Part 5: Grace

Doc: Hello everyone! 

Gō: I’ll take that!

Iino: Hey! That’s my chocolate!

Doc: You guys are looking well again today. Let’s go ahead and get started.

Think of the worst person you know. What do you think they deserve?

Yoshiya: Yeah, I would say terrorists that kill indiscriminately are pretty bad people.

Doc: Okay, so what do you think people like terrorists or Hitler deserve?

Gō: I hope they go to hell.

Iino: I want them to be punished for what they did.

What comes to mind when you hear the word “grace” (megumi)?

Iino: I don’t know, like, things that are given to us outside of our control or power? Like rain or sunshine?

Gō: Yeah, people in Japan talk about “megumi rain” or “the megumi of the earth”, don’t they? These expressions are all about crops and harvest.

Yoshiya: I feel like the love we receive from our families is also maybe what megumi means. We say that some people are “graced” with a happy home.

Doc: Right. Well the theme of today’s conversation is “grace”. Let’s look at what the Bible says about grace. You remember how last time we read about the first humans, Adam and Eve, and how they sinned against God? This is commonly referred to as “the fall”. We learned that the Bible understands sin in terms of relationship to God and his words or commands, and whether we respect them or not.

Gō: Yes, the main point was that sin, rather than being about individual actions, is a problem of the heart. 

Doc: Right! A heart that rejects God’s authority and wants to decide for itself what is good and what is evil: that’s the essence of sin. We saw that “knowing good and evil” means determining what’s right and what’s wrong. According to the Bible, this is now the human default, and it is the root cause of what’s wrong with humanity.

Doc: It would have been just for God to punish sin with immediate death. The Bible says that “the wages of sin is death”. But did Adam and Eve die right then?

Iino: No, they didn’t die. But they were thrown out of paradise. 

Doc: Yes, after eating the fruit of the tree they would no longer “live forever”, although they didn’t immediately die either, right?

Doc: But while they may not have died physically, when they were cast out of the uchi fellowship of paradise they did have a kind of spiritual death. They remained alive, sustained of course by God, but from now on, life would be different for them from how it was before the fall.

Yoshiya: Last time, we also saw God’s kindness to them after they sinned, when he cut off their access to the tree of life, so that they might not always live in a condition of rebellion against him and under his judgement.

Doc: You remember well! And you’re right…even though through this story we see that humans are unworthy to receive such kindness. I’d like to look now at our Bible passage for today, because here too we see God’s undeserved kindness to human beings.

Doc: Gō, would you please read Genesis 3:14-21 for us?

The Lord God said to the serpent,
“Because you have done this,
    cursed are you above all livestock
    and above all beasts of the field;
on your belly you shall go,
    and dust you shall eat
    all the days of your life.
I will put enmity between you and the woman,
    and between your offspring and her offspring;
he shall bruise your head,
    and you shall bruise his heel.”
To the woman he said,
“I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing;
    in pain you shall bring forth children.
Your desire shall be contrary to your husband,
    but he shall rule over you.”
And to Adam he said,
“Because you have listened to the voice of your wife
    and have eaten of the tree
of which I commanded you,
    ‘You shall not eat of it,’
cursed is the ground because of you;
    in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life;
thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you;
    and you shall eat the plants of the field.
By the sweat of your face
    you shall eat bread,
till you return to the ground,
    for out of it you were taken;
for you are dust,
    and to dust you shall return.”

The man called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living. And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.

Old Testament, Genesis 3:14-21

Doc: Thank you. Something I want you to notice from this passage is that the name, “Eve”, sounds like the Hebrew word for life-giver.

What hints of God’s undeserved favor to the man and woman can you find here?

Iino: Hmm, I guess God giving them animal skins for clothing?

Doc: Yes, that’s good. We didn’t read this part of the Bible together, but at the end of Genesis chapter 2, before Adam and Eve sinned, it says, “And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.” Then, immediately after Adam and Eve sin in chapter 3 verse 7, it says, “Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.”

Gō: Animal skins are quite a step up from leaves!

Doc: No mistake! These weren’t just loincloths, but were much closer to actual clothing. Quite the step up, as you said! But the question is, where did these garments of skins come from?

Yoshiya: Animal skins.

Doc: Okay. And these skinned animals: what do you think happened to them?

Iino: Well, I mean, they died, right?

Doc: Exactly. The first death in the Bible is that of these skinned animals. Up until now, only plants had been given as food. I mentioned it a moment ago, but do you remember that the Bible says, “the wages of sin is death”? And that God said, “but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die”? But instead here we see that animals die instead of Adam and Eve, and their sins are covered by this sacrifice.

Apart from the undeserved favor of these animal skins, is there any more grace on display here?

Yoshiya: Eve’s name?

Iino: Her name?

Yoshiya: I mean, God said to them, “you shall surely die”, but Adam gave his wife a name that sounds like the word for life-giver?

Doc: That’s good. Yes, it goes as far to say she will bear children, indicating that life will continue on from her. This is also undeserved favor. Anything else?

Iino: You mean there’s more?

Gō: What about verse 15?

Iino: Verse 15?? You’ll have to explain that one to me. 

Doc: It says, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” These are God’s words to the serpent. So who is the “I” in this sentence?

Iino: God.

Doc: Okay. And the “you”?

Iino: The serpent. 

Doc: Exactly. The enmity between the offspring of the woman, and the offspring of the serpent is going to continue. At this point, the first humans are not dead, but evil isn’t destroyed either, and so it’s going to spread through the world. Now, we need to think about the Hebrew word for “offspring” used here. It’s comparable to words like sheep or fish in English, in that it is used for both singular and plural nouns. 

Yoshiya: So when it says, “he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel”, is it specifically pointing to one of the woman’s offspring?

Doc: You got it. It is this “he” that will bruise the head of the serpent. “He” will deliver the fatal blow. But, we see that “he” will also get hurt, right? It says the serpent will bruise his heel. This is a foretelling that one of the woman’s descendants is going to defeat evil, but he is going to suffer for it. 

Gō: I remember this. What do you call it, again?

Doc: This is known as the “protoevangelium” or original gospel. This is the first place in the Bible that the gospel is announced. 

What questions remain about the relationship between God’s justice and his mercy?

Iino: Adam and Eve were forgiven because of God’s mercy, right? Well, I think it’s fine that they were forgiven by an animal sacrifice, but Hitler? If he were forgiven just because an animal died that wouldn’t be justice. 

Yoshiya: I think that most people want forgiveness for the sins they have committed, but often look at the sins of others and demand justice and punishment.

Doc: I think you’re right about that. The word “grace” is used in the Bible with a range of meanings. But one of the most important meanings is “unmerited favor”. Adam and Eve were saved by grace. Now, later on in the Bible, we read God’s “self-introduction”. Yoshiya, could you read Exodus 34:6-7 for us, please?

“The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.” 

Old Testament, Exodus 34:6-7

Doc: “The Lord” in all capital letters here is referring to the God of the Bible. In the original Hebrew text, God’s name means, “I am”. God’s personal name is very mysterious, wouldn’t you say?

Is there anything surprising to you about God’s self-introduction?

Gō: This passage says, “Forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty”… It sounds like God is a bit contradictory. 

Yoshiya: Yeah, but it says that grace is to a thousand generations even though punishment is only to the third and the fourth generation. No matter how you look at it, God’s grace seems much greater. 

Doc: Exactly. God is merciful and gracious. How his grace and judgement can coexist is quite the puzzle. But when we enter into the New Testament, we’re given the answer. 

How do you feel about the idea of God forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin?

Iino: It makes me think of God’s authority.

Yoshiya: Forgiveness is no easy thing, is it? Japanese feudal lord Oda Nobunaga was the exact opposite of “being merciful and gracious, slow to anger”. In fact, he’s famous for his temper. Lately, I’ve been reading a historical novel. It’s crazy what Nobunaga did back then out of anger; making people commit hara-kiri, or killing them himself. He couldn’t forgive. In fact, he was powerless to forgive. I reckon that a God who forgives people must be a truly powerful God, and actually Oda Nobunaga, supposedly the most powerful man of his day, was powerless.

Gō: In forgiveness, the one forgiving is the one making the sacrifice, right?

Doc: You’ve hit the nail on the head! Back in the Bible verse, “iniquity and transgression and sin” are pretty much synonyms. Even so, there are slight distinctions among them. I’ll explain using this pencil I have right here. Imagine God held this pencil and said, “this pencil is straight”. In this case, the straight pencil represents God’s law. “Iniquity” is to bend the pencil, “transgression” is to snap it in two, and “sin” is to throw away the pencil and live as if it – God’s law – never existed. 

How do you feel about the idea that God might forgive your sin?

Gō: Thankful.

Doc: Me too, very thankful indeed. God gave Adam and Eve the hope of life, by clothing their nakedness in sacrificial garments, and by the promise of a descendent of Eve who would crush the serpent’s head. God committed to a future solution to the problem of sin, according to his grace. Next time, we’ll see how this promise has been fulfilled in history.

The ESV Bible. Crossway, 2001, www.esv.org/.