In college, a friend sought my advice on how to respond to problems she had with her roommate. Her roommate continually made a mess of the bathroom they shared and rarely cleaned up. They agreed at the beginning of their lease that they would both share in the chores but now only one did the work. My friend felt annoyed, angry and torn. As a Christian, she felt called to love. Should she continue to clean up the bathroom as an act of service? Should she show her grace and bear the burden herself?
Recently that incident has come to mind because I found myself pondering the phrase “show her grace.” We Christians use that language regularly. We want to give grace, cover in grace, show grace to our friends, family, co-workers. But what exactly do we mean? Is it mere forgiveness, 70 times 7? Or is there another way to understand this divine call?
I’m learning that giving grace exceeds forgiving. With forgiveness we pardon a sin, a wrong done against us. We let the person go free, saying he/she no longer owes us what he/she took from us.
In the foremost act of, what I’ll call, forgiveness-grace, Jesus died and rose again on our behalf. In Christ, God reconciled us to Himself, forgiving our debt. The relationship we broke, He healed. In His work to mend humanity, He erased the debt of holiness we owed Him. At the cross, Jesus became our sin, while we became His righteousness. Humans restored to their Maker. Grace in forgiveness.
But the work of God goes beyond this pardoning. His works remains incomplete until human beings reflect the nature of God again. In the beginning, He gave us breath for the purpose of breathing it back to Him and the world we inhabit. We all bear God’s image, created to know and reflect His beauty, character, and love. But each of us is marred, a broken piece of humanity. None of us lives up to our full potential as a divine image bearer. Hence, the debt of righteousness we owed.
So God works to liberate us from that which hinders us from being fully alive, a transformative-grace. From the cross, the place of forgiveness-grace, God continues His gracious work until the eschaton, when we will partake of Christ’s glory. For now He renovates our hearts, the old to new, the shattered to wholeness, the dead to the living. He ever enlivens us, letting us know Him more deeply to reveal Him more fully.
His grace, as such, is not license to live as we would please. Rather, His grace empowers us to be human, to reveal Him. Much like the moon has no light of itself but reflects the sun’s essence, to be fully human is to reveal the light of the Greater Light.
So God works, restoring our marred image. God unleashes this creative, redeeming work through people, circumstances, His Word and Spirit. To give grace to another means, then, that not only do we forgive, but we interact in such a way as to help him/her back to glory.
A good question to ask ourselves, “Is my interaction helping restore this person to glory or am I enabling him/her to live in the marred state, in weakened humanity?” Was it enough for my friend to forgive her roommate’s failure to uphold her household duties? Or, was there a way she could have responded that pointed her back to glory?
Grace isn’t just accepting and forgiving people’s wrongs against us, but it involves responding in a way to lead others back to life, back to being human. As redeemed people in process, then, we can help each other. With humble hearts, we must learn to love each other in a way that creates a hunger for glory, for life.
Gracing each other involves accountability, not just overlooking wrongs in the name of forgiveness. We hold each other to a higher standard, exposing sinful motives and deeds of the heart for the purpose of freeing one another to live more fully. Like our Savior, we offer grace that empowers. Empowers to love, to live, to image. That is, to be fully human.
