[AI translation] A few days ago, I was reading the story of the rich young man in the Bible, and I was struck by a long-known detail. When the rich young man says to Jesus, "Good Master, what good thing shall I do...", Jesus replies with the question, "Why do you call me good?" (Mt 19,16-17) And then the rich young man is suddenly so embarrassed that he does not answer Jesus' question. Why does he call Jesus good? Maybe you don't know yourself, it just came out of your mouth. Many times, when I hear people talk about the "good God", I want to ask: Why do you call God good? Is it really good? Do you have some happy, irrefutable experience that God is really good, or are you just saying it out of superstitious fear, like the oppressed nobody about the tyrannical servant to whom he is at the mercy and feels that it would be better to give all the homage, just so that something bad doesn't happen?! Though many things have been done in His will that are not "good", but I'd rather say "good", too, just don't bring me more trouble!And that is what the phrase "gracious" God means! In a group of people, they were once talking about what God has given us in grace? People were confused. Yes! What has God given us in grace?" they thought to themselves. Until they finally agreed that he had given "everything". Yes, God has given "everything" in grace! This is the most uncertain answer, because it is so indefinite that it is little more than if someone were to say honestly and sincerely: nothing! In the whole Bible, "grace" is one of the most frequently used words. Let us now try to make this concept more concrete, to narrow it down, otherwise it will flow away, and what could really mean "everything" for us will become "nothing"!
What does the word itself mean? In the original language of the Old Testament, the Hebrew word for grace in Hungarian comes from the verb "to bend down". Grace, then, paraphrased, means such bowing down, the kindness of the superior to the inferior, the benevolence of the stronger to the weaker, the favorable disposition of the greater to the lesser. The New Testament word, the Greek "karis", or the Latin "gratia", means pleasant, gracious behaviour, as it pleases God to show mercy, to give gifts, to give help.
If we look at the meaning of the word, we find that "grace" is the attitude, the motive, the action of God, which he does not owe to anyone, which he does not out of necessity but out of his free good pleasure, which he exercises out of pure love towards someone who does not deserve that love or good pleasure at all, and who might even expect the opposite! For example: God owed no one the beauty and happiness of the Garden of Paradise, and yet to give it: it was out of grace! He did not owe it to Noah to make known to him the destruction of the flood and the possibility of deliverance, but that he did so: it was pure grace! He did not owe it to Job to heal him of his mortal sickness, and to give him new children to comfort him in place of the children taken away by the catastrophe. That the Lord did so afterwards: it was by grace. The Lord God did not owe this lost world Jesus Christ. That He sent Him and gave Him up to death, so that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but be saved to eternal life, was and is the greatest grace, the true grace, for ever! And so it could go on indefinitely: today God does not owe it to any of us to help us when we are in trouble, sick, in danger of our lives. If it does happen, it is only by grace! Nor is it God's business to answer someone's prayer, that He promised to do so was a great act of grace. God does not owe it to anyone that when he takes a breath he can breathe clean air into his lungs, or when he wants to drink from a spring he can quench his thirst with clean, wholesome water: that all these possibilities exist is all grace! Finally, no one owes salvation to God, no one can justly expect the Lord to save him, to give him eternal life as an inheritance, and if this happens to anyone, it can only be by grace.
From these examples we can see that the Bible speaks of grace in two senses: a broad sense and a narrow sense. Or, in an old way, in a universal and a particular sense. In the broader sense, that is, in the universal sense, it could be said that it is due to God's grace that the corruption of sin has not been completed in the world. For example, sickness is also a consequence of the state of falling into sin, but the fact that there is still health: this is attributable to the universal grace of God. As it were, God protects man against the destructive powers of his own sin. And this is universal grace. Or it may be said that universal grace is the work of God in moderating his own justice, in delaying its full efficacy, in postponing, as it were, the hour of the final reckoning. That is why all kinds of virtues, such as honour, patriotism, parental love, and fidelity to friends, exist independently of the work of redemption, say in the unbelieving world. That is why there can be so many blessings in science, so much beauty in art, so many noble things in culture. Because the grace of God protects this world from the destructive power of sin, therefore there is sunshine, arable land, much beauty of all kinds, good medicine, useful medicine. Hence, in short, life, though ever threatened with death, yet life in spite of sin! That is why life is endurable, and often beautiful!
God's grace, in a broader, universal sense, means that He "will bring His sun on the wicked and on the good, and rain on the just and on the unjust." (Mt 5:45b) And all this great, universal grace is so that He can accomplish His work of saving grace. The grace in the broader sense is there so that as little as possible of the grace in the narrower sense, the grace in the particular sense, is left out. Just as the wider, broader part of the funnel is designed to take in as much as possible and pass it on through the narrower, narrowed part to where it is needed. So the two are one, and universal grace is there to bring us to salvation by grace in the particular sense.
For the grace of God in the narrow sense is all that God has done in, by, and for sinful man, to save him from sin and death, and to secure for him eternal salvation! It is a special grace of God to please God. So that I and you, just as we are, so wretched and ugly, so useless and dirty - are wanted by the mighty God. It is a strange grace that we answer the first question of the Heidelberg Catechism thus. You are much needed by all in this life on earth, but only as long as you are alive, as long as you have vitality in you, as long as you can work. When you are helpless, when you are old, not very many people need you any more. And if you are dead: nobody needs you! They rush to get you out of the way. Well, God's claim on you is greater and more universal than anyone else's, because he still needs you: in life and in death! Moreover, He needs you in life, so that you may be all His in death! And this grace is a special grace! And the way in which God has made it possible for you to be His, the way in which He has prepared for you the forgiveness of sins, as a new garment, the sanctified life, the salvation, and the way in which He brings all this about in you through the Holy Spirit of God, the way in which you are truly His, both in life and in death: this is the work of His special grace.
That is, the work of God's special grace can be summed up in one name. In the name of the One in Whom this saving grace is made manifest: in Jesus Christ! So, to be quite specific and narrowed down, it is not right to ask what God has given us in grace, but it is right to ask: Who has God given us in grace? Now the answer is: Jesus Christ!
When God says in the Word read out, "I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, I will have mercy on whom I have mercy" (Ex 33:19c), this is not the arrogant declaration of a capricious tyrant, the arbitrary exercise of power, the random distribution of the tyrannical keg, no! On the contrary, it is a repeated assertion, a redoubled testimony to the grace of God: grace! As if to say: Man, if you have already experienced that I am gracious, then accept my true, great grace: forgiveness of sins and salvation for Jesus Christ! Do not be content with accepting general grace, for this is only an act of trust, only a foretaste of what God really wants to give! He wants to have mercy on you for eternal life! "I have mercy on whom I have mercy", as if to say: Do not stop, man, half way, but acknowledge that my saving grace is also open to him who, through my universal grace, has come to know me. If you have already had some experience of my grace, of that general, universal grace by which you live: then acknowledge that all this has been so far only because I want to save you to eternal life. "I will have mercy on whom I have mercy" - that is, all the way to salvation. To salvation I will have mercy on whom I have mercy! Not only for a cure from an illness, not only for a relatively endurable and beautiful life on earth, but for eternal life! Do not misunderstand the grace of God: everything that has happened in your life so far has happened so that you may receive the forgiveness of sins offered by grace and eternal life, for the merit of Jesus Christ!
"I have mercy on whom I have mercy, I have mercy on whom I have mercy", says our Word. It also means that God's grace is indeed grace, and not grace as we humans have it. To live among men on the bread of grace is humiliating, one always feels that one is a person who is being excommunicated, and there is also a constant dread of the moment at which the thread of this painful patience will be broken. Not so with God! "I have mercy on whom I have mercy", He says. So let not the person whom God has pardoned feel afraid or condemned, for His mercy is rehabilitation! Total rehabilitation, a relationship that is not disturbed by the recollection of painful memories, by reproach, because God has completely erased from his memory everything that the believer in Christ has ever done to sin against Him! As if nothing had happened! The state of grace is like the state of the prodigal son who has returned home: adopted back as a son, a state of sonship that keeps one in a state of complete, liberated bondage.
Our motto, "I have mercy on whom I have mercy, I have mercy on whom I have mercy" means, finally, that God's mercy preserves us in mercy! I cannot be lost, I cannot be let go of, for it will not let me go! What God says there in the Old Testament is the same as what Jesus says in the New Testament: 'My sheep... shall never perish, and no one shall snatch them out of my hand' (John 10:27-28) So in other words, salvation is sure, and it is sure precisely because it does not depend on me, but because it is by the grace of God!
So great, then, is the grace received in Jesus Christ that it can illuminate every dark corner of life on earth with its light, so that I now know that the cross, the burden, the pain, the suffering - but also the joy and the consolation: grace! For my whole life on earth and beyond earth, everything, is grace! So it is also true that grace is everything!
Amen
Date: 19 March 1950.
Lesson
Ef 2,1-9