UMR Communications is offering the latest headlines in the RSS format.
Commentary
GEN-X RISING: Transformed through holy habits Andrew C. Thompson, Nov 27, 2007
By Andrew C. Thompson UMR Columnist
In 2 Corinthians 3:18, Paul tells us that “we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.”
What a promise!
It is the promise of sanctification: By the working of the Holy Spirit, we are even now being changed into the likeness of God.
It’s true that we usually think about God’s grace perfecting us in the afterlife. But as Paul makes clear in this passage, it is a transformation that begins here on earth and within the church.
So we have to ask the question, “How does sanctification really happen?”
And the answer comes in the phrase, the “means of grace.” They are the outward signs, words and actions that God has ordained for us to receive transforming grace. Think of them as spiritual practices to which we commit ourselves in the expectation that they will shape us in Christlike ways.
In the Wesleyan tradition, we call the means of grace oriented toward the love of God “works of piety,” and the means of grace oriented toward the love of neighbor “works of mercy.” I am focusing here on works of piety.
It is true that “piety” has something of a negative connotation today, but that need not be the case. Piety just means “religious devotion,” and that’s how John Wesley used the word.
For Wesley, works of piety consist of those private acts of devotion and public acts of worship that we are called to practice as Christian believers. As he wrote in On Working Out Our Own Salvation: “Use family prayer, and cry to God in secret. Fast in secret, and ‘your Father which seeth in secret, he will reward you openly.’ Search the Scriptures; hear them in public, read them in private, and meditate therein. At every opportunity be a partaker of the Lord’s Supper. ‘Do this in remembrance of him,’ and he will meet you at his own table. Let your conversation be with the children of God, and see that it ‘be in grace, seasoned with salt.’”
This passage highlights what Wesley sees as essential: prayer, the study of Scripture, fasting, the Lord’s Supper and holy conversation with other Christians. As Wesley points out, some of these are private, such as fasting, and some are public, including the Lord’s Supper and holy conversation. Still others can be either public or private, such as prayer and Bible study. But they are all practices of the community of faith called the church.
Simply put, works of piety are those holy habits that, when ingrained into a person’s life, become the channels by which God’s transforming grace is received. They nurture and grow our faith, and that is vitally important.
Some might think all this attention to acts of discipleship is an attempt to earn God’s grace. Nothing could be further from the truth. Wesley himself says in The Means of Grace: “We know that there is no inherent power in the words that are spoken in prayer, in the letter of Scripture read, the sound thereof heard, or the bread and wine received in the Lord’s Supper; but that it is God alone who is the giver of every good gift, the author of all grace; that the whole power is of him, whereby through any of these there is any blessing conveyed to our soul.”
Truth be told, I don’t think we need to be worried about the traditional Protestant paranoia around the issue of works righteousness. The crisis at hand for the church today is in simply distinguishing itself at all from a larger godless culture. This is a concern especially in American Protestantism, where the church and the culture have walked hand-in-hand for so long.
Insofar as practices shape the character of communities—which they do—and the ingrained habits of individuals shape communal practices—which they must—it is imperative that individuals nurture those holy habits that will allow them to receive and be transformed by God’s grace.
Only then will the church be a community capable of transforming the world, because it will consist of individuals who themselves have been healed and reconciled by grace.
