A mini death and resurrection every day
Yes, how exactly did Jesus pull it all off? The things we’ve rehearsed so far—teaching about selflessness, denouncing the old-time religion which has us all kowtowing to a grumpy finger-wagging capital G God, then getting himself executed—sound interesting, even admirable, but you’d think that would have been the end of the story. On their own they don’t explain the incredible impact his career and exploits had after his death, and in particular they don’t explain how he, in some amazing way now, through faith, trust, belief in him, brokers the wonderful capital M Metanoia in us—as I’ve claimed!
Well, there is the little matter we noted earlier of his alleged resurrection three days after he was executed! The sort of thing you’d expect from the Messiah of the Jewish people that Jesus’ followers had decided he was by that point, as he himself seems to have claimed—the sort of thing a manifestation or incarnation of the great God on high, a “Son of God”, might be able to pull off, in fact. Certainly not a natural human thing to do, at any rate. Ignominious death, then triumphant resurrection—the stuff of legends, and a thousand hymns! But something must have happened, something must have energised his followers, who went from denial and despondency at the time of his death, to amazing courage and optimism shortly after—something that has served to energise his followers ever since.
Something? The Metanoia is itself a mini death and resurrection every day: we die to our old, natural, selfish way of operating in the world, then rise to a new and more selfless way—several times a day sometimes! Yes, but this is not a literal, physical death and resurrection, rather a psychological or spiritual one. It is certainly true that, before his physical death, Jesus is recorded as predicting his resurrection—at least four times by all accounts—but the other thing he predicted, or rather promised to his followers, was that he would send the Holy Spirit to comfort and guide them after he was gone. And seeing that he appears to have hung around for only forty days after his resurrection before departing permanently for heavenlier climes, whereas the promise of the Spirit was for ever after, you’d have to think that, from our point of view now 2000 years later, the second prediction/promise was by far the more significant.
Holy Spirit—holy smoke, holy cow! I promised at the start of this letter that I would explain to you how it is that Jesus can bring us grace and peace now, 2000 years after his departure—this is how! A capital S Spirit, sent by the selfless love teaching capital G God, intervening in our lives to broker the capital M Metanoia, the wonderful spiritual transformation we can undergo through faith, trust, belief in that self-same God. Or rather, the Spirit is that intervention, that moment in which, so to speak, a channel opens up and the great God on high pours into us the spiritual energy and agency we need to get over the hump. Wonderful counsellor, comforter, advocate—the Spirit is all that and much more besides!
Did Jesus in fact muddle up the two things, his short-lived resurrection and the long-lived Spirit? We may never know. So, let’s do the muddling up ourselves. Just try it: next time you get to that point of breakdown in your life, that confusion and feeling of uselessness, hopelessness, that vague or definite sense that you have stuffed things up and are your own worst enemy, just accept all that and let go of it, then cry out to God to send you the Spirit, open yourself up in faith and trust, ready to receive all the promised grace, peace, comfort, counsel—and see what happens. A mini spiritual death and resurrection, ten times a day if necessary! Over time, when you stick at it, trying to make every breakdown post a winning post, tell me if you don’t gradually become a better, more selfless person.
There are old stories which attempt to explain exactly how Jesus, through his death, resurrection and sending of the Spirit, manages to open up the Metanoia to us all. The most well-known one imagines the old, very masculine creator God sending his “son” to earth, literally incarnating himself as the man, Jesus of Nazareth, to first do a bit of teaching and preaching, then offer himself as a human sacrifice to … himself, to atone for all the sin of humanity and thereby win the forgiveness of … himself for all of us, so that we are now, yes, allowed to go through the Metanoia. But we’ve thrown that old God out already, with his rather alarming predilection for judgement, punishment and, yes, atoning blood sacrifices. And then there are more colourful stories of Jesus, in the three days between his death and resurrection, storming the gates of hell itself and setting free the captives there, breaking the power of the Devil and sin over us all—but these rely on that same old God, who let the Devil loose on the world in the first place, as what? … some sort of trial or test we somehow needed or deserved?!
Here’s a simpler explanation, however, which is based on actual evidence you can check for yourself any time you like. The Metanoia is always a new thing that is coming into the world, into our lives, and it always and only ever comes by outside spiritual intervention, ultimately through the Spirit. This intervention is an incarnation, a realization of the Spirit in our lives, and through it we gradually become more Spirit-like, more God-like. The test of it is, as I have only just said, simple and direct: do we, as a result of it, gradually become more kind, considerate, thoughtful, caring, selfless, leading richer, fuller, more challenging and creative lives? If the answer is “yes”, then surely that is all the confirmation, affirmation you could possibly want.
This is clearly what happened with Jesus: formed completely, naturally human, then the Spirit seems to have immediately gone to work, incarnating selflessness in him, setting him on the path which eventually led to the ultimate act of selflessness, humble submission to execution death on a cross. “Greater love has no one than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends …”—and in his case he must have had a sense that he was laying down his life for, potentially, all humanity. He might have started out his life as just a man, a mere human being like the rest of us, but by the end of it he was almost certainly becoming more Spirit-filled, more humanly divine—and blazing a pathway to the same for all of us, no doubt!
Why Jesus exactly, a child born to a poor family in what was then an obscure part of the mighty Roman empire—why was he the Messiah, the saver not just of the Jewish people from themselves, but all of us from ourselves? Presumably there was something exceptional about his human background, the social and cultural setting he was born into, his own forebears who contributed to the sorts of traits and predispositions he started out life with. The Gospel stories depict the critical moment at the start of Jesus’ preaching and teaching career, when, at the ripe old age of thirty (by most accounts), he is baptized by the legendary John in the Jordan River; the Spirit, according to witnesses, descending on him in the form of a dove. But Baptism was an old ritual even then, and there are similar stories from other cultures and other times and places of spiritual awakening and empowerment, so is it not possible that there were others in approximately the same boat as Jesus, before or after his time, teachers, seers, prophets, gurus, mystics, saints, founders of religious movements small or great? By all means! But the test of Jesus or of any of these possible others is in the fruit of their labours, in the subsequent impact their careers respectively had on the world. What was distinctive about Jesus, as we have seen, was his wonderful message of the Kingdom, the coming objective state of human relationships in the world based on selfless cooperation, the Metanoia of the whole human race. A universal message, a promise, which transcends not only the cultural and religious traditions—the capital L Law—of Jesus’ birth, but all cultures and all religions, all lores and laws. Oh, happy day!
Commentary 3
Paul in his letter, at this point, is still intent on driving home the message of our absolute guilt before the L-A-W Law—even if we are not Jews, and therefore not technically under the Law! All people, he charges, “both Jews and Greeks, are under the power of sin” (3:9), going on to quote from several Psalms:
“There is no one who is righteous, not even one; there is no one who has understanding; there is no one who seeks God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; there is no one who shows kindness; there is not even one.” “Their throats are opened graves; they use their tongues to deceive.” “The venom of vipers is under their lips.” “Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.” “Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery are in their paths, and the way of peace they have not known.” “There is no fear of God before their eyes.” (3:10-18)
No one, no one, no one—not even one! The power of sin is so absolute over every one of us, there’s nothing we can do about it off our own bat, only God can save us. Thus, Paul declares, unveiling what is surely the central formula of his whole theology:
“… since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith.” (3:24-25)
It is a miracle of legal logic, a brilliant attempt by the great apostle to tie Jesus into the narrative of Old Testament Judaism in such a way as to make him the culmination and fulfilment of it. To pull off the trick he introduces the marvellous concept his name becomes synonymous with ever after: Paul, the “apostle of grace”.
“By his grace as a gift”: in Greek χάριτι, from χάρις, charis, meaning grace, favour, kindness, blessing. The Latin equivalent is gratia, although the Greek word itself clearly relates to the Latin, caritas: charity, love, compassion, especially the sort that seems more divine than human in origin. The English word “grace” now is commonly used to denote a certain quality of our action or behaviour, for example elegance in movement or courteous goodwill. But Paul has in mind an older usage, that of grace dispensed by a ruler, a lord or a wealthy person, to someone who is subject to them, a mercy, pardon, freedom, special favour or gift, granted in particular circumstances, at the ruler’s or lord’s discretion. Typically, the granting of the grace would be couched in terms of the ruler’s or lord’s own goodness and love for their subjects, but in reality the subjects would have had to have earned it in some way, by providing particular services to the ruler or lord, or at least by showing them submission, obeisance, flattery.
In Paul’s account the ruler or lord is, of course, the old omnipotent creator God on high, dispensing grace to us, his human subjects. But not because—and this is the critical thing—we have earned it or merit it in some way, rather purely and solely because of their own self-sacrifice in Jesus. Subsequent theologians developed the idea further, identifying different types of divine grace available to us in particular situations and for particular purposes, such as sanctifying grace, actual grace, common grace, saving grace, prevenient grace, and so on. “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me … ’Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved …” – I think there are at least two of the different types referred to in these familiar lyrics[1].
Yes, a gratuitous gift, a grace, that we cannot earn, do not deserve, cannot generate inside ourselves by any effort of our own: the gratuitous spiritual intervention of the other God, the selfless love teaching divine parent, in our lives, to broker mother Metanoia, turning us away from our natural-born self-centredness, towards a new-born selflessness—and it may well have approximately those same differential qualities described by theologians, depending on the stage of the Metanoia at which the intervention happens to occur. Paul’s account of divine grace, its gratuitous, unearnable nature, is certainly a wonderful innovation, taking us beyond the futile legalism of the old faith; but, on the other hand, it is fatally flawed, because there is still the wrong God behind the grace, as he conceives it, still the implacable judgement of that God hanging over our heads—still the fear that no matter what we do, we might miss out on the grace and go to our graves and perhaps even to eternal punishment, never knowing the reason why!
Just ask Martin Luther, whose agonizing over this matter in his monastic days was profoundly formative. Rather than follow Jesus’ focus on repentance, stopping sinning, Metanoia, becoming a better, more selfless person, Paul associates grace, first and foremost, with forgiveness for sins and a formal pardon from God, allowing us to escape condemnation and eternal punishment, and win instead the prize of an eternal happy afterlife. The relevant theological terms we might resort to here are “sanctification” versus “justification”: Paul seems to fixate on the latter—indeed most of the rest of his letter is concerned with it, as we will see—almost completely ignoring Jesus’ primary focus on the former.
The consequences for Christian doctrine and practice of Paul’s justification fixation are dire: rather than focussing (to paraphrase JFK) on what we can do for God—serve them and the world by becoming better, more selfless people—we obsess about what God can do for us—let us off perdition and set us up in eternal comfort and bliss. Grace becomes a sort of spiritual commodity we spend all our time chasing after; which the church, naturally, corners the market on, controlling the supply of grace, even trading in it, through instruments such as sacraments and indulgences, so that by Luther’s time, 1500 years later, there seems to be nothing for it but to try starting again. “By grace, through faith”: the return, however, was to the original formula, with the same old God behind it, so that even though much was gained through both the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation, and the monopoly of the Roman church in the West was broken up into a competitive market of separate denominations, with grace acquisition increasingly becoming the province of the individual believer rather than the institutional church, the essential misapprehension remained.
Once grace is commodified in this way, as a sort of get-out-of-hell-free card, it then becomes associated in our minds with any sort of gift or favour we might hope to receive from God. Thus, we thank God and consider it a grace when we get out of a close scrape, when we recover from or avoid getting an illness, when the rain finally comes at the end of a dry spell, when our team wins a big match, and so on. The feeling is one of being forever at the mercy of an inscrutable absolutist God, whose face shines upon us one day, then we spend the rest of our time trying to work out what we did right so they will shine upon us the next time as well! By this point grace acquisition has become a nearly completely self-centred endeavour, and it is then a long, slippery slope we find ourselves on, in our own lives, and historically, down the road to disillusionment, loss of interest, loss of faith, agnosticism, atheism. “By grace through faith”, certainly, but the faith in the formula over time reduces down to a mere intellectual belief in an unpredictable God who might, if we somehow believe hard enough and play our cards right, dispense an occasional bit of grace to us—faith that is all too easy to lose, and which we mostly actually have!
So, yes, Paul’s conception of grace is a revolution in the making, but first we have to wrest it from the dread clutches of the old creator God, into the loving hands of the divine parent God whom Jesus presents and represents. That is the purpose of this letter, of course—so please now read on, as we do some more wresting.
[1] John Newton, Amazing Grace (1772).
