Closing Time

I feel like I need to write something that can close up this semester of my life in Hungary—some apt summation of the most incredible three and a half months of my life to date, using witticisms and words far too clever for me and cleanly and succinctly presenting to the world the result of my experience. And yet I am quite sure it would be impossible to do so, for a number of reasons I won’t get into, other than one: that while I may no longer be physically studying God in Hungary, God is most certainly not done teaching me about Himself and about what a life lived utterly in love with and for Him looks like.

My time in Hungary began with a promise: that God would show Himself to me in a way that I had previously been blind to or that I had previously seen with distorted vision. The thought that God wanted to clarify my view of Him in this way came from the story of the blind man that Jesus heals in Mark 8. When first Jesus touches this man’s eyes, the man says that he can see; but he specifies that he sees men as trees, walking. I saw much of myself in this man. I saw that I could, in fact, see Jesus—could see that He was my Savior, that He was my only Hope, that His cross was the only way, and that He was my Lord and Master. But I knew there was something missing; that what I was seeing was incomplete at best, and dangerously misinformed at worst. As Hudson Taylor wrote in a letter to his sister, “All the time I felt assured that there was in Christ all I needed, but the practical question was—how to get it out. He was rich truly, but I was poor; He was strong, but I weak. I knew full well that there was in the root, the stem, abundant fatness, but how to get it into my puny little branch was the question.” Since I began my Christian walk, I have felt assured that there was in Christ all I needed; but, indeed, I sensed that I wasn’t fully experiencing His perfect satisfaction.

It turns out that God answered this promise by opening my eyes to see His grace—to see Him and to see myself in the proper Light, and to have the veil lifted and the dawn begin to rise on the beautiful horizon of His boundless love. My first clue in this direction came during one of my classes. I have searched my notes high and low for this quote, but to no avail. Nevertheless, I distinctly recall one day about six weeks into my time in Hungary sitting in one of my classes (I think it was our morning devotions, but I’m not sure) and hearing these words come out of the mouth of the speaker: “Without knowing the grace of God, it is impossible to have an undistorted view of God.” In the moment, my brain fleetingly registered the words “undistorted,” “view,” and “grace of God”; but the press of daily life soon shoved aside the small question and hope that had formed in my mind.

As the semester progressed, we came upon our ten-day outreach and speaker’s week. Both of these challenged me and stretched me in ways that I had never experienced challenge before. Over ten-day outreach, God showed me what I now see to be His grace as displayed in His faithfulness. As His servant, He taught me that He is faithful to do in us that which He has called us to do. He showed me the blessing of service when it comes from love for Him and is done in His strength and power. During speaker’s week, He taught me what I now see is the grace of a relationship with Him—that He wants to know me, and wants me to know Him.

In all of these things, He was preparing my heart to see clearly what He has spoken all along—that “the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works” (Titus 2:11-14). And how the grace of God appeared to me! I finally understand, I think, the beautiful hymn Amazing Grace—“Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me! I once was lost, but now am found; was blind, but now I see.”

The final preparations the Lord did in my heart occurred on the weekend I wrote about a few blog entries ago, in a post entitled “Why Christians Need the Gospel.” I was made keenly aware of my deep depravity during that weekend. I almost couldn’t believe some of the things that I was thinking and barely keeping myself from speaking that weekend. Step one of understanding grace? Seeing myself in the proper light. That weekend, God gently reprimanded me for my pride, and showed me myself in all of my ugliness and sin. It so upset me and even startled me that I actually recall feeling almost dizzy with the revelation of it. That drew me to His gospel, as I wrote about, and I started to wonder how it was possible that I could truly be a new creature in Christ, as 2 Corinthians 5:17 says. That verse, though breathtakingly beautiful, had always seemed too good to be true, and had more nearly broken my heart than encouraged it. I realized earlier in the semester that I had always thought of myself as a fixed old creature, rather than as an entirely new creature. Now, as I came to this verse again, in light of my new and more accurate understanding of who I was, it seemed even more impossible. I saw that I still depended on myself, to a certain extent, for my “right standing” before God. If I did well by being obedient or saying no to temptation or sharing the gospel with someone, I patted myself on the back and felt at peace with God. However, nothing could silence the condemnation when I sinned—when I gave into temptation, or was too cowardly to share the gospel, or lied, or let someone down. As you might imagine, my life was a rollercoaster of delight and dread, of feeling secure one moment and the next completely unstable.

So I came hesitantly to this verse once again, and found myself wondering what it meant to be “in” Christ. As I looked it up on Blue Letter Bible, that hopeful expectation that had been born so many weeks ago in my heart was stirred. The following is what I found, and my response to it:

“2 Corinthians 5:17—“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.”

“In” (Gk. ἐν) Definition: In, by, with etc. Root word: A primary preposition denoting (fixed) position (in place, time or state), and (by implication) instrumentality (medially or constructively), i.e. a relation of rest.

What a definition! To be in Christ means that I am fixed, steadfast, steady, sure, unchangingly in Him. And, in Him means that my instrumentality, purpose, and role in life is also intimately associated with Him. Who I am and what I do are at rest in Christ. Who I am (all that I am) and what I do (all that I do) are at rest in Jesus Christ, just as Christ Jesus is at rest in the Father, and as He is in me. In the midst of everything of this life, the Unchanging One (I AM THAT I AM) is in me, and as He is immutable, so He is in me; as He is faithful, so He is in me; as He is mighty, so He is in me; as He is holy, so He is in me; as He is righteous, so He is in me. I am at rest in Christ.”

What glorious grace He demonstrated to me in those moments! I felt much as I imagine Christian in Pilgrim’s Progress must have felt upon first seeing the Cross—unimaginable relief as my burden fell away from my back. No longer would I need to be tossed to and fro by the waves of circumstance, or emotion, or fear! No longer would I have the unbearable load of condemnation, nor the unbearable load of pride, fastened to my back. No, those burdens had all been relieved by finally seeing Christ’s cross and His grace for what it truly was, is, and always will be—an everlasting place of the sweetest rest. It is in Christ’s finished work on the Cross, and that alone, that we rest. It is the Cross that makes me righteous or unrighteous; it is the Cross that makes me accepted or condemned; it is the Cross that makes me adopted or estranged; it is the Cross that determines my eternal and temporal standing. No sin is so great that it drains Calvary of its grace; no good work is so good that it outshines Calvary. I am who I am because of the Cross of Jesus Christ. I am righteous, accepted in the Beloved. I am a daughter of the King, a sister of the Savior. As Hudson Taylor wrote in that same letter to his sister, “It is a wonderful thing to be really one with a risen and exalted Savior, to be a member of Christ!”

As the beautiful Light dawned in my mind, so many other things that God had been showing me throughout the semester clicked into place. The time that He had healed me of self-loathing and hatred for my person and my appearance, He had used the verse Psalm 116:7—“Return, O my soul, to your rest; for the LORD has dealt bountifully with you.” What a beautiful picture of God’s rest and grace—His bountiful dealings with us, and the open arms with which He invites us to Himself. Or His demand that “none of these things [of the world] move me”—a demand impossible apart from the grace of God, and yet perfectly plausible and even to be expected of a gracious God. Or His specific calling of me to be His daughter and to do His work—how ridiculous to think that a human could ever even serve the living God, let alone be in His family, be a precious treasure to Him! And yet, even this would-be blasphemy is miraculously acceptable because of the blood of Jesus Christ and the grace of the Father to look on Him and pardon me. The list goes on, but the thread that ties them all together is the same.

So, I suppose I have come up with a way to clearly and succinctly summarize my semester: It was a semester of having my eyes opened to the abundant riches of God’s grace in Jesus Christ. May you and I be blessed to know “the riches of His grace which He made to abound to us in all knowledge and prudence,” and may you and I never lose the wonder of the Cross and the grace there demonstrated by a loving God for His sinful creatures.