Absolute Grace

Yancy put the Sermon on the Mount in perspective for me in his book The Jesus I Never Knew. He says the sermon is not about burdening us with more "to do's" and how to "be good." It's about what God is like.

Why should we love our enemies he asks? "Because our clement Father causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good." Why be perfect? "Because God is perfect." Why store up treasures in heaven? "Because the Father lives there and will lavishly reward us." Why live without fear and worry? "Because the same God who clothes the lilies and the grass of the field has promised to take care of us." Why pray? "If an earthly father gives his son bread or fish, how much more will the Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him."

The sermon wasn't given so we'd furrow our brows in despair over our inability to do it. It's God's ideal toward which we ought to strive. And here, Yancy's words capture it: "Thunderously, unarguably, the Sermon on the Mount proves that before God we all stand on level ground: murderers and temper-throwers, adulterers and lusters, thieves and coveters. We are all desperate, and that is in fact the only state appropriate to a human being who wants to know God. Having fallen from the absolute Ideal, we have nowhere to land but in the safety net of absolute grace."