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Conversion: From Religion to Grace
From the series: The One Covenant of Grace – The Salvation of the World
Text: Philippians 2:7
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
October 11,, 1987
Transcription of the spoken sermon
But whatever gain I had I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Philippians 2:7
God has determined from all eternity that He will save us, that He will redeem
the world. He made a pre-decision. He decided, not only to create, but also that
He would redeem, and we noted last week that that pre-decision is spoken of
sometimes in the scripture as predestination - simply the determination of God to
save, an eternal plan and purpose by which God will become the Saviour of the
world. And in the execution of that plan, within the course of human history, He
chose a special people, elected a people through whom to execute that plan and
purpose, and in binding Himself to that people specially chosen, He entered into
covenant relationship. And that covenant relationship with the people specially
chosen was in order, again, to execute His eternal plan and purpose, to send that
people specially chosen, bound to Him in covenant, to all the world to share good
news and to announce the grace and mercy of God for all people. That, in a
nutshell, is what the one story of the Bible is all about, and there's one covenant
of grace that is witnessed to throughout the whole of the scripture.
It is grace in the Old Testament where God called Abraham and bound Himself to
him. Abraham believed God and became the recipient of the grace of God.
Throughout the whole Old Testament it was a story of a special people, specially
graced. God bound Himself to the nation in the event of the Exodus and
reiterated the promise that He had spoken to Abraham, "I will be your God, you
will be my people." A special people in order that, through that people, all
families of the earth might be blessed and the light and the salvation of the
eternal God might be witnessed to in the midst of history. Jeremiah the prophet,
seeing the dismal results of that mission in the life of Israel and Judah, said,
Behold the days are coming when God will bind Himself in new covenant
and in that day it will not be a matter of external religion, but it will be
© Grand Valley State University
�Conversion: From Religion to Grace
Richard A. Rhem
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something of the heart, the law written within the heart when everyone
will know the Lord.
Jeremiah knew that the whole national scheme of things was falling into
shambles, but he also believed that the eternal plan and purpose of God would
not fail, that God would continue binding Himself to a people in order that,
through a people, there might be light for all people. The choice of a few on behalf
of the many. The choice, not simply to salvation, but to mission for the whole
world in order that the whole world might come to know that God is gracious,
that God is a Saviour.
Paul was a son of that old covenant, and the Judaism of that first century had
become a religion that had fallen into legalism and moralism as we know all too
well from the New Testament witness. And yet, there was still that zeal, that
determination and that dedication to God, which we see in the life of a Paul. Paul,
as he tells his own story, tells of a life before he met Jesus Christ that was full of
religion, that was full of pious practice, that was full of ritual rectitude, that was
full of legal morality, that was full of passion, seriousness, dedication and
commitment. But the paradox which Paul discovered was that his very religious
intensity was the means by which he was cutting himself off from experiencing
the love and the grace of God.
Paul, writing to the Church at Phillipi, is carrying on a controversy by those who
were disturbing those converts that he had brought to Jesus Christ. Those who
had come after him said, "Jesus, yes, but also Moses. Jesus, yes, but also the
ceremonies of the law, and all of the trappings of religion." Ritual purity, legal
rectitude, all of the embroiderment that so easily attaches itself to the
relationship of the person to God. Paul had cut through all of that. Paul had had
all of that cut through in the moment in which he was confronted by the Risen
and Ascended Lord Jesus Christ.
You know his story - On his way to throw into prison those who named the name
of Jesus, he was overcome with a brilliant light and heard the voice of Jesus. He
yielded himself to that voice, becoming the Apostle of Jesus Christ and the great
champion of the radical grace of God. Paul was one of the few figures in history
who understood the radicality of the grace of God. Paul was converted. Paul was
turned around in his tracks. Paul did a 180° twist. Paul's whole existence was
transformed in a moment, in the moment that he looked into the face of Jesus
Christ, and came to experience the grace - the grace of God in Jesus Christ, his
Lord.
This morning I want you to see that that one covenant of grace which is the one
story of the Bible, which is of cosmic scope and of eternal dimension, that
includes the new heaven and the new earth and all God's people, is nonetheless
just as individualizing and just as personal as your name. For it is one thing to
rejoice in the fact that God is a saviour, that God has determined to renew and to
redeem the world, that God has, from all eternity, loved and gives Himself in
© Grand Valley State University
�Conversion: From Religion to Grace
Richard A. Rhem
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love, binding Himself to the creation that He called into being. But finally, what
we all need to know is that we are loved, and that He knows our name.
The call to turn to God through Jesus Christ comes to us this morning, not as a
call to those beyond the bounds of the Church, not to the nonreligious, not to the
nonbeliever. We do that. We have a mission to the world. We do proclaim to
people everywhere the love and grace of God. But the interesting thing about the
call to conversion this morning as it comes to expression through Paul is that it is
the call to conversion to people who are religious, for whom religion has become
their security project by which they set themselves off from God.
That's the interesting thing about religion. Religion walks a narrow line. It can be
a blessing, or it can be a burden. It can be freeing and liberating, or it can be
binding and depressing. And I'm not sure but I suspect that religion has done
more damage in the world than it's done good, and I'm not sure, but I believe that
a person is better off with none of it than with a dose of a bad variety of it,
because religion can cramp the human spirit. Rather than liberate, it can oppress;
rather than inspire, it can dehumanize; it can make a person broken, cowering,
crushed. It can be the heaviest burden that one can ever be called upon to bear.
Paul understood that. He was deadly serious, deeply committed and passionately
involved in the practice of religion. And remember this, too, for Paul this was not
some kind of dark, degenerate paganism. Paul was a son of the covenant. Paul
lived in the light of the covenant of Israel; he lived in the light of the Torah; he
had all of the privilege that was accorded that special people to whom God had
specially bound Himself. When we speak of Paul, we're speaking of one who
served the true and living God, and what we have to see with Paul was that what
he needed was not to believe that there was a God rather than no God; what he
had to come to experience was not that he had to turn from his secular life and
begin to be serious about spiritual things. The interesting thing about Paul is that
he was all tied up in the true religion, in the religion of the true God, in the
revelation of the God to Israel. What he had to learn was that all of his religion
was his "self-project" by which he was securing himself, justifying himself,
seeking to validate himself over against God, to guarantee his life, to secure his
existence. That probably is the greatest temptation and the greatest peril to
religious people.
It's difficult to be the Church. It's difficult to be a society like we are, where
religion is practiced, where it has become institutionalized, where it has taken on
forms and structures, where it has developed a liturgy, a ritual life, a polity, a
form of government; where it has all of the trappings that any human institution
has. In such a situation where people are gathered together in the name of God in
the religious institution, there comes that subtle temptation to trust the
institution, to trust the practice, to trust the exercise of religion and to lose sight
of the fact that all of that is only so much scaffolding; all of that is so much
instrument or means for the end of coming to experience the grace of God.
© Grand Valley State University
�Conversion: From Religion to Grace
Richard A. Rhem
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Paul came to realize two very important things, which he shares with the congregation at Phillipi. He says that religion, first of all, or the grace of God, the
experience of salvation, is not a matter of status. If you want to talk credentials,
let me tell you my credentials, he says. He was an Israelite, so he belonged to that
special people who had been specially chosen, who had experienced the electing
love of God. More than that, he says, I was circumcised on the eighth day; I was
ritually proper. Once in a while I sense someone who gets very nervous about
being ritually pure. What if we do it this way, or what if we don't do it this way, or
what if this is not the process we follow, as though the rituals that we have
established have some kind of magic about them. What if the communion is
distributed by, God forbid, Deacons rather than Elders? Or if the bread should be
broken by an Elder rather than a Minister of the Word or, to be ridiculous, what if
the service were at 9 o'clock rather than 9:15?
And we may laugh, but religion has that terrifying power of binding people into
structures and forms that become absolutized and eternalized, and finally
become the things that are trusted, rather than recognizing that all of it could go.
All of it could go! We must simply rest in the grace of God, Who needs none of it!
And just the time we get so proper and so proud and so arrogant is the time that
the Spirit of God needs to shatter all of our forms. Paul was circumcised on the
eighth day; so what? His religion was burden, not a means of access to the smile
of God. The tribe of Benjamin - that's like saying the family of the Rockefellers,
the elite, something a little special. Paul says, No. To be in the grace of God is not
a matter of status.
But, neither is it a matter of achievement. If it were a matter of achievement,
would Paul have needed to find grace in the face of Jesus Christ? No, because
there wasn't much that God could do for Paul. He had achieved it all. Hebrew of
Hebrew-speaking parents. That means Jews of the dispersion living way off in
Tarsus but still speaking Hebrew. That's how serious was Paul's home about the
tradition. Still speaking Hebrew. As to the Law, a Pharisee. There were never
more than 6,000 of them. There were never many rough and ready religious
souls to be able to keep the discipline of the Pharisee. The Pharisee gets bad press
in the New Testament and we don't like them very well, but they were serious
people. They were the cream of the crop. Not many of us here in Christ
Community would qualify, a funny church such as we are! We take anybody. Not
many Pharisees could come out of a bunch like you. As to zeal, persecuting the
Church. No "live and let live" with Paul. No nonchalance. No easy tolerance. Paul
went to haul into prison those who dared to name the name of Jesus whom the
likes of Paul had crucified because Jesus put in peril their religion by which they
were justifying themselves. And he says as far as the Law is concerned, blameless.
Human achievement! Paul was no piker, but he wraps it all up in one little
package and tosses it on the dung hill, literally. Translate it more colloquially for
yourselves. That's what it was worth as a means of finding peace with God.
© Grand Valley State University
�Conversion: From Religion to Grace
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
A person whose religion is a matter of ought, heavy ought, duty, obligation,
onerous grinding out that which has to be done, all the time creating hostility
within and repressed anger that can never come out to God and so comes out in
ugliness to everybody else - all of that, Paul says, is to no avail. "One day I met
Jesus." Paul wasn't converted from darkness to light, from unbelief to belief, from
nonreligion to religion. Paul was converted from religion to grace, to the grace of
God Who says, "How come you're bustin' your buns, Buddy? I've always loved
you. Why don't you relax and let me put my arms around you? And then,
incidentally, tell the story."
"I considered all of that rubbish for the sake of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord,"
says Paul. His whole existence transformed. His life changed. Paul converted,
realizing what God intended in the first place with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob
and Israel. And what had happened in Israel happened in the Church over and
over again so that a voice like Paul's arises just once in a while and for not very
long because the cry of radical grace does not build strong institutions where
people are sheep and the religious leaders hold the spigot of grace. Once in a
while, through the sham and the ceremony of religious pride and arrogance, a
voice is raised, crying, "Radical grace!" and then again the saving God Who
revealed Himself in the face of Jesus breaks through and says to people, "Relax. I
love you. And there's nothing you can do about it."
Amen.
© Grand Valley State University
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Rhem, Richard A.
Source
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
Contributor
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
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English
Type
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Sound
Text
Identifier
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KII-01
Coverage
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1981-2014
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audio/mp3
text/pdf
Sound
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Event
Pentecost XIX
Series
One Covenant of Grace - the Salvation of the World
Scripture Text
Philippians 3:7
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
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KII-01_RA-0-19871011
Date
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1987-10-11
Title
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Conversion From Religion to Grace
Creator
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Richard A. Rhem
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
Relation
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Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
Language
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eng
Type
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Sound
Text
Format
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audio/mp3
application/pdf
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on October 11, 1987 entitled "Conversion From Religion to Grace", as part of the series "One Covenant of Grace - the Salvation of the World", on the occasion of Pentecost XIX, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Philippians 3:7.
Covenant of
Grace
Hebrew Scriptures
Nature of Religion
Prophets
Salvation of all
Universal Grace
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The God Who Forgives Us
From the sermon series: God, Our Ally
Text: Micah 7: 18-19; Romans 11: 33-36
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
July 28, 1985
Transcription of the spoken sermon
God is our Ally.
That is the center of our faith, the heart of the biblical revelation. He is there for
us, our friend, at our side, on our side. Our lives are undergirded by His
faithfulness and mercy, overshadowed by His love.
Even when we cannot sense it amidst tragedy, in the darkness, He holds us still.
Even when our conscience condemns us and our guilt threatens to overwhelm us
- even then, God is our Ally, for He is the God Who forgives us. That is the theme
of this message.
We recite the familiar Apostles' Creed and we affirm,
I believe the forgiveness of sins.
That is a great affirmation. That speaks to the deepest need of the human heart to be forgiven, to be accepted, to be right with God. That which is our deepest
need is that which God has provided, for He is a God Who forgives us.
Micah ends his prophecy with a great exclamation of hope and confidence, an
expression of sheer wonder at the grace and mercy of God.
Who is a God like Thee? Thou takest away guilt, Thou passeth over the
sin of the remnant of Thy people... Thou wilt show us tender affection and
wash away our guilt, casting our sins into the depth of the sea.
This amazed exclamation comes at the end of a prophetic book that had dealt
seriously with the sin of God's people, Judah. Micah prophesied near the end of
the Eighth Century, B.C. With Amos, Hosea and Isaiah he formed the quartet of
Eighth Century prophets that represents the golden age of Hebrew prophecy. The
social structures of Judah were in a state of deterioration. The nation lacked
moral integrity and Micah realized that this people was ripe for judgment.
© Grand Valley State University
�The God Who Forgives Us
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
He was a contemporary of Isaiah and although Isaiah, too, knew of the sin of the
nation, he could not yet conceive of the fall of Jerusalem. Micah, however,
predicted that fall, believing that Judah was not immune to the righteous
judgment of God. He did not whitewash the estate of a people who had left the
paths of righteousness.
But as for me, I am filled with power, with the Spirit of the Lord, and
with justice and might, to declare to Jacob his transgression and to Israel
his sin. (3:8)
Micah was no "soft touch."
But true to the prophetic tradition and the whole biblical perspective, judgment
was not the outpouring of the wrath of a vengeful God Who found pleasure in
destroying but rather the disciplining hand of a loving Father Whose purpose was
always and forever the redemption of His children. For Micah, then, the last word
was not judgment, but grace; not wrath, but mercy.
He does not retain his anger forever because he delights in steadfast love.
The forgiving grace of God is the last word and the psalm that concludes this
prophetic book sings it beautifully with a sense of wonder - the wonder known
and understood by all who know what it is to be forgiven.
Let us attempt to understand the wonder expressed in our text by acknowledging
the biblical diagnosis of the human condition - the condition of sin.
We can get this diagnosis from Micah or any other biblical writing. The text is a
statement that takes this human condition for granted; it is an expression of
amazement at the forgiving grace of God, given the human condition of sin. Paul
cites a Psalm and puts it bluntly:
All have sinned.
To be in a state of sin is to be in a state of alienation from God and one's
neighbor. In the Old Testament the Genesis stories portray the human person
doubting God's word and God's goodness, the unwillingness to live as creature
trusting the Creator, but rather wanting to usurp the place of God and to be Lord
of one's own destiny. It was Israel's lack of trust in God that is portrayed as the
root of their alienation and separation from God, which led to all the disastrous
consequences of their corporate and individual lives.
Sin is an old fashioned word. Its reality has been soft-pedaled, its seriousness
denied. Yet its manifestation is universal and its devastating effects everywhere to
be seen. Anyone with a pinch of common sense must acknowledge that
something is wrong. Those profound stories in Genesis, full of symbolic meaning,
© Grand Valley State University
�The God Who Forgives Us
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
tell us that something is wrong indeed, because we are out of relationship with
the God Who created us for Himself.
Modern psychiatry recognizes that something is wrong. A few years ago Karl
Menninger of the famed Menninger Clinic wrote a book that was titled, Whatever
Became of Sin? in which he implored the pulpit to preach on human sin because
this was to recognize the humanity of persons - that they are free and responsible
beings, accountable, with the need and capacity to repent. Otherwise we rob
persons of their unique humanness, their freedom and responsibility, making
them marionettes in a cosmic drama of fate.
This is the biblical perspective... God is good and not the author of evil. We make
wrong choices, foolish and brazen, and create chaos for ourselves and our world.
We get entwined in a web of wrong and we are wrong-headed and wrong-hearted.
We must own our wrong but we cannot unwrite the record of our deeds.
Therefore, we need to be forgiven or our situation is hopeless.
Ernest Becker, in his book, The Denial of Death, gives a fascinating analysis of
how the biblical picture of human sin parallels the findings of depth psychology
and psychoanalysis. He compares the work of the psychoanalyst, Otto Rank, with
the insights of the Christian thinker, Soren Kierkegaard. He writes:
Both men reached the same conclusion after the most exhaustive
psychological quest: That at the very furthest reaches of scientific
description, psychology has to give way to "theology" - that is, to a worldview that absorbs the individual's conflicts and guilt and offers him the
possibility for some kind of heroic apotheosis (to be exalted to the rank of
a god). Man cannot endure his own littleness unless he can translate it into
meaningfulness on the largest possible level. Here Rank and Kierkegaard
meet in one of those astonishing historical mergers of thought: that sin
and neurosis are two ways of talking about the same thing - the complete
isolation of the individual, his disharmony with the rest of nature, his
hyperindividualism, his attempt to create his own world from within
himself. Both sin and neurosis represent the individual blowing himself up
to larger than his true size, his refusal to recognize his cosmic
dependence... In sin and neurosis man fetishizes himself on something
narrow at hand and pretends that the whole meaning and miraculousness
of creation is limited to that, that he can get his beatification from that.
Rank's summing up of the neurotic world-view is at the same time that of
the classic sinner:
The neurotic loses every kind of collective spirituality, and makes
the heroic gesture of placing himself entirely within the immortality
of his own ego ... (p. 196)
© Grand Valley State University
�The God Who Forgives Us
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
There is not only the neurotic and the sinner's unreal self-inflation in the refusal
to admit creatureliness, but also a penalty for intensified self-consciousness "The failure to be consoled by shared illusions."
The result is that the sinner (neurotic) is hyperconscious of the very thing
he tried to deny: his creatureliness, his miserableness and unworthiness.
(p. 197)
But there is a significant difference between the classical sinner and the modern
neurotic.
Both of them experience the natureliness of human insufficiency, only
today the neurotic is stripped of the symbolic world-view, the God ideology
that would make sense out of his unworthiness and would translate it into
heroism. Traditional religion turned the consciousness of sin into a
condition for salvation; but the tortured sense of nothingness of the
neurotic qualifies him now only for miserable extinction, for merciful
release in lonely death. It is all right to be nothing vis-à-vis God, who
alone can make it right in His unknown ways; it is another thing to be
nothing to oneself, who is nothing. (p. 197)
In Rank's own summary:
The neurotic type suffers from a consciousness of sin just as much as did
his religious ancestor, without believing in the conception of sin. This is
precisely what makes him "neurotic"; he feels a sinner without the
religious belief in sin for which he therefore needs a new rational
explanation. (p. 198 in Becker from Rank, Beyond Psychology p. 193)
Thus declares Becker:
Thus the plight of modern man: a sinner with no word for it or, worse, who
looks for the word for it in a dictionary of psychology and thus only
approaches the problem of his separateness and hyperconsciousness.
Again, this impasse is what Rank meant when he called psychology a
"preponderantly negative and disintegrating ideology." (p. 198)
And sounding like a biblical prophet, Rank concludes, according to Becker, that
if neurosis is sin, and not disease, then the only thing which can "cure" it is
a world-view, some kind of affirmative collective ideology in which the
person can perform the living drama of his acceptance as a creature. Only
in this way can the neurotic come out of his isolation to become part of
such a larger and higher wholeness as religion has always represented. (p.
198F)
© Grand Valley State University
�The God Who Forgives Us
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
That is the conclusion of the best insight of the science of psychoanalysis and it is
a striking conclusion. Believing religion an illusion, Rank nonetheless believed
that human health could be achieved only by living in that illusion. Only thus
could the isolation and alienation of creatureliness be overcome by one being
caught up in a larger framework of meaning and purpose.
The diagnosis of the human condition is the same whether read from the Bible or
from the journals of psychiatry. The terminology differs but the meaning is the
same.
The human being turned in upon himself, rejecting the status of creature,
grasping for autonomy - that person is in biblical terminology a sinner, in
the parlance of modern psychology a neurotic.
Probably as much as anybody, Robert Schuller has attempted to utilize the
findings of the psychological science in his presentation of the Gospel. In his
book, Self Esteem, he contends that we are born with a lack of trust. This is
suggested by Erik Erikson in his studies in child psychology. Thus Schuller
contends we are by nature fearful, anxious, but not wicked. However one
responds to Schuller's dialogue with classical Reformed theology, he does make
an important point. For too long in the Church we have assaulted the dignity of
human personality and have ground persons even deeper into the paralysis of
their sinful condition with our heavy handed preaching of human sin.
The question is not whether we are sinful and thus commit sins for which we are
guilty. That is plain for anyone to see. The question is rather how can we
understand the human predicament and meaningfully bring the Gospel to that
predicament so that human transformation will result?
Somehow we must recognize that all the wrong we do, all the hell on earth we
create, is a reflection not of the human nature God created in his own image, but
of a negative response of that human nature which fails to understand God, itself,
and the way to wholeness.
This is not to downplay the havoc wrought by the person. Schuller uses the image
of a golf ball. Outside is a thin, dimpled cover. Beneath are layers and layers of
rubber wrappings. The core is a hard rubber ball. To describe a golf ball simply in
terms of the outer cover is superficial. The real nature of the golf ball is still
unknown. The outer cover he compares to human rebellion. But whence comes
that rebellion? Schuller claims we are like that golf ball. At the core is a natural
lack of self-esteem, a negative self image - all coming from a lack of trust. From
that core come all those rubber wrappings: anxiety, fear and all negative
emotions resulting in a face that appears angry, mean, rebellious. At the core of
our being we are non-trusting, insecure, defensive and our response to life is
angry, negative, destructive. Projecting our fear and suspicion outward, we ruin
our interpersonal relationships and generally make a mess of our lives and the
community.
© Grand Valley State University
�The God Who Forgives Us
Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
Berkhof in his Christian Faith sees our sin "rooted in the creaturely structure of
the risky being called man." We do seem to live in two worlds; we are part of the
animal kingdom and we are created in the image of God. There is both our
misuse of freedom and therefore our guilt and there is a gravitational force from
below. In Berkhof s terms:
Sin is not a fall from a higher form of existence, but the refusal to rise to
the higher form of existence of loving fellowship with God. Sin is contrary
to nature precisely because it is a yielding to the pull of our inherited
nature. Man falls victim to it if he does not in confidence, in surrender,
and in obedience open himself to the call from on high as it invites him to
join unconditionally and with his whole being in God's venture of a joint
history with man. (p. 207)
While not contending that Schuller and Berkhof are saying the same thing or
share a common analysis of the human condition, this much can be said - and
needs to be said - it is possible to understand the sinful behavior of persons,
acknowledging the seriousness of the wrong that we do, without painting the
human being as a monster, wicked and incorrigible.
Invited to friendship with God from above, pulled by a gravitational force from
below, the human being is both guilty and tragic, wonderful and capable of
transformation.
What, then, is the deepest human need?
Is it not unconditional love, unlimited grace, full acceptance and free forgiveness?
What we most need God provides, for He is the God Who forgives
If the rather long path we have taken to diagnose the human condition is accurate
- the biblical picture, the insight of psychoanalysis, of Schuller and Berkhof, then
what is it that can effect human transformation? How can human nature be
changed? Simply stated: An encounter with unconditional love and grace.
If it is true that at our core we are lacking in trust, fearful and anxious and if all
forms of negative behavior are the consequence, then it is precisely in the
experience of being encountered by an all-embracing grace and a nonthreatening love that we will find our anger dissolved, the shell of our hostility
shed and our defenses fall away.
The Gospel is the good news about God whose nature is love and Whose love in
action toward us is grace. And God encounters us in Jesus Christ. It is when we
encounter God in Jesus Christ that we know what it is to be unconditionally
accepted and embraced by grace. We meet God when we meet Jesus and we meet
Jesus when we meet a brother or sister in whom he lives and through whom he
loves.
© Grand Valley State University
�The God Who Forgives Us
Richard A. Rhem
Page 7
Then we may well exclaim with Micah,
Who is a God like thee? Thou takest away guilt... casting our sins into the
depths of the sea.
Is it that simple? Yes, it is. But it is not cheap. The story of Jesus reveals the
costliness of that forgiveness. His life, his death. He lived a fully human life in
total harmony with the Father. He bore our sin in his body on the tree. God made
him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness
of God in him. We are forgiven through Jesus Christ our Lord. We are accepted in
Jesus. When we can receive that, "hear" that, really appropriate that, we are
changed, transformed, inside out.
The Gospel announces forgiveness through the grace of God; He the God Who
forgives us.
No wonder Micah exclaimed in wonder,
Who is a God like thee?
Paul was awestruck, too, at the forgiving grace of God offered in Jesus Christ. In
Romans 9-11 he struggles with Israel's failure to believe in Jesus as their Messiah.
He finally concludes that in the mystery of God's ways Israel's disobedience has
resulted in the salvation of the Gentile world but he never gives up on Israel
either. Quoting from Isaiah 27:9,
From Zion shall come the Deliverer; he shall remove wickedness from
Jacob, And this is the covenant I will grant them, when I take away their
sins…
He contends that God will one day remove Israel's sin as well because he is
certain of the faithfulness of God and the unconditional nature of his promise.
"... God's choice stands, and they are his friends for the sake of the
Patriarchs. For the gracious gifts of God and his calling are irrevocable."
(11:28-29)
He can only conclude - even though he cannot fully fathom For in making all mankind prisoners to disobedience, God's purpose was
to show mercy to all mankind. (11:32)
This leaves him breathless. In a mood similar to Micah's, he breaks out in grand
doxology:
O depth of wealth, wisdom and knowledge in God! How unsearchable his
judgments, how untraceable his ways! ... Source, Guide and Goal of all
that is - to him be glory for ever! Amen." (11:33-36)
© Grand Valley State University
�The God Who Forgives Us
Richard A. Rhem
Page 8
What a doxology! What a God! And what calls forth that irrepressible praise of
the whole human being? The marvel of a grace that forgives! God is a God Who
forgives us! Now if only we could believe it; if only we could receive it.
Let me speak of God's forgiveness lifting up some aspects of it that may cause us
to sense more deeply its wonder and to appropriate more fully its blessing.
The first thing 1 would point out is that God's forgiveness has already been
provided - it is a reality now offered unconditionally to all who will receive it. God
does not hold us at arm's length, seeing first if we measure up, if we are worthy, if
we will do it all right now and not abuse His free grace. We do not deserve it.
It was while we were yet enemies that we were reconciled - while we
were yet sinners that Christ died for us. (Romans 5:6-8)
Forgiveness is not conditional on good behaviour; there is no parole system with
God - just a declaration of undeserved mercy and freedom from the guilt of our
sin. Forgiveness is not a future possibility if in the meantime we keep our nose
clean. Forgiveness has already been procured through the one offering of Jesus
and is ours now.
There is now therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
(Romans 8:1)
The Gospel is not a religion. A religion has a teaching, a ritual, a way of life.
Christianity is a religion, but the Gospel is the announcement of what is true now
because God has acted: Forgiveness is provided already - secured, forgiveness is
freely offered, forgiveness can be now received - received only as gift.
A second reflection I would share is that it is those who need it most who find it
the most difficult to receive it and personally to appropriate it.
Certainly there are those who bulldoze their way through life with seemingly little
sensitivity to the havoc they produce and the hurt they inflict. But I am more
concerned about the one of sensitive conscience, the one who longs to be right
but senses her failings and perhaps even despairs, feeling simply a failure. That
one tends to withdraw from the grace of God and from the fellowship where that
grace is extended. Such a one feels unworthy which is true enough; yet it is
precisely there that the misconception of forgiveness manifests itself. For if I do
not allow myself the luxury of grace, being unworthy, then I must be saying that
those who do receive it are worthy and then, of course, grace is no longer grace.
When I feel wrong, then I feel I do not belong. Withdrawal, isolation, alienation the bitter fruits of failure and despair not dispensed by God's unconditional grace
that will never be defeated, will not give up or let go.
© Grand Valley State University
�The God Who Forgives Us
Richard A. Rhem
Page 9
I wonder if in this state we do not take ourselves too seriously. Are we so allimportant and our sin of such cosmic dimension that even God can not forgive us
and create for us a new beginning? Is not such withdrawal really the last holdout
of pride that says, "I will do it on my own or I will not do it"?
This leads me to a third observation which follows as a matter of course:
Forgiveness is only for the helpless, the hopeless, the one who cannot help
himself. We know that; it is a truism of the Gospel. But we find it difficult to keep
that truth before our minds. That is inevitable in the Church, I suppose. In the
Church you hear about the "oughtness" of life. Certainly there is an "oughtness"
in Christian existence:
We ought to love God.
We ought to love our neighbor.
We ought to live truthfully, honestly, nobly, purely, faithfully, etc.
Thus the Church becomes the society of oughtness, the place where duty and
obligation are set forth, the place where discipline and censure are applied and
where failure is not easily tolerated. It is the last place one would dare be honest
about his life. Thus develops the paradoxical situation that the place of grace
becomes a place of judgmental spirit and the place of Good News becomes the
place of bad news.
And what kind of people do we form? People grim-faced, tightly wound, anxious,
masking their real life full of conflict and ambiguity behind a facade of
community respectability, lacking real spontaneity and joy.
Are you a hopeless case? You are very near the Kingdom; you are forgiven;
breathe easy and begin to enjoy the journey.
Finally, I can hear a chorus of dissent: You make the Gospel too easy; you make a
mockery of the Christian life. To that I can only say I will take that risk if only I
can help one suffering, sensitive struggler to hear and receive the Gospel of
forgiveness. And further, religion doesn't work anyway; it only binds another
burden on people and places one more monkey on their back. Religion never
transformed anyone. It controls, manipulates, keeps one in line (in public,) but it
can never free and heal and make whole.
If I am accused of announcing a grace that might put in jeopardy duty and
obligation and law, then I am in good company; St. Paul was likewise objected to.
He spoke glowingly of the triumph of grace in his Roman letter:
But where sin was thus multiplied, grace immeasurably exceeded it, in
order that, as sin established its reign by way of death, so God's grace
might establish its reign in righteousness, and issue in eternal life
through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Romans 5:21)
© Grand Valley State University
�The God Who Forgives Us
Richard A. Rhem
Page10
That "immeasurably exceeded" follows an earlier "vastly exceeded by the grace of
God" in verse 15 and an "in far greater measure" -verse 17. Thus Paul knows what
will be countered.
What are we to say, then? Shall we persist in sin, so that there may be ail
the more grace? (6:1)
He answers sharply, "No, no!"
And his answer contains the key to mystery of human transformation; it is
precisely the reality of an unconditional love and gracious acceptance that
triggers inward change; this is the reality that by the Spirit effects new birth.
Law can point the way, Law can indicate duty, Law can carry with it threat, Law
can hem us in, bind us up, keep us in tow, effecting an external conformity to
righteousness, But Law cannot change us. Law will never make us dizzy with
wonder, speechless in awe finally to exclaim, “What a God!”
Who is a God like Thee?
God is our Ally; He is the God Who forgives us.
References:
Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death. First published in 1973.
Hendrikus Berkhof, Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Study of the Faith.
Wm Eerdmans & Co., 1979.
Robert H. Schuller. Self-Esteem: The New Reformation. Word Books, 1983.
© Grand Valley State University
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Rhem, Richard A.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
Contributor
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
Rights
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Text
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
KII-01
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1981-2014
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio/mp3
text/pdf
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Event
Pentecost IX
Series
God Our Ally
Scripture Text
Micah 7:18-19, Romans 11:33-36
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
References
Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death, 1973
Hendrikus Berkhof, Christian Faith, 1979
Robert H. Schuller, Self-Esteem: The New Reformation, 1983.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
KII-01_RA-0-19850728
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1985-07-28
Title
A name given to the resource
The God Who Forgives Us
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Richard A. Rhem
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
Relation
A related resource
Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Text
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio/mp3
application/pdf
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on July 28, 1985 entitled "The God Who Forgives Us", as part of the series "God Our Ally", on the occasion of Pentecost IX, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Micah 7:18-19, Romans 11:33-36.
Forgiveness
Grace
Hebrew Scriptures
Judgment
Micah
Nature of God
Prophets
Sin
Transformation
Trust