In the first issue of this series, I made the follow distinction of grace:
A “throne of grace” is a description of what proceeds from the seat in thought and action rather than its construction. Just as your friends recognize you in your car, we are supposed to recognize God as He functions from His throne. Those who do, agree that all they witness is a spectacle of what grace is like. You must recognize grace – not as you’ve been told, but as it emanates from the throne.
I stated in the last posting that the Genesis creation event is depicted in two distinct perspectives: The kingdom of God versus the fallen kingdom of men. We find the kingdom of God represented wherever there is the proclamation, “…Let there be…” The creative nature of these words encapsulates the law of grace. Yes, grace is a law with indescribable power to bring order into chaos, peace into madness, and joy into despair. Grace is the highest law in the kingdom of God and every other law submits to it.
I recognize how the minute someone mentions the word “law” hyper-grace fanatics scream, “I’m not under the law! Jesus fulfilled the law for me, and I am now under grace!” Child, you’ve always been under grace, you just didn’t know it. Let me show you how.
At the end of Paul’s letter to the people of Galatia, he makes the follow claim:
Gal 6:7-9 Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. (8) For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting. (9) And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.
My short response to this passage is: Karma is a bitch – but grace! It matters not whether you call it sowing and reaping, cause and effect, paying the piper, karma, or the secret, it is a universal law of not only this natural world, which no one escapes from, but it a spiritual law too. To think you can, is what Paul describes as “mocking God,” or thumbing your nose at Him. This universal law is only superseded by the law of grace.
In the opening soliloquy to the fourth gospel, we overhear how grace came by Jesus. So, consider on the fourth day after the crucifixion of Jesus, was the law of sowing and reaping still in effect upon all? You know this to be true. Do you think that every person who had a part to play in the death of this innocent man, upon hearing of his resurrection, suddenly experience the dreadful crisis of a consciousness which knew how reaping from their acts would play out? Consider how many people, now faced with the evidence of one who truly was the son of God, are going to expect God to appear before them and carry out divine judgement. How many hours, and even days, did they cower in fear of the imagined retribution which a crowd, led by Jesus, might also justly inflict upon them? Karma, baby!
But grace!
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