There must be feelings of humility, not from nature, but from penitence, not to rest in them, but to go on to greatness. There must be feelings of greatness, not from merit, but from grace, and after having passed through humiliation. Pensees #524
The incarnation shows man the greatness of his misery by the greatness of the remedy which he required. Pensees #525
The knowledge of God without that of man’s misery causes pride. The knowledge of man’s misery without that of God causes despair. The knowledge of Jesus Christ constitutes the middle course, because in Him we find both God and our misery. Pensees #526
Man either hides his miseries, or, if he discloses them, glories in knowing them. Pensees #405
And here's one from his near contemporary, Fenelon:
The true method of profiting by the humiliation of our faults, is to behold them in all their deformity, without losing our hope in God, and without having any confidence in ourselves.
Francois de Fenelon, "Spiritual Progress"
In its simplest form, the Gospel can be reduced to these two broad concepts: the depravity of man (what Pascal calls "misery"), and the grace of God. These two parts must never be separated.
I have found that my faith struggle often lies in forgetfulness of one of these realities. For me, unbelief rarely manifests itself as an outright doubting of God's character, the truth of the Gospel, or the reliability of the Bible. It's much more insidious than that. It affirms one half of the Gospel without embracing the other, creating a dangerous state of imbalance.
We dare not speak of the grace of God until we have spoken of the utter sinfulness of man, for which grace is the remedy. And we must never speak of our sin without a sharply focused eye on grace. Sin without grace leaves us either despairingly enlightened about our condition and crying "woe is me," or it deep-freezes our smugly deceived hearts in their self-righteous complacency. The graceless way we view and treat others will reveal this. Grace without sin, on the other hand, leads us to a soft, fluffy version of Christianity which tells us we're basically okay and just need to try harder. Apart from a knowledge of what sin is and does, grace is never truly appreciated and clung to. The result is a "christianized" self-esteem teaching, the social gospel, and a merging of the church with the world.
Half a Gospel leaves man worse than he was without the Gospel. Imbalance in these matters can easily lead to frustration, ineffectiveness, complacency or heresy.
Recently, God seemed to say this to me: "You are more humbled by your own unfaithfulness than you are by MY FAITHFULNESS. You are more humbled by your depravity than you are by MY GLORY" Some of my virtues are half-baked. When I have only been living in the depravity side of the Gospel, my humility is truly felt, but it is too dependent on the knowledge of my weakness. It's a circular chain that only spirals downward. Real humility, like every other virtue, is grounded in a true apprehension of the complete Gospel - the Gospel of GRACE for SINNERS. True humility calls us to see not only what we are apart from God, but also Who He is in Himself.
Sometimes I am like a man who stands before the Grand Canyon, glances briefly at it, takes off his mirrored sunglasses to study his own reflection in them, and an hour later wistfully declares, "I'm so small and insignificant." This man misses the point altogether. And so do we, when we forget to keep the total Gospel balance of SIN and GRACE in perspective.
Grace is God's awe-inspiring display. It is divine activity which flies in the face of all our man-centered, legalistic ideas about justice and truth. Grace smashes our self-pity and makes us rightly ashamed of ourselves. It is designed to get - and keep - our attention throughout time and eternity. It is infused with a lasting glory, the glory of the infinite God. It seeps down into the lowlands of human depravity and raises those who cannot lift themselves. It carves through the bedrock of human sin, revealing what is there. But also removing great portions of that bedrock and redeeming the dry, accursed ground. For all eternity we and the angels will marvel at what God has done with sinful humanity by the working of His grace. We who have believed will forget ourselves and get lost in the abyss of this mercy. Angels will fall down adoring God, while demons and rebellious humanity agonize under a restless, grace-free existence.
Are you amazed by your inconsistency, your incessant bent toward sin, your ugly deceitful heart? You should be. But remember to lift your gaze to get stunned and captivated by God's response to your misery: a GREATER GRACE that mirrors your sinfulness in the opposite direction. Where sin abounds, grace does MUCH MORE abound. Mercy TRIUMPHS over judgment. And His lovingkindness PREVAILS over us.______________________________________________________________
Grateful acknowledgement is made to Tony Hayling at Agonizomai for his assistance in defining the thoughts in this post, and for the Fenelon quote.
