Cross Evangelical Lutheran Church

GRACE IS DIVINE AND HUMAN

British poet Alexander Pope famously wrote, “To err is human; to forgive is divine.” With these words, the wordsmith was acknowledging two biblical truths: First, because of their sinful nature, human beings will continue to make mistakes, commit errors, and fall into sin. Second, the removal of such sins is beyond the capability of any mortal; forgiveness of sin is something that is only possible for our divine Creator to accomplish.

Even the enemies of Jesus understood this second concept. You might remember their outraged thoughts while Jesus was absolving the paralyzed man before healing him, as they asked themselves, “Who can forgive sins but God alone?” (Luke 5:21). Forgiveness requires absolute authority over all things spiritual, and what human being could claim to hold such power by their own right or position?

What Christ’s opponents missed is a simple, profound fact: Jesus is no mere man. He is the God-man, fully divine and fully human. He is the son of Mary and the Son of God. Grace, both as an abstract concept and as a divine characteristic, is exceedingly difficult for us to appreciate without some sort of concrete illustration. As such, God made his grace as real and visible as possible when he sent his Son in human flesh. Jesus is the personification of God’s grace in the midst of sinners. Our fully human Savior then proceeded to use his uniquely divine authority to procure and proclaim nothing less than the complete forgiveness of our sin—for all people, for all generations, for all eternity.

In so doing, Christ took the divine attribute of God’s grace and made it applicable to human beings. As John wrote about Jesus, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). The blessings of faith in the Son are that we are justified heirs of grace and that his grace and forgiveness belong to us (Titus 3:7). Our Savior even puts this same grace on our lips as he shares his forgiving authority with us in John’s gospel: “If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven” (20:23). Properly speaking, perfect grace is something that only belongs to God. In Christ, such perfect grace and forgiveness belong to us, to treasure as our possession by faith and to share with a guilt-ridden world that is burdened by sin.

Only God’s grace, and his grace alone, could take the divine gift that we desperately need and embody it in the person of his Son, so we mere mortals can claim it as our own and proclaim it freely to others.