Year: 2015

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

I find it amusing when people exclaim, “If I can’t see it, I won’t believe it.” I often hear this said when people express doubt that God exists or that he includes all people in his grace and mercy. Seeking not to cause offense, I point out that we don’t see magnetism or electricity, yet we know they exist by their effects. The same is true with wind, gravity, sound and even thought. In all these ways we experience what is called “imageless knowing.” I like to refer to such knowing as invisible visibility.

For years we could only speculate about what was in the skies, relying on unaided eyesight. Today with the help of telescopes (like the Hubble Telescope), we know much more. What once was to us “invisible” is now visible. Yet not everything that exists is visible. Dark matter emits no light or heat—it’s invisible to our telescopes. Yet scientists know that dark matter exists because they have detected its gravitational effects. A quark is a tiny theoretical particle that makes up protons and neutrons in the nucleus of atoms. Along with gluons, quarks also make up more exotic hadrons such as mesons. Though none of these sub-atomic particles has been observed, scientists have detected their effects.

There is no microscope or telescope by which God can be seen, for as Scripture tells us, God is invisible: “No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known” (John 1:18). There is no way to “prove” the existence of God using physical instruments. Yet we believe God exists because we have experienced the effects of his unconditional, outgoing love. That love, of course, is most personally, intensively and concretely revealed in Jesus Christ. In Jesus, we see what his apostles concluded: God is love.

Love, which itself cannot be seen, is God’s nature, motivation and purpose. As T. F. Torrance puts it: “The constant and ceaseless out-flow of the Love of God which has no other reason for its movement than the Love that God is, is therefore [poured out] entirely without respect of persons and irrespective of their reactions” (Christian Theology and Scientific Culture, p. 84). God loves because of who he is, not because of who we are or what we do. And that love is manifested to us in God’s grace.

While we cannot fully explain the invisible—like love or grace—we know it exists because of what we partially see. Note I use the word partially. We don’t want to fall into the trap of assuming the visible explains the invisible. T. F. Torrance, who studied theology and science, postulates the opposite to be true; the invisible explains the visible. To make his point, he uses the parable of the workers in the vineyard (Matthew 20:1-16), where the vineyard owner hires workers throughout the day to work in the fields. At the end of the day, each worker gets paid the same even though some worked hard the whole day and others only worked a couple of hours. For most common laborers, this seems unfair. How could someone who only works an hour get the same wage as someone working all day?

Torrance points out that fundamentalist and liberal exegetes miss the point of Jesus’ parable, which is not about wages and fairness but about God’s grace, which is unconditional, generous and powerfully transforming. This grace is not based on how long we’ve worked, how long we’ve believed, how much we’ve studied, or how obedient we’ve been. God’s grace is based entirely on who God is. By giving this parable, Jesus makes “visible” the “invisible” nature of the God of grace who sees and does things quite differently than we. God’s kingdom is not about how much we earn—it’s about God’s lavish generosity.

Jesus’ parable tells us that God offers his amazing grace to all. And while all are offered the gift in the same measure, some choose to live in the reality of that gift sooner and thus may have opportunity to enjoy it longer than those who have not made that choice. The gift of grace is the same for all; what each person does with it varies widely. It is when we live in grace that what had been invisible to us becomes visible.

The invisibility of God’s grace does not make it any less real. God gave himself to us, in person, so that we can know and love him—so that we can feel his forgiveness and enter into a relationship with him as Father, Son and Spirit. We live by faith and not by sight. We have experienced his will in our lives—in our thoughts and actions. We know God is love because we know who he is in Jesus Christ, who “has made him known” (John 1:18). We feel the power of God’s grace as we come to know that his purpose is to forgive and to love us—to give us the amazing gift of his grace. As Paul says, “For it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose” (Philippians 2:13).

Living in his grace,
Joseph Tkach

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

A few weeks ago, while listening to Billy Joel’s song, “New York State of Mind,” I was scanning the news online. Coincidentally, my eyes fell on an article explaining that the state of New York had recently passed a law making it illegal to pierce or tattoo pet animals. It amused me to learn that a law like this is needed. Apparently the practice has become a trend. I doubt many New Yorkers took note of the passage of this law since it was only one among many recently enacted in the state.

By their very nature, governments (local, state and federal) have legalistic tendencies. They certainly enact a lot of laws! For the most part, they do so seeking to make the world a better place. But some laws are needed simply because people lack common sense. Whatever the reason, CNN reported that within the U.S. in 2014, 40,000 new laws were enacted at the state level.

Why so many laws? Largely because we humans, with our bent toward sin, find loopholes in existing laws. As a result, more and more laws are needed. Few would be necessary if laws were capable of making people perfect. But they aren’t. The purpose of law is to restrain imperfect people in order to promote social order and harmony.

In his letter to the churches in Rome, Paul wrote about the limitations of the law that God gave to Israel through Moses: “For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in the flesh…” (Romans 8:3). Not understanding these limitations, Israel’s religious leaders added bylaws and amendments to the law of Moses. It got to the point where it was nearly impossible to keep track of these laws, let alone obey them. And no matter how many laws were enacted, perfection was never achieved (and never will be) through law keeping. And that was exactly Paul’s point. God did not give the law to make his people perfect (righteous and holy). Only God, by grace, does that.

When I contrast law and grace, some accuse me of hating God’s law and encouraging antinomianism (the belief that one is released by grace from the obligation of observing the moral law). But nothing is further from the truth. Like anyone, I wish people were better law-keepers. Who wants lawlessness to abound? But as Paul reminds us, it’s vital to understand what the law can and cannot do.

In his mercy, God gave Israel the law, which includes the Ten Commandments, to guide them along a better path. That’s why Paul said that “the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good” (Romans 7:12). But by its very nature, the law is limited. It cannot bring about redemption nor free anyone from guilt and condemnation. The law cannot justify or reconcile us, much less sanctify and glorify us. Only the grace of God through the atoning work of Jesus working in us by the Holy Spirit does that. As Paul wrote to the Galatians: “I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!” (Galatians 2:21). Karl Barth made a similar point in a sermon he preached to inmates at a prison in Switzerland:

Let us hear therefore what the Bible says and what we as Christians are called to hear together: By grace you have been saved! No man can say this to himself. Neither can he say it to someone else. This can only be said by God to each one of us. It takes Jesus Christ to make this saying true. It takes the apostles to communicate it. And our gathering here as Christians to spread it among us. This is why it truly [is] news, and very special news, the most exciting news of all, the most helpful thing also, indeed the only helpful thing.

Some people upon hearing the good news (gospel) worry that God’s grace won’t work. Legalists in particular worry that people will turn grace into license. They can’t grasp the truth revealed in Jesus that our lives are about relationship with God—co-ministering with him rather than usurping his role as Creator and Savior.

Our role in living and sharing the gospel is to proclaim God’s love and to be an example of gratitude for God’s self-revelation and intervention in our lives. Karl Barth wrote in Church Dogmatics that this obedience to God begins in the form of gratitude: “Grace evokes gratitude like the voice of an echo. Gratitude follows grace like thunder lightning.” Barth commented further:

When God loves, revealing His inmost being in the fact that He loves and therefore seeks and creates fellowship, this being and doing is divine and distinct from all other loving to the extent that the love of God is grace. Grace is the distinctive mode of God’s being in so far as it seeks and creates fellowship by its own free inclination and favor, unconditioned by any merit or claim in the beloved, but also unhindered by any unworthiness or opposition in the latter—able, on the contrary, to overcome all unworthiness and opposition. It is in this distinctive characteristic that we recognize the divinity of God’s love.

I imagine your experience is not that different from mine when it comes to the topic of law and grace. Like you, I’d much rather have a relationship with someone that flows from love than one compelled by law. Because of God’s love and grace toward us, we desire to love and please him. Sure, I can seek to obey him out of a sense of duty, but I’d rather co-minister with him as the outflow of a genuine relationship of love.

Thinking about living by grace reminds me of another Billy Joel song, “Keeping the Faith.” Though not theologically precise, its chorus makes an important proclamation:

When the memory stays, yeah
I’m keeping the faith
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Keeping the faith
I’m keeping the faith,
Yes I am

Living by grace and keeping the faith with you,

Joseph Tkach

PS: Anthony Mullins and Mike Rasmussen shared with me a video of a performance by Kyle Brownell of a piece of “slam poetry.” He performed this at our CrossWalk Camp in Oklahoma. It’s called “Saved By Grace” and the lyrics declare the good news in a profound and personal way. Watch and enjoy on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pxgCEKE51c&feature=youtu.be.