“What a gift and privilege”

By Rev. Michael Stonhouse

Meditation – Friday, May 10, 2024

Ephesians 2: 1-10 (Forward, p. 12) CEV p. 1222

Whether Jews or Gentiles, the apostle Paul says that we have all been ‘in the same boat’. All of us had formerly made God angry through our sins. He mentions that his readers, presumably Gentiles for the most part, had offended God by following the ways of the world and allowing themselves to obey the devil. Then he mentions that ‘we also were ruled by the selfish desires of our bodies and minds.’ Now, this does not make it clear as to whether this was in addition to following the world—or something extra, something different. Anyway, Jew or Gentile they were all in the same predicament.

However, this is not all: God has shown His mercy, His grace, to all of us regardless of who we are or what we have done. He has treated us all alike. We were dead but now God has made us alive in (and with) Christ. We have been raised from death to life with Christ Jesus and are now seated with Christ in heavenly places.

All this has happened not because of anything that we have done, but simply as a gift from God. It is nothing that we earned, and so we have been treated far better than we deserve. We have this solely because we have decided to put our faith in God and accept His freely offered gift of salvation and new life. It is a gift, and a privilege, that none of us could ever merit on our own, and yet it is freely offered to all of God. All we need to do is to accept it. Thanks be to God for such a gift, and such a privilege. Amen.

Forward notes: “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God—not the result of works, so that no one may boast” (verses 8-9).

“One Sunday morning during our Christian formation time, an older woman who had been a churchgoer her whole life said, ‘I don’t think I understand the concept of grace.’ I chuckled and responded, ‘I don’t think I understand it either!’ In all seriousness, grace runs counter to the Protestant work ethic and the tenets of capitalism and can indeed be difficult to understand. We learn from a young age that people deserve what they get, both bad and

good. The Christian narrative of grace, of God’s love freely given to us while we were in a state of sin, does not compute.

“Every day, I try to understand grace, to rest in the knowledge that nothing I do can either lose or win God’s love for me, and I’ll probably be trying to understand it for the rest of my life. No one can boast because grace is the free gift of God.”

Moving Forward: “Is grace a distant theological concept or a lived-in reality in your life? How can you move toward a deeper understanding of God’s grace?”

A concluding note: For me, grace is quite understandable, and quite tangible and real. For years, both as a youngster and teenager, I thought that I had to ‘earn’ my parents’ love by doing all the right things and being the right kind of person. And, because of my frequent failings—probably quite overblown in my impressionable mind—I felt that I could never measure up. And I felt the same way about God. In church, all I heard was the do’s and don’ts of the Christian faith. And so there too, I was never good enough.

And so, it was a great relief, and came as an immense burden being lifted from my shoulders, to know that it was a ‘come as you are’ party, that I was loved, valued, and accepted just as I was. I had to do nothing at all to earn it. It was a given. As one of my old bishops once said, “Nothing you can do can make God love you more, and nothing you can do can make God love you less.” God’s love is a given.

But there is a catch, and for us work-driven, merit-based westerners, it only makes sense. One wise person put it this way: “God loves you just the way you are, but also loves you too much to let you stay that way.” God expects us to respond to His love with an appropriate gratitude, and with an appropriate change of lifestyle and behaviour.