Newbigin: pure grace

Saturday, September 26, 2020
    Commemoration of Wilson Carlile, Priest, Founder of the Church Army, 1942
Meditation:
    Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
    —1 Peter 2:10 (NIV)
Quotation:
    There is a covenant, ... and God is faithful to His covenant. But the substance of that covenant is all pure mercy and grace. If men presume to claim for themselves, upon the basis of the covenant, some relationship with God other than that of the sinner needing God’s grace, the covenant has been perverted. And where that has happened, God, in the sovereign freedom of His grace, destroys these pretensions, calls “No people” to be His people, breaks off natural branches and grafts in wild slips, filling them with the life which is His own life imparted to man. There is no law in His Kingdom save the law of pure grace. That is why they come from east and west to sit down with Abraham and Isaac, while the sons of the Kingdom are cast out; for the sons of the Kingdom have no place there unless they are willing to sit down with all whom the Lord of the feast shall call, and to receive His mercy in exactly the same way as the publicans and sinners.
    ... Lesslie Newbigin (1909-1998), The Household of God, London, SCM Press, 1953, New York: Friendship Press, 1954, p. 90-91 (see the book)
    See also 1 Pet. 2:10; Jer. 31:31-34; Matt. 9:11-13; Rom. 11:22-24
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, I am not worthy of Your mercy, except through the merits of Jesus. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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