Grace is ruining the image of the church.

(If you thought I was going to keep up with the nice kitchen metaphors in every post, sorry to disappoint you.)

Let me explain.

From where I sit, I see a church paralyzed by a faulty dichotomy between grace and “works.” I think we superimpose our post-Reformation definition of “works” on the “works of the flesh, ” a term Paul used specifically to describe the Law of Moses–which was a very prescribed set of behaviors designed to keep Israel pure and set apart. Paul wasn’t talking about the good works God “prepared for us before the foundation of the world” (Ephesians 2.10).

I cringe every time I hear a pastor say serving and taking care of the poor leads to works-centered righteousness. As if any transformation in our lives that compels us to live differently beyond cleaning up our personal morality is adding to the gospel.

I see people being given part of the truth, but never enough to get them beyond a form of grace that reduces God’s purposes to the mere sanitizing of our personal self-image. It’s a belief that being justified in God’s sight is the end point of his eternal purposes, when in fact, it is his will to grow and transform us into his likeness, so his image is carried throughout the world. (Read Ephesians in the Source translation by Ann Nyland to get a fresh whiff of the Spirit on this theme [HT Suzanne McCarthy at Better Bibles Blog]).

I see people who know they’re saved by grace, but they don’t know what they’re saved for. They’re trying to lay down all their former false gods and icons, but all they’re given to worship is a tidied up image of themselves.

And what God wants to do through Jesus and the Spirit is to exchange all other images for his and let him capture our imagination, consume us with his vision and change us into his image.

How do we move forward in grace instead of remaining where it found us? I’m sure some of you have some wisdom to offer, and I would love to hear it.

Here’s my story in a nutshell: Jesus began to transform me when I began to pray from Mattnew 6, especially the Lord’s prayer, especially for God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven, and especially to seek his kingdom and trust him to supply my needs.

This was scary at first. I was so burdened to pray this way, I could no longer pray for my own needs and blessings or for my family.

After a few months, I realized there was nothing else I desired any longer but Jesus and to do his will in the ways I saw him calling people in the Gospels. And that’s when he began to move in my family, and to bring some people to faith I’d prayed for and reached out to for years. And that’s when he captured my imagination and my passion and gave me a vision for carrying his image out into the world as good news and justice and mercy and salvation for all of creation.

Of course there’s grace. And forgiveness of sins. But that’s just the beginning.

Jesus had to teach me to get my eyes off myself and move beyond the place where grace found me. And now I’m looking for others whose imagination has been captured by Jesus, to unite with them, to make Jesus “manifest” along with every individual who “contributes to bringing his body to a state of completeness” (Ephesians 1.23).

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