One of the hardest struggles of my life has been with the grace of God. Or more specifically God freely loving me and forgiving me without requiring anything of me but to embrace that love and forgiveness. For me this is not an easy thing to do because it requires me to let go of everything. What I really want is for God to look at my behavior throughout my life and say to me, “You were more good than bad, so I am going to let you into my kingdom. Well done.” But what this really shows is my own weakness, that what I really want is to be in control and be able to prove my value, my worth to God. More than this, the control is not about a power over but rather a desperate cry to keep anyone from knowing the truth that I struggle with believing I am someone that God would want to care about.
My inner shame wants God’s law to be my salvation, if I live God’s law well enough then people will see I am Godly and God will see and have to accept me because of what I have achieved in my faithfulness to God’s law. The problem is that the more I understand God’s law and the more serious I take it, the more I realize how sinful I really am and how far I really am from fulfilling it. Or to look at it another way, if there was a law that could save me, as Paul says, then Christ died for nothing.
What frustrates me in this is that the right side of the church, in general, usually yells to me that if I have the correct personal moral values and live them then God will be happy with me but does not seem to notice that this implies that law can save me or that this makes the cross irrelevant. And the left side of the church, in general, usually yells to me that if I have the correct social moral values, “social justice,” then God will be happy with me but does not seem to notice that this implies that the law can same me or that this also makes the cross irrelevant.
What really bothers me and reminds me of my struggle with God’s grace than anything else is God’s very word. When I read the Bible and encounter the stories about God’s grace I struggle because they push me in directions I don’t really want to go. Like take for example this story by Jesus, (Matthew 13:44), “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.”
The part of me that doesn’t like God’s grace, that wants to prove myself reads this story and says, “Well the man was a hard worker, or tended the field, or was out looking for the treasure.” It is kind of like when we say, “You can’t win the lottery if you don’t buy a ticket.” Which implies that if you buy a ticket you deserve to win. So if you buy a thousand tickets should you deserve to win more than someone who bought one? But the story doesn’t say this, it only says he was walking along in another person’s field and stumbled across it. All of his actions happen after he finds the treasure and hides it. In other words, he never bought a lottery ticket yet he still won the lottery.
The unfairness of this aggravates my desire for law. The man did nothing to deserve the treasure. And this is precisely why this story is one of good news. The treasure belongs to God who hides it away for people to just stumble upon it. In other words, it is God’s to give away as God pleases and that is what God does. And the part of me that is beginning to get and truly embrace God’s grace realizes in this story that what God has given me through Jesus is God’s love, acceptance, and forgiveness.
It is the treasure, the good news, God’s love, acceptance and forgiveness, that forces me to let go of all the things I cling to, to try and please God instead of just trusting in God’s grace. And my hope for you is that in this story you find the joy in the hidden treasure, which is God’s love, acceptance and forgiveness for you.
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