Slippery Slope?

I dearly love the Reformed doctrine of God’s grace. It is one of the reasons I love the Reformed tradition and the Christian Reformed Church. The booklet What It Means to Be Reformed: An Identity Statement (2006) defined grace as “the unmerited favor of God toward those who do not deserve it. Grace is the unconditional and freely given love of God to people who can do nothing to earn it but can only accept it as a gift. … Grace is the astounding truth that nothing we do can make God love us more or less. God loves us because he loves us. God loves us because he is rich in love” (pp. 14-15). It is a balm to my sick soul because I know that I can never earn God’s love. Nothing we can do—whether by word, deed, or thought—can make God love us more or love us less. I always thought this was a Reformed emphasis.

Hence I feel the urge to sound a warning. Though well-intentioned, synod’s recent zeal to discipline not only those who behave differently but also those who believe differently might inadvertently send a wrong message: that God’s favor is conditional on our acting “correctly” and believing “correctly.” Without a counterbalancing emphasis on grace and compassion, all the energy and urgency directed not only at proclaiming something to be wrong but at clarifying and codifying rules to either discipline or exclude those who think otherwise can send that wrong message.

I worry about the proverbial slippery slope in practice, if not in theory, toward earning God’s favor by doing right and believing right. That is not a historic Reformed emphasis, though it is often a temptation for Reformed Christians. The 19th-century Reformed theologian Herman Bavinck warned about a “righteousness by good doctrine” posture (The Certainty of Faith, p. 26), which he thought his fellow Protestants were dangerously flirting with, as opposed to Catholics’ tendency toward “righteousness by good works.” Either posture moves us away from God’s grace, God’s unearned favor.

Good works, obedience, and—in my opinion—even good theologizing do not earn us God’s favor. They are, rather, our responses of gratitude to God and signs of our placing our trust correctly: in Christ. The What It Means to Be Reformed booklet also speaks of gratitude as a Reformed emphasis:

One of the most significant features of the Heidelberg Catechism is the placement of its teaching on the Ten Commandments. Of the three sections of the catechism—Our Guilt, God’s Grace, Our Gratitude—the Ten Commandments are placed in the section on gratitude. Christians don’t obey God in order to get rid of their guilt or in order to earn their salvation. They obey because God already has removed their guilt and given them the free gift of salvation. Obedience is the Christian’s way of saying thank you for the gift of salvation, not the way of earning salvation (p. 24).

I don’t fear that we would change our written theology away from salvation by God’s grace alone through faith in Christ Jesus. But I do fear that our unspoken theology in practice can devolve into anxiously policing ourselves and others in both right actions and right thinking in order to earn God’s love and favor. I fear our focus is slipping into drawing boundaries for God’s love rather than gratefully exploring the depths of God’s love. I pray that it would not be so.