"Grace, mercy, and peace"

DISCIPLESHIP STEPPING STONES: 1 Timothy 1:2 (part 3)

To Timothy, my true child in the faith:
Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.

Paul, having recognized in Timothy his "true child" in the faith in Christ, now goes on to adorn his salutation with a benediction.

Grace. The word charis means "favor", especially of the undeserved kind. St. Augustine categorized grace into "operating" and "co-operating"; John Wesley further compartmentalized it into "preventing" (we say "prevenient"), "justifying", "sanctifying" and even "glorifying". But it is all one, even though it operates differently for us: God's love, vectored toward us as favorable regard.

It is hard to get the mind around this. In a world where services must be bought, grades earned, wages merited, and budgets balanced, something true and free is hard to grasp. I get a gift, I feel the obligation to offer one in return. Someone does me a kindness, and I'm looking for ways to repay it. Here in Southern Maryland, when someone brings over a dish of food to assist during an illness or following a death, the vessel is returned to its owner not only clean but full of some food, treat, or accompanied by flowers or some other offering. We talk the language of free gifts, but how hard it is for us truly to understand it!

God is gracious. Even in the language of faith, we hear, "Christ died for the sins of the world", and we think, on some level, "That's darned nice of him to do." It's not until we realize that Christ gave Himself to forgive (in Wesley's words) my sins, even mine, that we truly begin to know how to respond. As John Newton exclaimed, "Amazing grace! How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me!" It is easy to confess others' sins; harder to acknowledge our own. It is easy to intellectually assent to the idea of grace; infinitely harder to receive it. But what joy there is in knowing that the Savior is not just the Savior of the world; He is the Savior of me!

Mercy. The word is eleos, and stems from "to help". Mercy is God's grace, targeted to help me in a particular way. In what way? This depends on my need. God forgives my sin. God delivers me from sickness, or ignorance, or death, or bondage to addiction, or the power of Satan ... or all of the above. If grace is an arrow, mercy is the entry wound on my life, a wound which destroys the power of death and brings healing in its wake.

I deserve nothing but death, bondage, sickness and destruction. Not because I was made that way, but because of my own choices and the common lot of a very broken and corrupted humanity. Grace means that God moves toward me for good; mercy means that the movement is effective on my behalf for life, freedom, healing and resurrection; and the result in my experience is ...:

Peace. Eirene is the Greek, picking up the meaning of the ancient Hebrew shalom. Not just the end of violence and chaos, but an utter "rightness", when all is as it is created to be. This peace is the effect of God's grace and mercy, and slowly invades the individual life and through our lives, the world around us. It is a contagion to be spread; it is a work to be built; it is a feast to be shared at the table of God's acceptance, when the hands have been washed by God's righteousness.

These are three gifts from God. But there also seems to be a sequential aspect to them, like stepping-stones: grace to mercy, mercy to peace, all from God in Christ.

Lord Jesus Christ, I deserve none of your gifts. But it is your will that I and all your human creation receive all of them. First your favor, then the effects of it, then the experience of wholeness which it brings. Let me, having been blessed by these things, turn and strengthen my brothers and sisters and extend the news of your gracious presence to the world. For your own dear sake, and out of love for your children I beg this of you. Amen.


Prince Frederick, Maryland (Providence)