Grace (& Self-Compassion)
“I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!
So then, with my mind I am a slave to the law of God, but with my flesh I am a slave to the law of sin.
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do.”
–Romans 7:21-8:3a
So then, with my mind I am a slave to the law of God, but with my flesh I am a slave to the law of sin.
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do.”
–Romans 7:21-8:3a
Centuries of legalism within the Christian church make it clear that the reality of the gospel’s message is hard for us to grasp. The truth is that we are unable to live well enough to justify ourselves. Jesus is straight-forward about this throughout his time on earth—trying to “get it right” is not his hope for us. Instead, He offers us grace. The assurance that we are completely loved exactly as we are. We feel squeamish about this, fearful that we’re taking an easy way out. But the fact that so few of us really live as loved people shows that there is nothing easy about accepting grace. We would rather be in control of our worthiness, and it’s hard to relinquish this to the reality of a grace-filled God. This is literal: “There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” Wow. We can be completely honest about our screw-ups and completely confident in being okay exactly as we are. We can open ourselves up to receiving God’s compassion, forgiveness, and love as so clearly outlined in Scripture without thinking that we’re “cheating” somehow. We can even be active in responding to ourselves with these godly qualities—compassion, forgiveness, and love—rather than beating ourselves up when we fail. This is powerful.
There is often a fear that receiving grace and compassion when we mess up is going to stop us from improving and growing. This is not actually the case. Showing ourselves compassion leaves plenty of room for repentance, learning from our mistakes, working toward goals, and being transformed. Self-compassion actually facilitates this kind of transformational growth by taking out the fear of failure that binds us and allowing us to be more open to learning from our experience. When we respond to ourselves with kindness (as God does), we acknowledge with the Apostle Paul that we do not act in the ways that we want and that this is difficult. We are honest about our frustration and pain, and we respond to ourselves in this pain with love that heals. Mindfulness is rooted in self-compassion. Without self-compassion, moment-to-moment awareness can become excruciating. Life is hard, and we often work fairly hard to avoid that awareness. This allows a lurking belief that life is hard because we are doing something wrong, that it is our fault. That other people are doing it better and we just can’t get our act together. We see others’ marriages, parenting, financial status, professional accomplishments, friendships, cars, etc. and think “what is wrong with me that I can’t live the way I want to?” Through self-compassion, we change this response to ourselves and notice that life isn’t hard because we’re doing something wrong—life is hard for everyone. We start to receive God’s grace and treat ourselves like a friend when we’re hurting rather than beating up on ourselves because we’re suffering. We stop comparing and experience gratitude for whatever abundance (in whatever form) we have. |
"Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and the pain of it no less than the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace." "You want people to recognize the truth of who they are--that they're exactly what God had in mind when God made them." |