Grace on the Ground
A final foray into this month’s Christianity Today takes us to the moving story of Chris 
Rice, chronicling the low-point and turning-point of his famous partnership (and friendship) with Spencer Perkins.
Their efforts at leading an interracial Christian community had pushed them to the breaking point in their relationship with each other. Before chucking everything and parting ways, they called in some mediators to help hold them together. Spencer had an epiphany:
“Yeah, yeah, I know all about grace, I thought… Grace is God’s love demonstrated to us, even though we don’t deserve it. But in all my 43 years of evangelical teaching, I never understood until now that God intended grace to be a way of life for his followers… Sure, I knew that we were supposed to love one another as Christ loved us. But somehow it was much easier for me to swallow the lofty untested notion of dying for each other than simply giving grace to brothers and sisters on a daily basis, the way God gives us grace” (36).
I take two things away from this. First, all the talk about “dying” might not have the payoff that I might hope. Of course, if someone “gets it,” it will be a powerful motivator and metaphor, but someone can hold onto the idea that we’re supposed to die for each other and use that as an excuse not to live for one another. Spencer confesses to such a short-changing of the gospel here.
The other thing, though, is that we must keep coming back to the idea that means by which God forms us into a people when he calls us to himself in Christ determines our identity as God’s people, which in turn delineates what it means to live as God’s faithful people. We are a people saved by grace–and therefore we are to be grace to one another. We are a people saved by the self-giving love of Christ and therefore we are to give up our lives in love of one another. We are a people saved as God lavishes forgiveness upon us, and we are called in turn to be a forgiveness people, forgiving one another from the heart.
Any idea of “grace” or “forgiveness” or “self-giving” or “cruciformity” that does not immediately call us to be for others what we have received from Christ is a selling-short of the faithful life to which God calls us. If we have received grace from above, we are called to be grace on the ground here below.
Grace on the Ground brought my attention back to your, “What’s in the Name of the Lord” discussion. I think we maybe leaving out the crucial role of the Spirit in God’s name placement.
The word that is striking to me is in Rom 1:4. In Greek, it means to determine, appoint, designate. If I am reading this right, it was the Spirit who was the one who gave the designation for him to be called the Son of God. It was the resurrection—the act of God raising a man from the dead that gave the Spirit credence to appoint the name. The Spirit placed God’s name and identity on the risen Lord Jesus. Why was it after the resurrection?
How is the resurrection-name designation by the Holy Spirit different than say an announcement of Jesus as son? (see Luke 3:22) I would argue that it because with the designation by the Spirit came the giving of grace to Jesus Christ’s followers in order for them to work on behalf of the Lord Jesus’ name (Romans 1:5). I’d say that the difference was to inaugurate representatives “for his name” among nations like of old.
I think the thoughts in Grace on the Ground are linked to What’s in the Name of the Lord. What we receive through Christ is grace in order to “bear the name of the name-bearer,” for his name sake, and for the nations.
Thanks, Daniel for giving us some great thoughts to wrestle with!
I’ve had this post on my mind for a few days now, Daniel, so thanks for that! Very honestly, I’ve found it wonderful to discover missional Christian discipleship and so thrilling to uncover and ponder cruciformity and cross-shaped Christian relational postures.
But I’ve also found that it is RELATIVELY VERY EASY to do that when compared to actually having relational stress and having to put cruciformity into action. Even more difficult to do it over time. Relationships and the rough and tumble of community life seriously stress theological convictions and cruciformity is no exception.
You discover this in marriage, child-rearing, and intentional community life over and over and over and it doesn’t stop . . . . The hope comes from knowing that death is the only pathway to resurrection. Again, it’s one thing on “paper” / on a blog, but quite another in practice.
Wonderful food for thought — cheers!
Angela and Tim,
Wonderful, enriching thoughts from both of you.
Tim, I am tracking with you. There’s a “big picture,” exciting, “get out and die to conquer the world” part of missional living, and then there’s a whole lot of everyday, mundane bearing with one another as God bears with us that often is the truer test of how deeply saturated we are with the gospel of the crucified Christ. And, too often, this is where I see that the gospel has nothing to do with how Christians parse our life together. You’ve nailed it.