Getting the scale right

Following on with part of what I said in the previous post, I had a glance at this earlier today. The example given is unfortunately so common to how many Christians try to explain grace. The problem is to an extent that so often we try and make nice illustrations of topics, which unfortunately often fall far short of hitting with the real impact of what we are trying to describe (something that I am sure I fall victim to, I have a habit of trying to find analogies for everything). In this case, grace is in danger of being interpreted as an unexpected pleasantry.

Sometimes, it's worth considering why we feel the need to find illustrations and aids to understanding. Sometimes it's because we struggle to see the "mechanics" of how something works, and so an illustration can be useful to understand the concept. But with grace, our problem isn't so much understanding the concept - most people can get the idea of a free gift - but actually grasping the scale of the gift. If this is case, illustrations like offering people free jelly beans doesn't really help people to appreciate the full force of the message of scripture. In these instances, it is often better to forego the attempt at illustrating and instead allow exposition to do the work:

"For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous man–though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die– but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us."

Romans 5:6-8

This is the magnitude of God's love for us. We were his enemies, living in open rebellion against him, yet his response is to send his Son to die in our place. This is the idea and the magnitude of God's grace, and it's this thought that we must seek to meditate in the inevitable and (if you are like me) the all too common moments when we slip into "jelly bean" type thinking.