Gilead and the Implications of Grace

In Marilynne Robinson's Gilead, Rev. John Ames is in failing health, approaching death. He has a young son, the product of a late-in-life marriage to a much younger woman. Realizing that there is much that he will not be present to teach his son, Rev. Ames takes up writing a letter to his son, intending it to be read when his son is closer to adulthood.

In this letter he writes about many of life’s lessons that he’s learned and recounts many of the events that have made up his life. At one point (pp. 72-73), Rev. Ames has this to say about his best friend’s son:

“I don’t know how one boy could have caused so much disappointment without ever giving any grounds for hope. Man, I should say, since he’s well into his thirties. No, he must be forty by now. He is not the eldest or the youngest or the best or the bravest, only the most beloved.”

He goes on to state,

“I have said at least once a week that there is an absolute disjunction between our Father’s love and our deserving. Still, when I see this same disjunction between human parents and children, it always irritates me a little. (I know you will be and I hope you are an excellent man and I will love you absolutely if you are not.)”

Indeed, how absolute is the disjunction between God’s love and our deserving. This is one of the hardest lessons for us to learn. Even after we’ve learned it conceptually, it is so hard to learn it functionally. The Bible is absolutely clear that we can do nothing to merit God’s love. Our sinful condition leaves us deserving nothing but his wrath. And yet he has loved us still! Christ’s perfect obedience has earned the Father’s love and favor for us, and his death on the cross has atoned for our sin, absorbing the punishment we deserved.

Especially in light of this grace, it is amazing how quick we are to apply standards to others that we have no intention of applying to ourselves. Rev. Ames readily acknowledges that he will love his son absolutely regardless of his deserving, when only a sentence earlier he had stated how much that irritates him in others. If we were to, in humility count others more significant than ourselves (Philippians 2:19) and to love our neighbor as ourselves (Leviticus 19:18), it would radically change the amount of grace we are willing to afford others.

How easily we disconnect the gospel from its natural implications. If we truly understand how little we deserve and deeply know the grace that God has shown us, then that will transform the way we look at others. Indeed, I need to love others better. But that is not the sickness; it is only a symptom. What I really need to do is know the love of God better, for if I do, I will be compelled to love others better. We love because he first loved us. (1 John 4:19).