Last week, I spent my time offering to you my thoughts about Satan in order to put the events of Jesus' temptation in the wilderness – the account of which we read last week – into greater perspective, and therefore make the whole encounter a bit more understandable to modern ears that tend to close when any mention of the devil is made. Today, in a sense, we're going to be considering the very opposite of Satan – but, again, the opposite of Satan might not be clear in many people's minds, and there's usually a huge misunderstanding about what Satan is the opposite to. I suspect that most people see Satan as the opposite of God. On the surface, that seems to be a fairly rational and logical proposition. After all, do we not routinely speak of Satan being “opposed” to God, and does that not make Satan God's opposite? But there are at least two things in that traditional understanding that we have to question. The first is whether Satan is truly opposed to God. That seems so clear that to question it might strike many as virtually heretical, but I think it's worth pointing out that throughout Scripture (throughout the Old Testament and up to and including the story of Jesus' temptation in the wilderness) Satan isn't portrayed as being opposed to God – he's portrayed in a sense as being one who  serves God by testing the faith of God's people. So Satan tested the faith of Job by taking from him all that mattered to him; Satan tested the faith of David by tempting him to put faith in the size of his army rather than the power of God on the eve of a battle; Satan tested the faith of Jesus as we heard last week by putting very alluring propositions on the table. So it's not clear to me that Satan opposes God. What's clear to me is that he tests God's people. But even if Satan does oppose God, that doesn't necessarily make him God's opposite number. Opposites are usually equal; they simply use their equality of status and power and nature for opposite ends. I say with no hesitation that – whatever you may think of Satan – Satan is not God's equal. Satan is a creation and God is the Creator, and the creation cannot be greater than the Creator. So Satan is not God's opposite. But if Satan is not God's opposite, and I want today to speak of that which opposes Satan, then what am I speaking about? Today I'm speaking not about God as the opposite to Satan, but as God's grace as the opposite to Satan. Grace is the divine quality that we hang our hats on, so to speak. Divine grace is the quality without which we're in pretty desperate shape. 

 

     Grace is not just the opposite of Satan – grace is the opposite of legalism; grace opposes the belief that there are things we must do, rules we must follow and laws we must obey in order to earn the favour and the love of God. And yet – considering how central divine grace is to our faith, it's strange that Christians have such difficulty with the concept of grace. Throughout the church's history Christians have boldly proclaimed the grace of God – the unconditional and unearned merit God gives to us – but for the most part we've failed to live by grace and we've failed to extend grace to others. We generally restrict grace to those who are like us and to those with whom we agree, and assume that as a condition for receiving the grace of God others have to become like us,  but grace, if it is to be truly grace, must be truly unconditional. It can't be reserved only for those who believe like we do or who act like we do or who live like we do, because as soon as we make those distinctions we're implicitly saying that grace isn't grace – that it has to be earned by how we believe or by how we act or by how we live. 

 

     This requires a change in thinking on our part – a change in how we understand the love of God; a change in how we understand what the cross was about. We can't claim to be extending God's grace unconditionally when in fact we're really placing all sorts of conditions on God's grace. For Paul, Abraham was the prime example of the grace of God in operation – a time when there was no law to follow, but a time in which Abraham could still receive God's grace, just as we live without “law” - we live by grace, for as Paul said,  “where there is no law there is no transgression.” Christ – Who came for the world, is the grace of God who removes us from the demands of the law. In John's Gospel, a man named Nicodemus approached Jesus with many questions about this new understanding of God that Jesus was just beginning to reveal. Jesus said in effect that it wouldn't be enough for Nicodemus to gain an understanding of His words in his head, but that this new way of seeing God would have to become a matter of the heart instead; it would have to become a new way of seeing the world and those in the world and a new way of approaching life. Jesus said to Nicodemus, “You must be born again.” Here's the whole verse: “no one can see the Kingdom of God unless he is born again.” That also has been turned into an ungraceful threat all too often: you can't get to heaven unless you think like we do. But again I'm not sure that's what Jesus was saying. The words seem to be about understanding the concept. You can't “see the Kingdom of God unless [you're] born again.” The issue is being able to see it and understand it but it doesn't appear to be a question of inheriting it or gaining access to it. Jesus' point seems to be not a threat – believe this or you're in trouble – but an invitation – enter this new way of life that God has laid out for you and you'll suddenly understand the glory and wonder of God's grace which has already been given to you. The idea of being “born again” strikes me as relevant to this discussion. We have to be reborn into a new way of thinking and seeing and relating because for so long we've warped the very meaning of the gospel by speaking of and sharing what can only be described as an “ungraceful grace.” Too often, the church has tried to say that God's grace is a gift only to those who deserve it and who've earned it! Being “born again” should open us to a new understanding of the gospel – not that “we have something you don't have” but “look what God has given us all!” That's the very point of God's grace - that it's unconditionally given to all and everyone, without exception. Otherwise, God's grace can't be grace, because if there's even one condition attached to it, it isn't grace – it's something we have to earn by meeting that single condition.

 

     God's grace is such a wonderful gift to share with the world. Some try to make it conditional. Some try to say that while grace may be a gift a gift still has to be accepted, but that isn't true. You don't have to accept a gift for it to be yours. Any one of you could drop by my house in the middle of the night and pop a hundred dollar bill into my mailbox – in fact, as an illustration of what I'm talking about I highly encourage that experiment! I'll find it in the morning and I won't know who put it there; I'll only know it's there. That gift is now mine to do with what I choose. Whether I make good or effective use of it is beside the point. It's my choice. It's been given. That's what grace is about. Grace is just given to us; God's favour is extended to us; God's love is always with us. What we do with those things is up to us, but what we do with them doesn't negate the fact that God has given them to us. We – and by we I mean all the world – are the blessed recipients of the grace of God, and God's grace creates an ever-expanding community of people who are bound together by a common understanding of and appreciation for God's love. So we can't claim to believe in God's grace and then try to put conditions on God's grace. Grace is either grace or it isn't. You can't argue that someone has received God's grace only because they've done this, said that, lived like this or been like me because that puts a price on God's grace - and there is no price on God's grace. No payment is ever required for God's grace. It's simply ours because God gives it to us. If there's anything more than that required, then it isn't grace. It's the grace of God (which appeared in the world in Christ) that causes us to be a people who rejoice.