Wednesday, July 05, 2006
Can Grace Condemn?
Matt 23:33 - You serpents, you brood of vipers, how shall you escape the sentence of hell?These are harsh words of condemnation spoken by grace incarnate. Clearly the answer to the question posed in the title is a resounding YES! And yet we remain hesitant with the answer - there seems to be some boundary between the two that we are constantly probing to find.
Matt 16:23 - But He turned and said to Peter, "Get behind Me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to Me; for you are not setting your mind on God's interests, but man's."
Matt 19:24-25 - "And again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." And when the disciples heard {this,} they were very astonished and said, "Then who can be saved?"
Luke 11:44-47 - "Woe to you! For you are like concealed tombs, and the people who walk over them are unaware of it. And one of the lawyers said to Him in reply, "Teacher, when You say this, you insult us too." But He said, "Woe to you lawyers as well! For you weigh men down with burdens hard to bear, while you yourselves will not even touch the burdens with one of your fingers. "Woe to you! For you build the tombs of the prophets, and it was your fathers who killed them.
Grace and condemnation are not somehow mutually exclusive. I would even go so far as to argue that grace demands condemnation, on purely logical grounds. If there was no need for condemnation, and if that need was not met, there would likewise be no need for grace. If you are not in the territory of condemned, then there is nothing for grace to lift you out of. If utterances of grace are not preceded by declarations of condemnation, then the grace is but an empty genture and is completely meaningless to the receipient.
Thus, I would argue that it is in fact a graceful act to utter condemnation. Consider Christ's utterances above. Do you think Christ intended simply to condemn? One of those utterances is to His most beloved, to the Rock upon which He built the church. No Christ's intent in pronouncing the condemnation was instructive and corrective. He sought to illuminate the condemnation so that the grace could be accepted, and meaningful
The retort often comes about flies and sugar v garbage - but the object is not attraction - the object is grace - Grace that only has meaning in the context of condemnation. Condemnation as the predecessor to grace is graceful, and often necessary.
Related Tags: grace, condemnation, Christ
