emphasis not on second coming but on Christ. The expectation is that what God revealed in the incarnation--at the center of history--makes clear what God revealed in creation and what God will reveal at the end time. Grace endures until the end of history. God in Jesus Christ is alpha and omega.

The Quality of Grace

Grace and love are identical and it is as difficult to rescue one theme for contemporary usage as it is the other. I shall briefly describe the quality of grace through a biblical verse which refers to love: grace bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things, grace never fails. (I Corinthians 13:7-8)

First, grace bears all things. In the incarnation, God stoops to our station. God becomes human and identifies with our human condition. Grace does not pretend; it looks at humanity honestly, realistically. There is no pretense that human beings are better than they are or worse than they are; stronger than they are or weaker than they are; more promising than they are or less promising than they are. Just as we are, God comes to us. And relates to us. And in this relationship helps us to be what we were created to be. This is our salvation, to be in positive, right (righteous) relationship with God. John Wesley, Gordon Rupp said, was pessimistic about nature but optimistic about grace.

Graciousness in our lives means that we respond to God with gratitude (charis evokes eucharist , grace evokes gratitude, thanksgiving), and it means that we identify with the human condition, as it actually is, in order to invite persons into newness of life. (II Corinthians 4:17).

Second, grace believes all things. This is the word of possibility. We believe in God because God believes in us. Human dignity is not a natural possession. Rather, our dignity comes from the fact that God, in the incarnation, has dignified us. The incarnation not only says something about God, it says something about human beings: God comes to us at eye level. We are the object of God's grace, therefore we are valuable, even as God has made all people valuable by identification with the human condition. His name is Immanuel God with us. (Matthew 1:23)

Third, grace hopes all things. Usually we think in terms of hope as hope for or as hope that . In both cases there is a particular object of hope. In the scripture there is also a different preposition often used: namely, hope in God. Here the focus is not so much on particulars but on the condition of hope, on the ground of hope, on the context of hope. Our hope is in God, for the God in whom we hope is the God of grace and we hope in and for grace.

Finally, grace never fails; love does not end. Here is the climax. The steadfast love of God is our ultimate hope. From the vantage point of the middle of history, we learn the basic truth of all history: from beginning to end, there is grace. Here God so far surpasses our expectations that we respond with amazed thanksgiving. No wonder "Love Divine" is a popular Wesleyan hymn.

     "Love divine, all loves excelling,
        (here is uniqueness never to be matched)
     Joy of heaven to earth come down,
        (it is joy, not judgment, that comes,)
     Fix in us Thy humble dwelling,
        (it is the self humiliation of God which
         is extolled; Philippians 2:5-11)
     All Thy faithful mercies crown
        (mercy is another word for grace)
     Jesus, Thou art all compassion,
        (Jesus as the author of grace)
     Pure unbounded love Thou art
        (the words all and unbounded emphasize the
         magnitude of grace)
     Visit us with Thy salvation,
        (salvation is the gift of Christ)
     Enter every trembling heart."
        (to tremble is to be awe-struck, to be
         aware of what grace means.)

Grace leads to graciousness. The grace expressed in Jesus Christ is to be expressed in Christian believers. This is faith working through love. Faith, therefore, is not simply intellectual assent, an act of the mind; faith is a way of life which integrates our thought, our will and our practice. Again, Jesus is the model. One can hear John Wesley's advice to a Miss March, "Go and see the poor and sick in their own poor little hovels .... Jesus went before you and will go with you." (Letter June 9, 1775)

A Case In Point

To move from abstraction to concreteness, let us take one of the most difficult contemporary issues: how, in the light of this Wesleyan understanding of grace, do we deal with the issue of homosexuality and of same sex marriages? I approach this with much trepidation for here we face a complex and contentious issue. But let us try, and each of you must correct me where I am inadequate or deficient in understanding.

I choose this topic in part because with current uses of "grace" we think only of softness, tolerance, understanding. But to attempt to be gracious can also call us to living with strength in difficult times; grace certainly calls us to self-criticism, to honesty in relating to others, possibly to suffering and--above all--to seeking God's will.

We begin with the incarnation. Grace is a person, Grace is Jesus Christ. Spirituality is enfleshed, piety is not discarnate. It is in our bodies that we are recipients of and expressors of God's grace. Because of the incarnation, William Temple said, "Christianity is the most materialistic of all religions." We are not gnostics, Christian love is embodied love.

Yet we have not loved God or our neighbors as we ought, we have, rather, embodied idolatry. We are all sinners, and, as sinners, none of us stands as final judge of other sinners. Consequently we begin with humility.

I emphasize this because both sides in this homosexual debate often claim the moral high ground; persons on both sides understand themselves as holding the higher moral standard. Let us for a moment, then, quiet down, recognize the awesomeness of God's grace and be humble.

I want to direct our attention away from origins to ends. I want to focus not on the reasons for homosexuality but on the ends of human relationships as expressed in marriage. Morality has to do not with what is but with what ought to be; not with what we are by nature but what we are by the goals we seek and serve.

Traditionally there have developed within Christianity several understandings of human sexuality and marriage. And these are affirmed in our Discipline . Human sexuality is a part of the good creation. It is to be celebrated. But appropriate celebration has been set in particular contexts:
     In singleness, celibacy,
     In marriage, fidelity,
     Marriage once and for all,
     Marriage between a man and a woman.

These are ideals, and I must confess that I have always understood myself to be a traditionalist. But, as a realist, I recognize that all of these ideals are known as much in failure as in observance; and this knowledge cuts not so much between Christians and others as it cuts through Christian hearts. Here grace has a special significance.

The regular violation of the prescriptions of celibacy and fidelity are obvious in contemporary North America as they have been throughout history. Singleness and celibacy are not held together. Marriage "once for all" ends half of the time in divorce. Marriage between a man and a woman predicated upon the expectation of procreation or even as a protection against lust (better to marry than to burn) are no longer operative. In the light of these actual conditions, we need a fresh Christian understanding of marriage. We need a nuptial theology. Our problem with same-sex marriage is due in large part to our failure to understand the meaning of Christian marriage.

Since singleness can be offered as an appropriate response to God, marriage is not necessary. Marriage is a gift. Reception of that gift is affirmed as the couple stands before God and with the witness of the people of God. The couple and the community take vows together.

Marriage, in Christian terms, is a reflected relationship. Marriage is a human embodiment of the relationship which God has established with the world. Incarnation and creation, as acts of love, are the foundation of human love and human marriage. This is a high understanding of marriage, and one which can only exist within the context of grace and as an expression of grace. In the marriage bond human beings are privileged to express the grace that God has already expressed.

Obviously this understanding of marriage can not be promoted as a general ideal throughout society, it only has meaning for those who have been claimed by the gracious self-giving of God. Christian marriage is a means of grace. We love one another by God and in God.

Human sexuality is a part of this gracious expression: two persons become "one flesh." It is perhaps possible to speak of an ontological dimension in marriage. In marriage we offer ourselves, our souls and bodies to God. Marriage is not principally a bond between two persons, it is not simply a good in itself or a fulfillment of two individuals. Marriage is the bond of two persons with God and within a community of faith. Marriage is an expression of embodied grace. In monogamous relationship there is time and opportunity "to know" (the biblical term has special meaning), appreciate and enjoy one another--in God. Marriage is sacramental, it represents a human possibility for glorifying God, for making grace manifest.

Marriage is open to procreation, to family. Children in a marriage are also gifts; gifts not only to the couple but also to the church. It is not only appropriate but necessary, as in baptismal vows, that a congregation accept responsibility for the marriage and the children.

Marriage is bodily grace. As a Christian act it is embodied spirituality, a joint offering to God. The gift of our bodies in marriage is a spiritual act. Now obviously to make such claims in our contemporary world is almost ludicrous, it seems impossible. And, of course, it is impossible except as rooted in and expressed by grace which believes, hopes, endures and never fails.

An implication of this is that the marriage of homosexuals, once taken to be a perversion, now can arguably be seen as fulfilling the actual conditions of most marriages. The issue of homosexual marriage, then, is the issue of all marriages: can this relationship be an expression of grace? Can heterosexual marriage be a means to holiness? Can homosexual marriage be a means to holiness? These are the questions the Christian community must ask and answer.

The issues are enormous, the church's decisions crucial. Is there any way forward in our effort to understand homosexuality and marriage, either heterosexual or same-sex marriage? It is unacceptable for Christians to form sides with each side attempting to beat the other into submission. Perhaps, however, it is possible to plea for some humility. Both sides must restrain their claim to moral superiority and seek the most adequate, most compassionate and most faithful understanding. We must begin not with our own rightness or righteousness but with an humble and persistent desire to know the will of God in this situation. The discussion must be within the church, among the people of God. Both homosexuals and heterosexuals must seek to know God's will.

Is it possible for Christians to allow space for differences to exist in the same community of faith? Is it possible for more than one practice to be recognized? The answers to these questions are only to be found through discourse within Christian community. Our discussion must be among people who are in the body of Christ and who seek authentic life in Christ as they honor God with their bodies.

Unfortunately this approach demands time. The issue is so complex that it cannot be quickly resolved. Perhaps United Methodism can become the exception and await the guidance of God. It may be that in the end we shall not reach consensus. It may be that we shall not be held together in the Body of Christ by agreement but by love. It may be that we shall only find unity in diversity. But through it all we must, by grace and with grace, seek to be faithful disciples.

To take such a position has much precedence. On a number of moral issues there is division in the body of Christ. Pacifists and militarists live within the same Christian community; we have different positions on divorce; people who accept and reject the death penalty share faithful commitment; different convictions regarding abortion coexist. We must not allow disagreement over the nature and implications of homosexuality to separate the Body of Christ. If we can stay together, it may be only with tension and disagreement, but until we know more and understand the will of God better, we may by grace have to learn to live with fellow Christians who disagree with us.

Now we conclude or, perhaps we can commence. We began with grace. We end with grace. Creative grace, prevenient grace, costly grace, reconciling grace, grace that bears all, believes all, hopes all, endures all and grace that never fails. Here are the roots and fruits of our entire Christian existence, including Christian marriage.

Amen.

May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.



Thomas A. Langford

Council of Bishops, The United Methodist Church
Lake Junaluaka, NC
November 2, 1999

Return to WUMFSA Homepage