Grace upon Grace

While I was walking to office this morning, I was reminded of a story that was written by G.K Chesterton, which I mentioned in this blog some time back. This is the story in full, as told in his book "Orthodoxy":

“I have often had a fancy for writing a romance about an English yachtsman who slightly miscalculated his course and discovered England under the impression that it was a new island in the South Seas. I always find, however, that I am either too busy or too lazy to write this fine work, so I may as well give it away for the purposes of philosophical illustration. There will probably be a general impression that the man who landed (armed to the teeth and talking by signs) to plant the British flag on that barbaric temple which turned out to be the Pavilion at Brighton, felt rather a fool. I am not here concerned to deny that he looked a fool. But if you imagine that he felt a fool, or at any rate that the sense of folly was his sole or his dominant emotion, then you have not studied with sufficient delicacy the rich romantic nature of the hero of this tale. His mistake was really a most enviable mistake; and he knew it, if he was the man I take him for. What could be more delightful than to have in the same few minutes all the fascinating terrors of going abroad combined with all the humane security of coming home again? What could be better than to have all the fun of discovering South Africa without the disgusting necessity of landing there? What could be more glorious than to brace one's self up to discover New South Wales and then realize, with a gush of happy tears, that it was really old South Wales. This at least seems to me the main problem for philosophers, and is in a manner the main problem of this book."

The main point of the story for GK Chesterton is that what he was going to write were not new discoveries but many people have derived the same conclusion as him many generations back. It is the same feeling that I had whenever I read of other people's theological insights which aligned nicely with what I derived independently from them. One such insight, as I was reflecting, was the insight of grace in the OT. In John 1:16-17, it is written:

16 Out of his fullness we have all received grace in place of grace already given. 17 For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

Reading in isolation, verse 17 may seem as if that there is a dichotomy between the law and Jesus Christ, which seems to agree with what Paul 'seem' to say in his epistles. But to read it this way is to read the whole passage out of context. In its immediate context is verse 16, which mention that there is already a grace given and out of the fullness of God, a grace is given on top of the grace already given. The grace already given, as seen in verse 17, is the law and the grace given on top and in place of the grace already given is the grace and truth through Jesus Christ. What this mean is what I have also mentioned in this blog, that the law is given by God as a show of His grace.

I shall not dwell too much on the specifics here but in view of this finding, I hope to highlight another problem that too many Christians are ready to jump on before even thinking or reading their own Scripture - the false dichotomy between the OT and the NT. One of the common arguments that a casual reader of the NT will tell us is that we are leaving in the age of grace and not in the age of law, i.e. new time, not old time, new testament not old testament. More intrinsic in this argument is that we need to show grace to people, not impose law on them like what happened in the OT.

I am of course oversimplifying the argument but that is roughly the gist. This really sounds right to the casual reader of the Scripture but unfortunately, it may prove theologically inconsistent from what we read in the Scripture. Firstly, God is immutable. In the NT that these Christians so proudly flash around, it is written that God is the same yesterday, today and forevermore. Theologically speaking, this means that the God we worship cannot change and hence must be the same God in both the OT and the NT. This is also one reason why studying the OT is so important as believers of Christ.

Secondly, all Scriptures is Spirit-inspired (2 Tim 3:16). At the point of writing, Paul was actually referring mainly to the OT from which most NT writers derived their theological insights from. Paul definitely used the OT extensively. James wrote with much implicit references to OT and Jewish literatures. Likewise, Peter and John used OT scriptures, John especially used a lot of OT imagery in Revelations. Even Luke used OT narratives as a foil for his Gospel account. To push the OT aside therefore in favour of NT is therefore akin to telling people that you just need two years to obtain your GCE A'Levels. While this sounds true, one forgets that you need another 10 years of foundation before embarking on a A'level education. The OT was the foundation from which the NT writers based their works on and to discount it is plain folly and unprofitable to the Christians.

At the heart of all these is a lack of Scriptural knowledge, or rather biblical illiteracy, which is showing implicitly in the Christian population in Singapore. This is not helped by preachers who are determined to preach their favourite topics at the expense of sound exegesis. Normal Christians are no better. I remember there was one sharing session in my office and we were talking about verses that talk about importance of Bible, prayer, fellowship and evangelism and to my surprise, most of my colleagues struggled in providing biblical references. And we are talking about Christians who are serving God full time professionally. What more should we say of Christians in the churches?

But we are in the process of growing and becoming more Christlike and hence we need to allow people the space to grow. The only point I want to emphasize is that as believers, we owe it to ourselves to study our Scripture and know the Word of God. No one can do it for us. And the Word of God is given to us as His grace to us, the grace already given is the OT, the new grace is the NT. Treasure them, and we will do well as His disciples.