Free Grace (Wilson UMC)

If you’re watching this, it means I wasn’t able to be there with you in person this Sunday. Unfortunately, my mother-in-law has been battling stage IV cancer for the past several, and I needed to be available to support my wife and daughter at this difficult time. At the time of this recording, we really have no idea whether she is going to pull through this latest challenge or if we’ll to get back to TX as quickly as possible to say our goodbyes.

I want to take a moment to thank Indy for all of his patience, help, and understanding this week. He’s been absolutely tremendous, and I want to express my sincerest gratitude to him. I’d also like thank those of you here at Wilson for welcoming me with kindness and generosity. It has been a joy to be with you, and I am sad I wasn’t able to be with you here today.

Before I jump into this message, I want preface it with a few comments. Not only did I want to be there with you on Sunday because I’ve enjoyed being with you so much, but this could also be a bit of a contentious message. It’s my understanding that there are a number of people in your church family here at Wilson who adhere to a more Reformed theology that leans in the direction of predestination and some of you may fully embrace that doctrine. When I planned this sermon series out, I wasn’t aware of that. I thought I’d just be preaching to the choir so to speak at another Methodist church.

I can tell you right now that this is not going to be a sermon you’ll want to tell your friends about except to say how wrong I am! The messages that I’ve been sharing with you are adaptions from a sermons I gave at Tri-Lakes and the message last week on original sin and today’s message on Free Grace come from a series on Wesleyan theology, the goal of which was to explain the distinctives of Wesleyan theology.

Now given that there will be some of you listening to this message who embrace predestination, I want to acknowledge up front that you’ll likely find yourself arguing with me throughout this sermon and even getting a little frustrated or angry with me. Not that you need my permission, but I want you to know that is totally fine! One of the things I love about you guys here is Wilson is the fact that so many of you came up to me last Sunday after the sermon to raise questions about. I loved it! And, I was looking forward to some more of those conversations after this message.

As you’re likely to pick up on during this message there are few doctrines I take more issue with or disagree with more vehemently than I do the doctrine of predestination. So, there you have. My cards are on the table.

Now, with that said, I want to acknowledge a few things. First, I have no monopoly on the truth, and I may stand before the Lord one day only to find out how wrong I was. Second, I recognize that the debate is complex and textured and requires nuance. Additionally, I recognize there are incredibly godly and incredibly smart people (much godlier and much smarter than me in fact) who espouse this doctrine, so I hope to address the topic of free grace and predestination with the respect due to those who adhere to it. Indeed, some of my dearest friends in the world believe in predestination, so when I talk about it I don’t see just a theology but the people and faces behind it.

And, Lastly, I did consider changing the message, but the more I thought about it, more appropriate it seemed to me for this sermon series as an opportunity for us to welcome nuance and texture in a conversation about a controversial topic.

Ok, my apologies for the long preface, but my hope is to set a conversational and congenial tone rather than an adversarial one for this message.

I was recently introduced me to something called the just-world hypothesis. The just-world hypothesis was postulated in the mid twentieth century by the Canadian psychologist, Melvin J. Lerner, and it is also sometimes referred to as the just-world fallacy, which I think you’ll agree is probably a more accurate way of putting it. The just-world hypothesis (or fallacy) states that the world is a fair and orderly place where what happens to people is generally what they deserve. In other words, bad things happen to bad people, and good things happen to good people. This view leads us to believe that the world is stable and predictable. We want things to make sense, and the logic of the just-world fallacy gives us the illusion that we can make sense of our world and the things that take place in it. For example, most of us, when faced with a difficult medical diagnosis will (at some point) wonder, “What did I do to deserve this?” because the stinking thinking of the just-world fallacy is practically a subconscious reflex for us.

This type of logic makes sense to us. The problem is that this logic is not the logic of the gospel that Paul so wonderfully articulates in Romans 5.6-11

Especially striking to me is the logic of verses 6-8 where Paul writes,

6 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.

7 Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die.

8 But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.

The eternal Son of God did not become incarnate and offer himself on a cross for the sake of our salvation at a time when humanity was at its best: the reality that God was violently crucified on a cross by the very people he desired to save proves that. Think about how remarkable this is! According to Paul, it’s rare enough for someone to die for a person they would consider righteous, someone who is exceedingly noble. And maybe, just maybe someone might lay down their life for someone whom they think is good but not quite to the level of being righteous. It’s unthinkable, then, that a person would lay down their life for someone who is antagonistic and ill-natured. And yet! that is exactly what God did for us: he died for us when we were hostile and had done nothing to warrant or deserve such a rescue. Let’s make this personal. Bring to mind the person in this world whom you have had the most enmity and conflict. Now imagine laying down your life so that person could live. This seemingly illogical, irrational act is the logic of the gospel and the rational act of a God whose love for us is far beyond our comprehension. The logic of the gospel obliterates any notion of the just-world hypothesis, not because bad things happen to good people, but because because the undeserving get that which they don’t deserve in Christ. That, my friends, is grace.

Now some of you may be puzzled by the fact that I kept saying things like “God was crucified” and “God died” for us. I’m being very intentional in using this language. Too often we talk about Jesus’ act of self-giving on the cross as though Jesus did something for God. As the second member of the Trinity, who was fully human and fully God, Jesus was not doing something for God but as God. Tom Wright puts it this way:

Paul for Everyone, Romans Part 1: Chapters 1–8 Jesus’ Death Reveals God’s Love and Guarantees Final Salvation (Romans 5:6–11)

Look at verse 8. What Paul says here makes no sense unless Jesus, in his life and death, was the very incarnation, the ‘enfleshment’ (that’s what ‘incarnation’ means) of the living, loving God. After all, it doesn’t make sense if I say to you, ‘I see you’re in a real mess! Now, I love you so much that I’m going to … to send someone else to help you out of it.’

As Jurgen Moltmann put it, make no mistake. It was no mere man who was crucified; it was God crucified.

To this point, Wesleyans and those who affirm predestination have no argument and agree about the outrageous logic of the gospel. I think we would also agree that while the gospel logic of Romans 5.6-11 is a simple but profound and powerful truth, it is extremely difficult for us to absorb into our hearts, and it is in this sense I want to suggest that we read Scripture with depth, or it is probably more accurate to say, we need to let Scripture read us deeply.

Romans 5.6-11 invites us to dive far below the surface of the inaccurate and simplistic world-view of a so-called “just-world” to the depth of God’s mysterious and incomprehensible grace and mercy toward us.

So, today is a good day. Today we get to talk about the Wesleyan notion of grace. Of course grace is not distinctive to Wesleyan theology. Every stream of Christianity celebrates God’s beautiful grace.

However, what makes Wesleyans different, especially when contrasted with those affirm the doctrine of predestination is that we believe (as John Wesley put it), grace is FREE FOR ALL and FREE IN ALL. That is, God’s saving grace is not only available to a certain group of people whom God has elected to be saved; rather, God’s saving grace is freely available to everyone who would welcome it.

In his sermon, “Free Grace,” Wesley takes aim at those who affirm the doctrine of predestination. Simply put, predestination is the idea that God has decreed before the foundation of the world those who will be saved and those who will justly face eternal punishment. For the proponent of predestination, it is outlandish that God should have mercy and save anyone because humans justly deserve eternal damnation because of sin. For Wesleyans, we agree that God’s saving mercy is unmerited, but to us, the idea that God would not offer saving grace to ALL human beings, well these are fighting words because, at the end of the day, we believe that this doctrine ultimately leads to an understanding of the nature and character of God that is entirely unfitting and unworthy of God. And those right there, those are fighting words for the Calvinist because human beings are in no position to render such a judgement.

Now, here’s the reality of the situation. We could go back and forth all day long prooftexting and lobbing biblical passages at one another in an attempt to settle this. In fact, I think I got a sense of what hell might be like when I was stuck on a van with a Calvinist for 15 hours on a mission trip. She wanted to argue the issue The. Entire. Time. I was ready to embrace predestination just to bring the conversation to an end but apparently God did not determine that such a thing would come to pass for me. (That was some theology nerd humor for you.

In my opinion lobbing verses back and forth as we did on that interminable drive, will get us nowhere. Both sides can produce Scriptures that support their view. However, in Wesley’s sermon, “Free Grace,” he puts his finger on what I believe are the two main problems Wesleyans have with the doctrine of predestination.

First, Wesley says that predestination “overthrows the whole Christian Revelation.” What Wesley is getting at is that when you look at the metanarrative of Scripture, it suggests that God’s unfolding plan was always to expand those who are being saved, not limit that number.

After the fall, God begins his plan of salvation by choosing one man, Abram. Through Abram came the nation of Israel, whom God elected. Through the elect nation of Israel came the Messiah who would bring salvation not only to the Jews but to the Gentiles as well. Thus, those whom God elects whom God chooses is always expanding in the narrative of Scripture. We can throw individual verses back and forth all day long, but for the Wesleyan, the real biblical problem with predestination is that it runs counter to the overall biblical narrative.

Another key issue that Wesley addresses is what the doctrine of predestination ultimately says about the nature of God. Wesley minces no words here calling it a “doctrine full of blasphemy” that “destroys all of God’s attributes at once” and “represents the most holy God as worse than the devil as both more false, more cruel, and more unjust.”

I chose a different path regarding my tone, but I wanted to give you a taste of the rhetoric Wesley deployed to demonstrate the seriousness of the disagreement.

From a Wesleyan perspective, the problem is this: regardless of how advocates of predestination might soften their language or qualify their terms, at the end of the day, you end up with a God who created sentient beings, most of whom will suffer eternal torture with no chance of a different outcome because they were never given any other choice. To the Wesleyan, this is an understanding of God’s character that is altogether unworthy of him and unfitting of who he is.

A.W. Tozer famously once wrote,

“What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.”

What we think about God is so important because Tozer wrote that

“We tend by a secret law of the soul to move toward our mental image of God.”

In other words, we tend to develop a character and set of dispositions that reflect what we actually believe about God.

If Tozer is correct that we become similar to what we actually believe about God, it is deeply troubling to Wesleyans to mimic the character of a God who is “pleased” with the eternal suffering of sentient human beings made in his own image. The Westminster confession actually says God was pleased to ordain human beings to wrath for the praise of his glorious justice. For the Wesleyan, such a concept of God is unfitting because it conflicts the narrative of Scripture and the self-giving God revealed in Jesus Christ.

Now, while Wesleyans and proponents have a theological disagreement on these points, I have yet to meet a person who doesn’t struggle to accept the outlandish logic of gospel whether they believe it is only offered to some or offered to all.

Tozer goes on to note that the God-concept which actually resides in our hearts, is not necessarily consistent with what we say we believe about God. Tozer writes,

“Compared with our actual thoughts about Him, our creedal statements are of little consequence. Our real idea of God may lie buried under the rubbish of conventional religious notions and may require an intelligent and vigorous search before it is finally unearthed and exposed for what it is. Only after an ordeal of painful self probing are we likely to discover what we actually believe about God.”

This is where we need to allow Scripture to read us deeply. My suspicion based on pastoral counseling sessions is that what most of us actually believe about God in our heart of hearts corresponds to the logic of the just-world fallacy rather than to the logic of the gospel that Paul describes in Romans 5.6-11. Deep down we tend to believe God is generally only gracious to those who deserve it as a result of their being a “good person.”

Without fail, whenever I talk with people about the idea of the just world theory, people laugh, they literally laugh out loud saying, “I don’t believe that nonsense!” My response is always the same: Don’t be too quick to jump to that conclusion. Let the Bible read you deep down in your heart first. You just might find out that the just world fallacy has taken root in you deeper than you thought.

Last week, I told you about Father Gregory Boyle’s ministry to former gang members in Los Angeles. This week I’ve got another story from Father Boyle’s ministry to share with you.

The photographer, Steve Burton, visited Homeboy Industries to undertake what he called the “Skin-Deep Project.” He took photos of several former gang members who were covered from head to toe with tattoos, reminders of their former lives. Every time they looked in the mirror, they were reminded of their past. Every time another person looked at these intimidating figures, the first thing they saw was a fiendish past literally written on their bodies for all to see. Burton took the photos and edited them to reveal what each person would look like without their tattoos. It was an extremely touching and emotional experience for these men and women to see themselves with the markings of a dark past.

The Skin Deep Project - David Pina

You see, like these former gang members and those who see them with all of the threatening markings on their bodies, we fail to see past the things that have darkened our lives. In our heart of hearts, we often believe the logic of the just-world fallacy: we have to either get the tattoos removed or avoid them in the first place to receive God’s grace. However, the logic of the gospel states that God’s grace comes to us precisely when we are marked by darkness, and as Wesleyans, we believe this grace is freely offered to all, not just a few. This is the beauty of God’s grace freely given to all.

Reflection Questions

In my heart of hearts, what do I really believe about the nature and character of God?

What “tattoos” have darkened my life that I believe exclude me from God’s grace?