Cheap Grace

"Cheap grace means grace as a doctrine, a principle, a system. It means forgiveness of sins proclaimed as a general truth, the love of God taught as the Christian 'conception' of God.  An intellectual assent to that idea is held to be of itself sufficient to secure remission of sins. . .no contrition is required, still less any real desire to be delivered from sin.  Cheap grace therefore amounts to a denial of the living Word of God, in fact, a denial of the Incarnation of the Word of God.  Cheap grace means the justification of sin without the justification of the sinner.  Grace alone does everything, they say, and so everything can remain as it was before."

"Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate."  

~quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship

Lord, forgive us for those times when we love our sin more than we love and value you and our redemption purchased with the blood of Christ.  

Thoughts on Beginning a New Year

"The road to hell is paved with good intentions."  This saying, which is found in a broad variety of lands, does not arise from the brash worldly wisdom of an incorrigible.  It instead reveals deep Christian insight.  At the beginning of a new year, many people have nothing better to do than to make a list of bad deeds and resolve from now on -- how many such "from-now-ons" have there already been! -- to begin with better intentions, but they are still stuck in the middle of their paganism.  They believe that a good intention already means a new beginning; they believe that on their own they can make a new start whenever they want.  But that is an evil illusion:  only God can make a new beginning with people whenever God pleases, but not people with God. Therefore, people cannot make a new beginning at all; they can only pray for one.  Where people are on their own and live by their own devices, there is only the old, the past.  Only where God is can there be a new beginning.  We cannot command God to grant it; we can only pray to God for it.  And we can pray only when we realize that we cannot do anything, that we have reached our limit, that someone else must make that new beginning.  

~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, God is in the Manger, p. 80

Look Up, Your Redemption is Near!

I love to hear Andy Williams' recording of "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year."  The song is upbeat and filled with wonderful images of Christmas celebrations.  But the sad reality for some Christians is that Christmas is anything but the most wonderful time of the year.  The holiday only intensifies their pain, loneliness, regrets, depression. . .not quite the emotions that celebrating the coming of our Lord should evoke. 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer spoke to this as we read our Advent devotions this morning:

Stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near."  Luke 21:28

"Are we going to join in this movement that comes down from heaven to earth, or are we going to close ourselves off?  Christmas is coming -- whether it is with us or without us depends on each and every one of us.  Such a true Advent happening now creates something different from the anxious, petty, depressed, feeble Christian spirit that we see again and again, and that again and again wants to make Christianity contemptible. . .Advent creates people, new people.  We too are supposed to become new people in Advent.  Look up, you whose gaze is fixed on this earth, who are spell bound by the little events and changes on the face of the earth.  Look up to these words, you who have turned away from heaven disappointed.  Look up, you whose eyes are heavy with tears and who are heavy and who are crying over the fact that the earth has gracelessly torn us away.  Look up, you who, burdened with guilt, cannot lift your eyes.  Look up, your redemption is drawing near.  Something different from what you see daily will happen.  Just be aware, be watchful, wait just another short moment.  Wait and something will break over you:  God will come."

My prayer for you is that you will be able to look to the One who is the only source of true hope, love, forgiveness, healing.  The Lord Jesus came so that we do not have to remain in our miserable state, neither now or for eternity.  Lift up your heads and see the Savior! 

The Power and the Glory of the Manger

As part of our morning devotions, Joel and I are reading through God is in the Manger by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and I will be sharing a few quotes from the book as we go through the season of Advent.  

From today's devotion:

"For the great and powerful of this world, there are only two places in which their courage fails them, of which they are afraid deep down in their souls, from which they shy away.  These are the manger and the cross of Jesus Christ.  No powerful person dares to approach the manger, and this even includes King Herod.  For this is where thrones shake, the mighty fall, the prominent perish, because God is with the lowly.  Here the rich come to nothing, because God is with the poor and hungry, but the rich and satisfied he sends away empty. Before Mary, the maid, before the manger of Christ, before God in lowliness, the powerful come to naught; they have no right, no hope; they are judged. . ."

"Who among us will celebrate Christmas correctly?  Whoever finally lays down all power, all honor, all reputation, all vanity, all arrogance, all individualism beside the manger; whoever remains lowly and lets God alone be high; whoever looks at the child in the manger and sees the glory of God precisely in his lowliness."

The Wonder of All Wonders

"God travels wonderful ways with human beings, but he does not comply with the views and opinions of people.  God does not go the way that people want to prescribe for him; rather, his way is beyond all comprehension, free and self-determinated beyond all proof.

Where reason is indignant, where our nature rebels, where our piety anxiously keeps us away: that is precisely where God loves to be.  There he confounds the reason of the reasonable; there he aggravates our nature, our piety -- that is where he wants to be, and no one can keep him from it.  Only the humble believe him and rejoice that God is so free and so marvelous that he does wonders where people despair, that he takes what is little and lowly and makes it marvelous.  And that is the wonder of all wonders, that God loves the lowly. . .  . God is not ashamed of the lowliness of human beings.  God marches right in.  He chooses people as his instruments and performs his wonders where one would least expect them.  God is near to lowliness; he loves the lost, the neglected, the unseemly, the excluded, the weak and broken."

"That this Jesus of Nazareth, the carpenter, was himself the Lord of glory; that was the mystery of God.  It was a mystery because God became poor, low, lowly, and weak out of love for humankind, because God became a human being like us, so that we would come to him.  God as the one who becomes low for our sakes, God in Jesus of Nazareth -- that is the secret, hidden wisdom."

~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, taken from God is in the Manger, p. 22 - 23.