By Grace Alone

This last weekend I preached at the 125th anniversary of the first congregation I served. Their theme for the anniversary year was "By Grace Alone." Of course that's one of the "alone" assertions that are attached to the Lutheran Reformation: Christ alone. Faith alone. Grace alone.

In this day that phrase, "by grace alone," has often been viewed through an antinomian lens. We treat grace first and foremost as an attribute of the hidden God. It's understood as the nature of a God who operates only out of love and mercy (as if our human vision could ever get behind the veil and see the fullness of God's nature). We think, “Of course God is gracious. What kind of a loving God would be any other way? Of course, God accepts us as we are.” But God’s grace is nothing close to that.

Perhaps if we were able to remove ourselves from our electronic gadgets and gizmos, our prideful attempts at mastering life, our hubris in to manipulating our surroundings, we might come to understand the hidden God as a dangerous bet. Were we to do as our forebears as they washed and dressed their dead, nailed the planks for coffins, and lowered them into the earth, we might well see the limits of our own efforts and the horror of facing this so-call gracious God. With the psalmist we might point to the grass that lasts for a moment and then withers. Some gracious God!

When we speak of grace alone, the starting point is not how good and nice God is. It certainly isn’t something that calls us to say, “God is love. God is love. God is love,” over and over again to reassure ourselves that God might be well disposed toward us. Instead to speak of grace alone is to acknowledge first and foremost that I am truly and utterly incapable of solving the dilemma of my sin on my own. As Luther said in the Small Catechism, “I believe that I cannot by my own understanding or effort believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to him.” Or as the confession in the old green hymnal said, “We confess that we are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves.”

"By grace alone” is not a declaration about God, but a confession you make about yourself.“By grace alone” means that you’re incapable (no matter how you dress up your own sinful piggishness and slap lipstick on it). If you can't do it, it's left to that hidden God. As Luther advised, we would be well to run from that hidden God to the revealed God who, in Christ Jesus, actually makes a choice about you that you can count on.

The choice is this: God elects to take on whatever your sin can dole out, he chooses to take on flesh and bone and an execution on a cross, so that at last you might know fully and finally what your place is both here on this vale of life and death and in heaven itself. Christ Jesus takes on your sin, your inability and unwillingness to believe and trust God and gives you his own righteousness, purity and life. “By grace alone” means that there is truly no other option, no other way out.

Thus, to speak of grace alone is first to tell the truth, to confess your lack of trust, to pray, “I believe Lord, help thou my unbelief.” It is to ask God to move against you, against your nature and desire, your will to create your own future. “By grace alone” means to pray day-in-day-out that Christ Jesus your Lord would come to rescue you, that he would speak a word of mercy, that he would be forgiveness itself for a sinner like you.