lay down your life

 I'm perpetually bemused by cheap grace.

It's a Bonhoeffer concept in which he says that people are in love with cheap grace. The idea that any discussion of law, of sin, can be easily watered down to the point that it doesn't say anything anymore. You, as the Christian, would read the word of God about how you are to lay down your life for the brothers, and your conclusion would be that you should practice self care. This is not an uncommon view, you understand, so how do you get to that point? 

Cheap grace.

The idea that you don't worship a Christ who forgives sins, but rather a Christ who tells you how to live. And the advice that you would get from most people who would tell you how to live is that you should do things like practice self care, drink water, get rest and exercise, that kind of thing. People who want to give you practical advice for life rarely tell you that the best thing for you to do is to lay down your life for someone else. That gets frowned upon in self care circles really quickly. 

But Jesus isn't a self care guy. His advice is to lay down your life for your friends, to show the greatest love you can have. Now, as I mentioned on Sunday, the odds of you having to be killed for your brethren are low low odds. It may come up, and we all have to be prepared for what that would mean, to be sure, but it's not really likely that you would have to literally die for your friends. Rather, what's likely is that your friends may need your help, your time, your input, etc. They will likely at some point need your money. Not a lot all at once of any of those, but they'll sure need a lot over time.

And believe it or not, your time, your money, those things are your life, really. In bite sized formats. That's what your life is composed of, minutes, hours, days, etc. In many ways we like to think of our life as being separate from our lives, which is strange to say, but think about it. You don't think of your day to day (getting up, drinking coffee, taking a shower, eating breakfast, driving to work, etc etc) as your life. You don't think of those things as your life. That's just some stuff. But in reality, that's a lot of your life. And we don't think about how we treat the people we see everyday as indicative of how we treat people, but that is how you treat people. You may think of yourself as being calm and patient because you would totally good samaritan someone that you saw beaten by the side of the road, but for most of us, how you would treat a beaten gentleman is not a very good indicator of how you treat people, given that you typically see almost zero beaten roadside gentlemen in an average week.

The story we tell ourselves is that we would totally spring into action if called upon to do the right thing, but the need for us to do the right thing just never comes up, fortunately for us. We would treat people well in one grand gesture, but won't treat them well on a daily basis. We would absolutely lay down our lives for our friends, but won't pick up the phone when we know they need help moving. That kind of thing. And that line of thought is awfully pervasive in things - we always assume that we could handle an act of supreme sacrifice if called upon, safe in the knowledge that it's not going to be an obligation for us anytime soon. 

But Christ dictates that you should be laying down your life for your friends. And that means that you are going to be asked to die for the brothers, yes, but also to spend your life bit by bit on them. And that will come up on a regular basis. After all, we forget that the injunction from Jesus in Matthew 25 (When I was sick, did you take care of me, when I was hungry did you feed me, when I was naked did you clothe me) apply to the sick and vulnerable but also to those who need your help on a regular basis. Because that's your actual life. The people you need to feed and clothe and take care of on a regular basis, that's how you actually treat people .That's the nature of your sacrifice, the nature of you laying down your life for the brothers. Thinking about this means that the way you treat people on a regular basis is how you treat people. Your life is the sum of what you do on a consistent basis. You can't claim a moral good on how you would act if a grand gesture would come up and you're never required to do it. Rather, you laying down your life for your brothers will be laying down your time and resources for them nice and regularly. 

It seems like a lot, which it is, which is why you need grace as much as you do. Have you laid down your life for the brothers? Probably not as much as you should have. Have you given until there's nothing left? I doubt it. And that's why you need Jesus, who did all those things, and imbues you with that same righteousness. Which is good, because that gulf between what Jesus asks for and what you can do is why you need his grace.