WESLEY’S FIVE MEANS OF GRACE, lesson #2
November 23, 2008
Last week we launched into a lesson on John Wesley’s five “Means of Grace” as he perceived them to be instituted in the Bible. That lesson has now morphed into a short series that I hope will eventually lead us to Wesley’s five means of grace. We said, too, that he put forth three “Prudential Means of Grace” that he felt were incumbent on prudent Christians. We will identify them as well, as the final lesson of this series.
But first, as best we can, let’s define grace. Probably most of us have a pretty good idea of what it means. I’ll bet most of you have heard this definition: “Grace is unmerited love.” But from where did that familiar definition come, for it isn’t literally spelled out. Now if someone asked us to define “faith” it would be easier because we could refer to Hebrews 11:1 which says, “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” Or, from the King James Bible as it was actually said, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” With grace, though, as with faith, there is a great deal more to understand than can be explained in one verse.
For example, did you know grace was perceived differently in the Old Testament than in the New? Let’s read, without context, some verses from the Old Testament that reference grace. See if you can locate a common thread just from these brief passages.
Genesis 6:8: Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.
Exodus 33:17: And the Lord said unto Moses, I will do this thing also that thou hast spoken: for thou hast found grace in my sight…
1 Samuel 1:18: And (Hannah) said (to the high priest, Eli), ‘Let thine handmaid find grace in thy sight.’
Jonah 2:8: Those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace that could be theirs.
These passages are representative of how most Old Testament writers presented grace, when they mentioned it at all. And I know you are way ahead of me in finding our answer; in each of these passages, grace was “found” or “given” by doing something that would please someone, usually God—as the phrase, “in thy sight”, signifies.
But then, near the end of the Old Testament, something different and interesting starts to appear. Some of the prophets, including Zechariah, begin to speak of grace in a different way. Let me read Zechariah 12:1 to you and let’s see if it treats the concept of grace differently than the Old Testament formula of seeking God’s favor through good deeds that we just sampled—. “And I will pour upon the house of David and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace…” Now try to focus on that image, “…I will pour…the spirit of grace…” Instead of us seeking God’s grace by what we do, Zachariah has God saying he will “pour” grace upon us. That seems more than a subtle change to me. For instance, why would we seek what is being poured upon us? The prophet’s wording, not “you will seek”, but “I will pour …” should create 1) a collective sigh of relief—for both them and for us—for it implies that we no longer must work for or earn what will be given, what God will now pour upon us. What if you had worked hard all your life, just barely getting by, following all the rules, and, yet, life continued to be an economic nightmare? And then your rich Uncle Max died and left you the inheritance! Could that not be analogous to having blessings “poured” on you? You would have received something you didn’t have to work for. And despite your profound sorrow at losing Uncle Max, would you not feel relief? I mean, now neither you nor Uncle Max has to suffer any more! Let’s take a different analogy. You may remember the dramatic scene from the movie, “Giant” when the n’er do well scoundrel, Jett Rink’s, first oil well gushes in? He is on both knees looking up, his hands raised toward heaven, oil from the gusher beginning to cover his face, and laughing uncontrollably? I’ll never forget that scene; for Jett Rink it represented freedom from the pain of a life that had always fallen short. This is what the pouring of God’s free grace meant to those who had had to work for it all their lives—relief, freedom, joy. 2) But you would also get the idea that grace is a gift for everyone, for God says he will pour it on all of “…the house of David and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem…”; there is grace for everyone! 3) And if that is true, then grace must be abundant, not elusive as it seemed to be. We can forget about the dry holes we drilled when the oil is gushing freely. Why, it’s so abundant that God even wastes some, for we all know of those who have access to grace but decide not to partake. Anyway, the idea of grace being poured freely by God 1) brings relief, 2) is for everyone, and 3) is super abundant.
But back to our passage…I was still searching for the origin of the definition, “Grace is unmerited love”, when, “what to my surprise”, God placed my finger on the key that opened a different translation—the Amplified Bible. I went right to that same Zechariah 12:10 and guess what happened—the Amplified Bible amplified that verse! (Well duh!) Now let’s read Zechariah 12:10 amplified: “And I will pour out upon the house of David and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem the Spirit of grace OR UNMERITED FAVOR…” I found it! Now I know I could be accused of “verse, or version shopping” here, but I don’t see it that way. I think this is just a matter of how one interpreter sees the ancient text and its translation into the modern vernacular.
November 23, 2008
Last week we launched into a lesson on John Wesley’s five “Means of Grace” as he perceived them to be instituted in the Bible. That lesson has now morphed into a short series that I hope will eventually lead us to Wesley’s five means of grace. We said, too, that he put forth three “Prudential Means of Grace” that he felt were incumbent on prudent Christians. We will identify them as well, as the final lesson of this series.
But first, as best we can, let’s define grace. Probably most of us have a pretty good idea of what it means. I’ll bet most of you have heard this definition: “Grace is unmerited love.” But from where did that familiar definition come, for it isn’t literally spelled out. Now if someone asked us to define “faith” it would be easier because we could refer to Hebrews 11:1 which says, “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” Or, from the King James Bible as it was actually said, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” With grace, though, as with faith, there is a great deal more to understand than can be explained in one verse.
For example, did you know grace was perceived differently in the Old Testament than in the New? Let’s read, without context, some verses from the Old Testament that reference grace. See if you can locate a common thread just from these brief passages.
Genesis 6:8: Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.
Exodus 33:17: And the Lord said unto Moses, I will do this thing also that thou hast spoken: for thou hast found grace in my sight…
1 Samuel 1:18: And (Hannah) said (to the high priest, Eli), ‘Let thine handmaid find grace in thy sight.’
Jonah 2:8: Those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace that could be theirs.
These passages are representative of how most Old Testament writers presented grace, when they mentioned it at all. And I know you are way ahead of me in finding our answer; in each of these passages, grace was “found” or “given” by doing something that would please someone, usually God—as the phrase, “in thy sight”, signifies.
But then, near the end of the Old Testament, something different and interesting starts to appear. Some of the prophets, including Zechariah, begin to speak of grace in a different way. Let me read Zechariah 12:1 to you and let’s see if it treats the concept of grace differently than the Old Testament formula of seeking God’s favor through good deeds that we just sampled—. “And I will pour upon the house of David and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace…” Now try to focus on that image, “…I will pour…the spirit of grace…” Instead of us seeking God’s grace by what we do, Zachariah has God saying he will “pour” grace upon us. That seems more than a subtle change to me. For instance, why would we seek what is being poured upon us? The prophet’s wording, not “you will seek”, but “I will pour …” should create 1) a collective sigh of relief—for both them and for us—for it implies that we no longer must work for or earn what will be given, what God will now pour upon us. What if you had worked hard all your life, just barely getting by, following all the rules, and, yet, life continued to be an economic nightmare? And then your rich Uncle Max died and left you the inheritance! Could that not be analogous to having blessings “poured” on you? You would have received something you didn’t have to work for. And despite your profound sorrow at losing Uncle Max, would you not feel relief? I mean, now neither you nor Uncle Max has to suffer any more! Let’s take a different analogy. You may remember the dramatic scene from the movie, “Giant” when the n’er do well scoundrel, Jett Rink’s, first oil well gushes in? He is on both knees looking up, his hands raised toward heaven, oil from the gusher beginning to cover his face, and laughing uncontrollably? I’ll never forget that scene; for Jett Rink it represented freedom from the pain of a life that had always fallen short. This is what the pouring of God’s free grace meant to those who had had to work for it all their lives—relief, freedom, joy. 2) But you would also get the idea that grace is a gift for everyone, for God says he will pour it on all of “…the house of David and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem…”; there is grace for everyone! 3) And if that is true, then grace must be abundant, not elusive as it seemed to be. We can forget about the dry holes we drilled when the oil is gushing freely. Why, it’s so abundant that God even wastes some, for we all know of those who have access to grace but decide not to partake. Anyway, the idea of grace being poured freely by God 1) brings relief, 2) is for everyone, and 3) is super abundant.
But back to our passage…I was still searching for the origin of the definition, “Grace is unmerited love”, when, “what to my surprise”, God placed my finger on the key that opened a different translation—the Amplified Bible. I went right to that same Zechariah 12:10 and guess what happened—the Amplified Bible amplified that verse! (Well duh!) Now let’s read Zechariah 12:10 amplified: “And I will pour out upon the house of David and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem the Spirit of grace OR UNMERITED FAVOR…” I found it! Now I know I could be accused of “verse, or version shopping” here, but I don’t see it that way. I think this is just a matter of how one interpreter sees the ancient text and its translation into the modern vernacular.
Anyway, in the Amplified New Testament the idea of grace is always followed parenthetically with a descriptive phrase like, “God’s unmerited favor” or “God’s unmerited mercy and pardon”. So the idea of grace, while not specifically defined in the Bible (as is faith), nevertheless assumes we understand that grace is a free gift, something given to us by God, of which we are undeserving. Let’s read, without context again, some passages from the New Testament that mention grace and see if we can ascertain a difference in emphasis from the Old Testament.
Romans 5:15: For if the many died by the trespass of the one man (Adam), how much more did God's grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many!
1 Cor. 15:10: But by the grace of God I am what I am…Notice Paul doesn’t say, “by the grace of God that I have earned”.
Ephesians 1:6-8: In him (Jesus) we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace.
At the risk of wasting your time and insulting your intelligence, allow me to further spell this out for the engineers and architects in the class, those who have so much trouble with words. 1) The verse from 1 Corinthians, says that all we are, however accomplished, is not our doing, but a gift called “the grace of God.” 2) The passage from Romans tells us that grace is a gift that abundantly “overflows to the many”. 3) And the verse from Ephesians says, “we have redemption”, not that we are trying to earn it.
Now there is another point about grace that we don’t often hear. Yes, grace is a gift, and yes, gifts, by definition, are free. But let’s be careful here that we don’t take that too lightly, for as writer, Philip Yancey said, “Grace is free only because the giver himself has borne the cost.” Now I know some of you are probably into re-gifting—giving something that was first given to you. In fact, the last two Christmas presents I got from my brother were ties with his initials on them! He claimed it was a misprint! But grace isn’t a second hand gift. What Yancey is saying is that grace is free—to us, but it sure wasn’t free for God. The point is that grace was as expensive to God as giving up a child would be for one of us. However one may interpret that, it comes down to saying just how important each of us is to God. Grace, then, is a “pearl of great price”. It isn’t something God conjured up as an afterthought and dropped on the world. Grace has been likened to the life sustaining manna that fell daily on the Israelites while making their pilgrimage through the desert. So something as unassuming as manna could and has been understood as a pre-figuration of God’s free grace. Maybe God was remembering the adequacy of the manna when he said to Paul “My grace is sufficient for you…” (2 Corinthians 12:9).
Now why and how God had to buy grace with a price in order to make it freely available to us is a difficult theological concept. It is delved into by theologian Jurgen Moltmann in his book, The Crucified God, but we won’t attempt that mountain today. Suffice it to say that in 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 we are told by Paul, “You are not your own; you were bought [with] a price.”
Probably more than any other single thing, a church-wide misunderstanding of grace was what drove John Wesley. Notice I said a “church-wide” misunderstanding; not a misunderstanding among the unsaved; for they know little or nothing about grace. It was the church that was in error here. Churches can be wrong, you know, and often have been. As we said last week, Wesley was educated by, and a priest in, the Anglican Church, which is the Church of England, and he never left. His goal was not to form a new denomination, but to stay and correct the teaching of his church that salvation was, for all intents and purposes, bestowed by the church. In other words, they had almost an Old Testament understanding of grace.
They should have remembered Paul’s teaching in 2 Corinthians 5:17-18: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ…”
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