The order in which we do things is very important, as any man has discovered in the morning if he has put his shoes on and then tried to pull on his trousers. This is true also for what we first tell people about God. To most modern Christians, this is obvious: we tell them that God is love, and that Christ died personally and unconditionally for them. But is this right? Or is it distorting in some way?
Certainly, the Bible tells us that God is love (1 John 4:8, 16), and Christians are assured that in love He predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ (Eph.1:4-5). The scheme of salvation begins with God’s free grace and mercy, which we receive by faith in Christ, and then go onto produce good works in His name (Eph.2:8-10). Should we not, then, begin any discourse about God by pointing to His grace?
Yet, in making Himself known to us through the Bible, God does not appear to have rushed into revealing that He is love, and that He loves us. Taking the Bible as it stands, the first thing we learn about God is that He is our creator: ‘In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth’ (Gen.1:1). When Paul preached to the Athenians, who would not have known this verse, he declared to them that the distinction between the Creator and His creation is crucial: ‘The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made man, nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything’ (Acts 17:24-25).
God also reveals Himself as eternal. Before He created the heavens and the earth, there was only God (Ps.90:2). Hence He spoke of Himself to Moses in terms of ‘Yahweh’ (‘I am who I am’; Ex.3:14). Initially, this may seem somewhat enigmatic, but it is a declaration that the Egyptian gods – the sun, the Nile river, scarab beetles, crocodiles and all the rest all which represented some kind of divinity – have beginnings, but the God of the Bible is the eternal ‘I am’. He simply is. Past, present and future are all in His hands; He can speak of the future as if it were already past.
Another attribute which needs to be known early on is that God is so holy that no man can see Him and live (Ex.33:2). Both Testament proclaim that God is ‘a consuming fire’ (Deut.4:24; Heb.12:29). Even the angelic beings declare that He is thrice holy (Is.6:3).
What is the effect of preaching love and free grace to someone who does not view God as the all-holy and ever-existent creator of the universe? It is rather like giving a million dollars to a two year-old. He has no appreciation of it, and is bound to misuse it. This is not to preach preparationism or hyper-Calvinism. God commands all people everywhere to repent (Acts 17:30). Nor is it to downplay love or play it off against God’s other attributes. Quite the reverse, for God’s love is unutterably holy. Without the holiness, it would be portrayed as shamelessly weak and anaemic.
In 1937, confronting the apostate Nazified Reich Church, Dietrich Bonhoeffer warned:
The proclamation of grace has its limits. Grace may not be proclaimed to anyone who does not recognize or distinguish or desire it … The world upon whom grace is thrust as a bargain will grow tired of it, and it will not only trample upon the Holy, but also will tear apart those who force it on them. For its own sake, for the sake of the sinner, and for the sake of the community, the Holy is to be protected from cheap surrender … The preaching of grace can only be protected by the preaching of repentance.
There is an order to life, which is not rigid and mechanical, but it is recognisable. The gospel too is more than windy discourses on love and grace. Half-truths or truths presented in an unbalanced or inadequate way can easily become distorting. In Bonhoeffer’s terms, there is a world of difference between cheap grace and free grace.
With warmest regards in Christ,
Peter Barnes