Grace, then, means neither that men can or ought to do something, nor that they can or ought to do nothing. Grace means that God does something. Nor does grace mean that God does ‘everything’. Grace means that God does some quite definite thing, not a thing here and a thing there, but something quite definite in men. Grace means that God forgives men their sins. Grace is the self-consciousness of the new man, the answer to our question concerning out existence. We are not in a position to say anything which is relevant concerning grace and sin, until our perception has been sharpened and we are protected from pantheism by being reminded of the critical significance of the death of Christ; until we have been liberated from obsession with the problem concerning what we can or ought to do or not to do. Grace is the Kingdom of God, His rule and power and dominion. Grace is radically contrasted with the whole realm of human possibility, the sphere of the sovereignty of sin. Though grace, on account of this contrast, lies beyond all human possibility, yet nevertheless, for the same reason, it judges human life and launches a disturbing attack upon it. In so far as in this contrast God is encountered, human life is refashioned and provided with a new hope and a new promise. Grace, as the power and authority of God over men, can never be identified with the actions or with the passivity of the men of this world. Grace is the unobservable truth of men: it is their impossibility, which constitutes the veritable possibility of their acting or not acting; it is their veritable existence, which can be defined only as non-existence. The man who is under grace has this contradiction in himself. Grace is not ‘something’ which a man has in himself, it is that which God has in him, by which the man of sin is contradicted. Since, however, we know only the man of sin, this contradiction contradicts all men, and it contradicts ourselves. We are therefore compelled to say quite definitely that to possess grace does not mean to be or not to be this or that, or to do or not to do this or that. The possession of grace means the existential submission to God’s contradiction of all that we ourselves are or are not, of all that we do or do not do. ‘Grace possessed’ means that we are presented unto obedience to the contradiction, and that we are His servants. This possession of grace occurs as the impossible possibility of God which is beyond every possibility of our own: it is the freedom which God takes to Himself in us. HE takes it, and He takes it IN US.

Posted on February 28, 2010