Animated Exuberance
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with you all. 2 Corinthians 13:14 NASB
Grace – “What is grace? The presence of the soul. A person had grace when the throbbing of his heart is audible in his voice; when the longings of his soul animate his face.”[1]
You and I probably never thought of grace in these terms. For us, grace is “the free and unmerited favor of God, as manifested in the salvation of sinners and the bestowal of blessings.”[2] Grace is Augustine and Luther redefining Moses and Isaiah. For us, grace is a theological concept that is expressed in the action of God. It is not a human demonstration. Not until Heschel makes it so obvious.
We don’t live the idea of grace. We live the practical manifestation. If we are graceful, we exhibit a certain demeanor, we express ourselves with a certain vocabulary, we act toward others in a particular manner. In the real world of practical human relationships, you and I immediately know the difference between grace and effrontery. We feel the difference between compassionate care and rejection. What would happen if we applied this distinction to God? What would it be like to experience not God’s theological declaration of grace but rather His throbbing heart and longing soul?
One of the great tragedies of the Westernization of the biblical texts is the removal of soul. The Bible becomes a dictionary of theological terms, a collection of proof-texts, a repository of moral principles. It is stripped of its existential reality when it is categorized, analyzed and turned into doctrine. But men do not live ideas. They live by breathing, eating, speaking, involving themselves in a world that needs restoring, battling with the will to survive, seeking meaning for their actions. Ideas may influence how they live, but living is far more particular, tangible, tactile and difficult. We need grace because we are alive, not because we require a forensic status that equips us for the next world.
If God’s grace is as simple as the expression on the face, the passion in the voice, the willingness of hands and feet, then we too can enter into the manifestation of this grace. We can smile. We can comfort. We can bless. And in the process, we will experience living grace, something far more transforming than a doctrinal position defined on page 537 of a textbook. May I make a suggestion? Why not try living grace today? Why not let the passion of your heart make its way to your eyes and mouth? Why not dance a little, laugh a little, shed a tear, bless someone, speak gratitude, smile? See what happens when you become a vehicle of grace.
Topical Index: grace, charis, 2 Corinthians 13:14
[1] Abraham Heschel, Man’s Quest for God, p. 51.
[2] New Oxford American Dictionary
By Skip’s above delineation, I think that grace could be why we seek addictive behavior (in addictions, I can fool myself, through use of a substitute, into believing that I am experiencing grace). Grace could be why we respond with explosive rage or cold bitterness (because we didn’t get it). Grace is why sex allures and why we like Hollywood and People magazine (in our culture, we have learned to mimic grace, and to expect grace from beauty or sexual encounters). Grace can be what drives a parent to make their child “straighten up! behave! Say ‘thank you’! “yes ma’am”!, because they know that society will judge them as parents based on the relative state of grace that it sees their child exhibiting (or not). Grace (or the personification of) is what a child molester can use to allure his prey, and what gets candidates elected (nobody is going to respond to someone who is showing a complete, or seeming, lack of it). Not to say the above examples are necessarily actually BEING graceful: no, but they have to at least be either more or less successfully mimicking grace or traveling on the expectation that those around them will agree with them that grace is the expected norm. We HAVE to have grace!
‘Dead in trespasses and sins’ is where a person is locked out of a personal experience of grace in their lives. This is a deadly place: this place causes endorphins to plummet and minds to derail and the human spirit to despair. We do not survive long without grace of some sort. When we can’t get it one place, we seek it in another, or at least in another place that promises it to us in our present condition. Why in our present condition? Because we all have a need to be accepted just as we are, flaws and all. Why do we need that? Because none of us can ever deserve it! Have you ever witnessed someone (or been guilty of it yourself) working to earn, or deserve, love? Has that worked yet on this planet? I am not saying that we are not supposed to bend all our minds, souls and bodies toward those actions at all times: no, I don’t think I am saying that. I am saying that the world is running on a counterfeit of grace because it has no goods to trade for it on the open market. The world seeks grace precisely because it does not have it, and we all, unfortunately, have learned in its schools how to counterfeit the stuff. Because of this, I think we can all fool ourselves that we are ‘doing’ grace when we actually are just trying to fool someone else, or even ourselves. Grace is not optional, but this is the best the flesh is going to be able to do about it.
Does the above excuse me from going out of my way to exhibit graceful behavior (that vulnerability of soul Heschel so eloquently observes above and that it is the exhibition of)? Nope. What I think I am trying to say is that we all are hardwired for grace: for the giving and receiving of bare soul to bare soul, and if that flow is interrupted for any reason at all, we rapidly start to die. We must relate! Grace is how we do it. Grace is the medium of the exchange, but grace is only possible in a soul that is not simultaneously channeling disobedience (sin). Scripture teaches this, both New Testament and Old. If I regard bitterness in my heart, my “gifts at the altar” will not succeed in producing an encounter with the Most High. I need to leave those gifts and go deal with the bitterness. I cannot smile with a bare soul at someone I am secretly despising, for grace, like all heavenly-originated gifts, cannot operate through the pollution. Besides, that beggar on the corner has as keen a set of grace-detecting radar as the rest of us, and he is going to pick up on my spite and discount my smile.
David knew that clean hands are found with pure hearts and Paul knew that all we are left with if we are not free to be vulnerable without fear is “tinkling brass and sounding cymbals”. Reminds me of a sign I saw in bear country not long ago that informed people to carry little bells to ring to scare away the (black) bears, along with a can of pepper spray to ward one off, if encountered. It went on, however, to point out that the main way you could tell the difference between the scat of a black bear vs. a grizzly was whether or not there were little bells present in it, along with an odor of pepper spray. The world is wise to grace counterfeits, ya’ll, I have found to my sorrow. Many times I have been left, a chewed-up pile of tinkling bells and pepper spray on the ground, to contemplate on the fact that the only true place of safety for me to walk in grace is, as Skip reiterates so often, that place of actual vulnerability; counterintuitive as it may seem to my flesh. I think this is what Paul calls “walking in the truth”. Not optional in a world of grizzlies.
So profound, yet so simple (but not always easy!). Great post, Skip.
This is not a blog posting so much as a complete spiritual manifesto writ large. Amazing grace indeed! Well said Skip
Yesterday we attended my nieces wedding I think we experienced grace. There was gratitude and tears. Lovingkindness in the community. I would not have realized this as grace without reading this today. You have touched my heart.
Thank you
Just out of curiosity why is this the apostolic blessing rather than the benediction in Leviticus?
Do they replace each other or intended to be used for different purposes?
I love your question, Seeker!
Personally, I’ll rather have the benediction as you call it, that would be THE PRIESTLY BLESSING in Numbers 6:23-27?
Shalom!
Does this mean, to be a SON, we need to be manifested in SONSHIP, in the very image of our Father, doing the things we SEE Him doing in the lives around us and others, touching lives as He would; hearing from Him “face to face” to speak as He would speak?
Ester thank you for doing the correct referencing for my misdirection I tried to post a correction but the message just hung as my connection was weak…
My words were uttered without going through my mind… Bad habit I am still trying to change…