More often than not, when people ask me who “Grace” is when they see the tattoo on my forearm, people think it’s my wife’s name. Well…its not, but it is the word that during my senior year of high school, it was explained to me for the first time and although I didn’t understand fully, the Spirit worked in my heart. From that moment, when I finally understood a small aspect of grace is when I finally allowed the Spirit to take control of my life. Before then, I saw following Jesus as a “to do” list and heaven had to be earned. Although most people verbally don’t agree with that, without knowing it, Christianity can still be a “to do” list. Understanding grace and His love is the only way to turn from the “to do” list mentality.
And now, as I’m reading the Ragamuffin Gospel by Brennan Manning, I have found that the “to do” list mentality is still there, and not only that but not seeing His grace and living through it is robbing God of the praise He is so deserving of.
Let me explain: When Christ was asked what the most important commandment was, his response was “to love God with all your heart, soul and mind and to love your neighbor as YOURSELF.” Most Christian’s focus on loving others, and while that’s a command from God, His command is to actually love them AS your love your own being. You have to see yourself and love the person you are, and when you can do that, only then can you fully love them the way Christ and the Spirit intended.
Doesn’t that sound selfish? Not at all! Why not? Because only when you see the grace and forgiveness in your own life can you be able to show unconditional love and grace to those around you.
Not loving yourself despite the sinful nature inside of you is robbing God of praise and the grace, forgiveness and love He has shown you on the cross. Fully accepting and loving yourself despite your sin shows that the forgiveness shown on the cross wasn’t worth counteracting all that was meant to be defeated on the cross.
Doesn’t this open up the mentality of being able to sin more and be okay? If that’s what you are thinking, then you are missing the entire point. Seeing the grace and forgiveness Christ shows us through sin will draw us so much closer to Him than by trying to be perfect by maintaining a bunch of rules. Even when you do sin, which everyone will, that sin will open your eyes to the grace needed to be extended to you and the forgiveness Christ showed us.
The emphasis has to stop being on what I do rather than what the Spirit is doing through us. Brennan Manning says in his book that those “who are truly filled with light are those who have gazed deeply into the darkness of their imperfect existence” and be totally okay with that because of their faith in the work that Christ does through that darkness.
Manning goes on to talk about how we are called to have faith like children. He explains that having faith like children has a lot of background when used in the Bible. Children cannot think of themselves worthy or not worthy of anything. They simply rely on faith in people to take care of them and just focus on loving those who brought them in to the world to love them back. “ God’s grace falls on them because they are negligible creatures, not because of their good qualities.” The grace God shows to them are not based on anything good they have done, because children aren’t focused on the good they can do, they just are. They rely fully on Father to show them grace and give them worth.
Nothing we have ever done, are doing, or will do will affect how Father views His children. What does matter is having faith that His grace and forgiveness shown on the cross, knowing He has made all that was and is so pure and believing that is good enough and loving Him in return for that.
And if we do that, how amazing will the grace and love be that we can now show to those around us because of the faith we have in the grace Father has shown us…
